Dunn County considers CAFO moratorium
By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Planning Resources and Development Committee planned to meet October 17 to discuss a six-month moratorium on Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations to present at the Dunn County Board meeting Wednesday.
The PR&D committee discussed the possibility of a moratorium at the October 11 meeting.
About 50 people attended the meeting, and 18 audience members addressed the committee during public comments.
PR&D members planned to more closely review a draft of the moratorium at their October 17 special meeting that was then expected to be presented to the Dunn County Board at the October 19 meeting.
Nick Lange, Dunn County corporation counsel, submitted a draft for PR&D members to review.
Members of the PR&D committee were generally in favor of a moratorium but disagreed on how long the moratorium should be in place.
A six-month moratorium with the possibility of a six-month extension if needed seemed to have the most support among committee members.
The majority of those who spoke during public comments said they were concerned about soil and groundwater contamination from CAFOs, specifically from large dairies, and were in favor of a moratorium to give Dunn County time to review the county’s zoning ordinance to make sure regulations are adequate to keep the groundwater from being contaminated.
Many of the speakers said they believed the state Department of Natural Resources is too short-handed to make sure the CAFOs are complying with state law.
Many of the speakers also referred to problems in Kewaunee County where 320 water wells have been found to be contaminated with coliform bacteria and nitrates.
The concern about CAFOs, the expansion of large dairies and the contamination of soil and groundwater was prompted by a request for expansion at Cranberry Creek Dairy in the Town of Rock Creek.
Cranberry Creek Dairy plans to expand to 7,250 animal units — or 5,000 dairy cows — by next summer. The dairy currently has 1,250 dairy cows.
Rock Creek is one of six unzoned townships in Dunn County.
Nutrient management
Charles Harschlip, who lives in the Rock Falls area, is a dairy farmer with a 70-cow herd and a Wisconsin Natural Resources Conservation Service 590 Standard Nutrient Management Plan.
A nutrient management plan establishes how much manure can be applied to farm fields based on soil testing and the nutrients needed for that particular field to grow a particular crop.
Harschlip said he is “getting nervous” because the “bigger operators are putting on way too much manure on some fields.”
Three large dairy herds, including two in Pepin County, would be within six to eight miles of each other, he said.
Describing the Cranberry Creek nutrient management plan as a “scary situation,” Harschlip noted that nutrient management plans are self-regulated.
Pepin County and the Black River Falls office of the DNR are short-handed, and “they need help,” he said.
“If the county could do any kind of moratorium to slow this down,” Harschlip said.
Dead zone
Rachel Kummer of Rock Falls also identified herself as a dairy farmer in favor of a moratorium on CAFOs and described Cranberry Creek Dairy as a neighbor who wants to expand in size by five times.
Kummer said she wrote a nutrient management plan last winter and knows how to read the plans. When she looked at the Cranberry Creek nutrient management plan, the plan was missing soil samples, had incorrect crop rotations and listed landowners where the manure would be spread who had not been asked permission to use their land, Kummer said.
For the expansion, Cranberry Creek needed an inspection, and an August 5 letter to the dairy listed all of the areas of non-compliance, such as the over-application of nitrogen in 2015 and 2016 — one hundred pounds more of nitrogen per acre than should have been applied, Kummer said.
The dairy has not submitted manure samples for nutrient analysis and has had problems with run-off control from feed bunkers, she said.
A local bow hunter recently located a site where every bit of vegetation is dead in a spot ten feet wide by 30 feet that leads to the creek bank, Kummer said.
Cranberry Creek Dairy has been pulling water from the creek for fertilizing, and the equipment must have been leaking all summer, she said.
Soil samples were tested for urea, ammonia and nitrate, and the amount was so high that it was beyond what the machines could be calibrated to accurately measure, Kummer said.
“We need time to make sure our environmental concerns are addressed,” she said.
Public trust
Randy Koehler is a dairy farmer in the Rock Falls area who lives a half mile south of the proposed Cranberry Creek Dairy expansion.
The 100 pounds more per acre of nitrogen is perhaps an overage of 50 percent, Koehler said.
The public wants farmers to be more sustainable, and the public wants to be able to trust farmers, he said.
Violations of regulations by one large dairy hurts all farmers because the public then does not trust farmers not to violate regulations, Koehler said.
“We need a moratorium to get some time to look into this,” Koehler said.
Mike Grant from Menomonie said government was supposed to be for the people to serve the people.
But the state government in Wisconsin has defunded the DNR and has stopped looking at science.
“Everyone has to have clean air and clean water,” he said.
In recent years, the larger dairy operations have represented a major change in agriculture, Grant said.
“We need time to look at it more closely,” he said.
Villains
Ryan Ullom of Eau Claire said he is a third-generation dairy farmer.
The people speaking at the PR&D meeting are painting a broad picture that dairy farms are bad, he said.
Farmers do not want to contaminate the environment, Ullom said.
“We do not intend to contaminate the water or the air. We want to provide for our families and for everyone,” he said.
Farmers want to work with the government. Grain farmers also over apply nutrients and are self-regulated, Ullom said.
The people speaking at the meeting are “painting dairy as the villain,” he said.
Lee Ullom of Menomonie said his family is working on following the CAFO standards.
How much is a moratorium going to help operations that are already following the standards? Ullom wondered.
The Ulloms have a family farm that is expanding to support the family. A moratorium will cause some operations to fold, he said.
“A moratorium would cause us to no longer be an operation to the fullest extent … (it would be a) detriment to our operation as a family,” he said.
Doug Ullom begged to differ with his sons about the farm being third generation and said it was, in fact, a fourth generation farm.
Ullom said he is a supervisor on the Spring Brook Town Board and his farm is located in the Town of Dunn.
All together, he has four sons and 11 grandchildren, and Ullom said he understands the concerns about clean water.
The Town of Spring Brook is removing the water fountains at the town hall because of nitrate contamination, and there are very few dairies in Spring Brook, he said.
“Like my sons said, we’re being put out as villains,” Ullom said.
In every business, there are good operators and not-so-good operators, he said.
Cheryl Ullom said she has lived on a dairy farm her whole life.
“We work hard, and we love what we do,” she said.
The economics of dairy farming are difficult, and Ullom said she would love if if they could stay at 50 cows or 100 cows.
The big dairy farms have been driven by economics, she said.
“Every farm that is trying to survive should not be punished,” she said.
The Ullom family wants to expand their farm in order to be able to support the family, Cheryl Ullom said.
“It’s too bad we have to be at war over this,” she said.
The DNR is understaffed, and laws are not being enforced. If people want the laws enforced, they should ask the state Legislature for enforcement, Ullom said.
Parts per million
Helen Kees of Durand said she is a farmer and has cattle.
Working farmers have taken time out of their busy schedules, especially at this time of year during the harvest, to do research and complete work that should have been done by civil servants, she said.
Kees said she had requested information from the DNR before the hearing in Rock Creek in September for the Cranberry Creek Dairy expansion.
In some areas, drinking water in Dunn County has a nitrogen levels of 12 to 24 parts per million, she said.
In Wisconsin, the enforcement level is ten parts per million, but two parts per million is considered the protective action limit at which something should be done, Kees said.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency is in Madison right now, reviewing the DNR’s enforcement of clean water regulations, she said.
Emerald
Emerald Sky Dairy in the Town of Emerald in St. Croix County is planning an expansion, said Kim Dupree, who lives one and a half miles from Emerald Sky Dairy.
Three of her neighbors have had excessively high nitrates in their well water the last several months, she said.
After doing an open records request, Dupree said she had discovered that Emerald Sky Dairy has only submitted half of the required compliance logs to the DNR since 2008, and the DNR is understaffed.
One of her neighbors spent $11,000 to install a reverse osmosis system on one faucet to deal with the nitrates, and another neighbor spent $20,000 drilling a new well, Dupree said.
Reverse osmosis and new wells to draw water from below the contaminated level are not covered by homeowners insurance, she noted.
St. Croix County also is currently considering a moratorium on CAFOs, Dupree said.
“Clean drinking water is essential … we all need to work together to protect our water,” she said.
Another woman from the Town of Emerald said she had attended a two-day summit on CAFOs in Green Bay in September and had learned about the damage in Kewaunee County.
The Algoma public school system has a clean water kiosk because well water cannot be used for drinking or bathing or cooking, she said, and in the Town of Emerald, there are contaminated wells in all four directions from Emerald Sky Dairy.
Citizen Action
Jeff Smith, who lives in a township neighboring Rock Creek, is a member of the Citizen Action Cooperative of Western Wisconsin.
Clean drinking water is a bi-partisan issue, he said.
“We have to figure out what is in the best interests of everyone,” Smith said.
Manure can be land spread 12 miles away as part of a nutrient management plan, but many people are not aware of the amount of land involved, Smith said.
Smith said no one wants to “vilify the family farms.”
Wisconsin is rich in water resources, and it is “not smart” to contaminate the water. “We should be protecting our water at all costs,” he said.
Moratorium
“It is appropriate for us to take a look at this,” said Tom Quinn, chair of the PR&D committee and a county board supervisor from Downing.
Quinn also is the executive director of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
The regulation of CAFOs is an enormously complicated issue, said Diane Morehouse, PR&D member and county board supervisor from Menomonie.
“It seems to me it would be prudent to take some time,” she said.
Gary Bjork, PR&D member and a county board supervisor from Colfax who also is a farmer, agreed that it would be appropriate to take a look at the county’s regulations and suggested a six-month moratorium on CAFOs.
Bjork expressed concern for farmers being able to continue any plans for expansion during a moratorium longer than six months.
Gary Seipel, PR&D member and a county board supervisor from Eau Galle, said he had missed the meeting two weeks ago and had been “blindsided” by the idea of a moratorium.
A one-year moratorium would be detrimental to existing farms that want to expand, he said.
A moratorium would prohibit licensing of new operations or expansion of existing operations, said Lange, the county’s attorney.
By studying groundwater, surface water and watersheds in relation to possible impacts by CAFOs, Dunn County would be doing what the DNR and what the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection should be doing and is mandated to do, Seipel said.
The state law that regulates CAFOs was done in 2004, and at that time, no one thought about farms with 26,000 hogs or 5,000 dairy cows, Quinn said.
“The scale is so much greater. Maybe the state regulations are not being managed correctly,” he said.
DNR personnel are told to issue permits for the lowest standards on the books, Quinn said.
A moratorium would not prevent farmers from starting the application process; obtaining all the proper permits for a CAFO is a lengthy process, he said.
Responsibility
The Dunn County Board has a responsibility to Dunn County residents regardless of what the DNR or DATCP does or does not do, said Steve Rasmussen, chair of the Dunn County Board and ex officio member of the PR&D committee.
“This is about local control,” he said.
Taking a look at the county’s ordinances and gathering information about groundwater and surface water “is not blaming. It is addressing a perceived need in the community. It is not blaming agriculture or dairy. It is an issue that is of concern to Dunn County residents,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen suggested that citizen members should be part of a committee appointed to review the ordinance and the scientific information available, including farmers such as Dave Styer.
The committee will be looking at “what works, what doesn’t, what is appropriate,” Rasmussen said, adding that he was anticipating community engagement that is thoughtful and reasoned as well as focused on evidence-based decision making.
Seipel advocated taking two weeks to review the proposed moratorium — until the next regular PR&D meeting.
Quinn advocated for approving the moratorium so it could be presented to the Dunn County Board at the October 19 meeting.
Waiting two weeks for the next PR&D regular meeting means it would be six weeks before a moratorium comes before the county board, Quinn said.
The Dunn County Planning, Resources and Development Committee unanimously postponed making a decision on recommending a moratorium on CAFOs until a special meeting of the committee October 17.
