"Your water isn't as clean as you think it is....our legislature has abandoned us," said Kim Dupree at a press conference today announcing the release of the Sierra Club-John Muir Chapter's new white paper "CAFOs: A Threat to the Water in Wisconsin".
Today residents, local officials and scientists gathered at the Menomonie City Library in Menomonie to highlight the environmental and public health impacts of Wisconsin’s failure to adequately and fairly regulate large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) or factory farms. Northwest Wisconsin is facing a rapid expansion of existing and proposals for new facilities. Around the state these factory farms are responsible for contamination of groundwater, stress on water supply from over pumping, fish kills from manure spills, odor and many other hazards.
In 2004, Wisconsin legislators passed the Livestock Facility Siting Law (Wis. Stat. § 93.90). The law and rules were designed with the intent of making the farm permit application and approval process more efficient. The law is not designed to protect public health or natural resources and it doesn’t.
Since the CAFO citing law passed the number of CAFOs in Wisconsin has doubled from approximately 150 to over 300. CAFOs generate large quantities of manure, both liquid and solid. This is an issue because manure contains bacteria, phosphorous, nitrates and other substances that can contaminate water supplies. The management and disposal of this manure is the source of many of the significant problems that can arise from one of these facilities.
- A dairy CAFO with 2,500 cows generates the same amount of waste as a city of 410,000 residents.
- Liquefied animal waste emits 160 known toxic gases, including hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas with the characteristic stench of rotten eggs.
- A recent study in Kewaunee County show that of 47 wells tested 29 were contaminated by manure.
- In 2004, a six-month old infant from Kewaunee County was taken to the emergency room after bathing in manure-tainted well water.
- An estimated 94,000 households in Wisconsinhave unsafe levels of nitrates in their drinking water, harmful to adults and potentially fatal to infants
- A dairy operation of 5,000 cows would use approximately 67,000,000 gallons of water per year.
The seriousness of this problem was highlighted by the release of the latest information from studies done on contamination of wells in Kewaunee County. Tests have shown that up to 60 percent of sampled wells in a Kewaunee County contained fecal microbes, many of which are capable of making people and calves sick, including Cryptosporidium, a parasite that comes from both people and animals. Researchers estimated Cryptosporidium in drinking water is likely infecting 140 of the county’s 20,000 residents each year.
“But the problem is not limited to Kewaunee County”, said Neil Koch a retired hydrologist. “CAFOs in the Chippewa Valley will pollute the groundwater as well, he continued. “There are 150 septic waste land spreading sites in Dunn County that do not meet DNR standards for percolation rates which could cause health problems for people living near these sites.”
These factory farms are not necessarily good for agriculture. “These large CAFOs, especially paired with the vertical integration that has been occurring in cases like Cranberry Creek and Grassland,are aggravating the processing capacity in our state and putting the squeeze on other farmers,” said Rachel Kummer a local farmer.
Since the passage of the Livestock Facility Siting law in 2004 we have seen a perfect storm of an explosion in the number of huge factory farms and a lack of enforcement. The result has been contaminated drinking water and manure spills causing fish kills.
We need to repeal this law or amend it to protect the people of Wisconsin and the state’s environment. Until then there should be a moratorium on new or expanded facilities.
Read the full report or fact sheet.