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Environmentally Disastrous CAFO? Great Idea!

by: Jill Richardson

Sun Nov 08, 2009 at 22:34:23 PM PST

The WI Dept of Natural Resources found that a new 11,5000 cow dairy would be an environmental disaster... and approved it anyway. Yikes! What to do? Details below.

Jill Richardson :: Environmentally Disastrous CAFO? Great Idea!

The following is from a post on DailyKos:

This dairy CAFO, in the Town of Rosendale, we call it CAFO-RD, asked for a permit to Confine 11,500 Animal Units. The WDNR wrote an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) telling everyone why this CAFO wasn't a good idea. The 197 page EIS points to issues like the 127 species of birds, invertebrates, and suchlike that could be harmed in nearby grasslands, marshes and fields. It mentioned the 94 million gallons of cow manure that would be land-spread on 5631 acres of crop land, across 4 major area watersheds and already EPA 303d-listed waters (The largest untreated sewage area in the state of Wisconsin...even the cities of Milwaukee and Madison, though slightly larger, at least have some sewage treatment.)
The EIS discussed the negative traffic impact to small rural roads per year (26,000 truckloads of manure, feed, and suchlike.) This was a minor problem compared to the harmful effects of air quality, the pervasive dust, and the likelihood of manure spills into nearby surface and groundwater.
The EIS further criticized the locating of this CAFO on this delicate karst region of Wisconsin (karst, is a geologic condition where the porous nature of the soil provides an easy conduit to the groundwater.) The particular problem in this case is where much of the land-spreading will be done on topographic surfaces estimated to be less than 24 inches to groundwater in some places.

Karst was actually named for a region in Slovenia that I've visited. You can see details and pictures of the Slovenian karst caves here. It's easy to understand why this is not a geologic formation where you'd want to deposit tons upon tons of manure.

So after all of that analysis, the Wisconsin Department if Natural Resources decided to issue a permit for this new, enormous dairy. The reason? The dairy will bring in an estimated $70 million per year in revenues. Plus $100 million required to build the CAFO. This is despite their own EIS, plus testimony and petitions from various outside groups. Now that the OK has been given for the dairy, there's a 30 day comment period ending December 3, 2009. What a mess.

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Environmentally Disastrous CAFO? Great Idea! | 6 comments

EIS (4.00 / 2)

What is the point of writing an environmental impact statement, one might ask.

WiDNR apparently did not just approve an 11,500-cow dairy, they approved creating it with no sewage treatment facility. This really irks me. The time is long past when when regulatory agencies might think it OK to dispose of a hazardous waste by dumping it on land. You want to build the dairy? Fine, build a sewage treatment plant big enough to provide at least secondary treatment to the sewage. And pay for road construction and maintenance.

Almost 17,000 gallons of untreated sewage per acre per year? About 0.4 gallons of untreated sewage per SQUARE FOOT per year?

Eeeew.

by: count @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 01:09:34 AM CST

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jobs and revenue (4.00 / 2)

That is exactly the reasoning used by British Columbia to permit the Norwegion salmon factories to farm Atlantic salmon in the north Pacific.

I wonder how dismal an EIS would have to be for the WiDNR to reject an application.

by: count @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 01:35:15 AM CST

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Regarding the manure handling (4.00 / 2)

you'd think that they'd at least put a manure gassification plant on the place and do some secondary processing of the manure as well. There's a farm back east somewhere, Mike Rowe did a segment on it in his Dirty Jobs program. This dairy farm takes all of the manure, runs it through a digester which produces enough methane to run the dairy and the guy's home. When the manure comes out of the digester, it's heated and the solids and liquids are seperated. The liquids are used for fertilizer on the guy's own fields, which the cows graze on, and the solids are pressed into planting pots for starting seeds. One of the nice things about this is that the solids and liquids are sterile by the time the liquids go in the lagoon and the solids are made into seedling pots. The seedlings also grow faster than they do in regular peat pots because the solids have a lot of the nutrients in them still. Kind of like a peat pot with natural fertilizer build into it. I'll try to dig up a link to that dairy farm.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

by: Joanne Rigutto @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 06:21:40 AM CST

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The pots are called (4.00 / 1)

Cow Pots

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

by: Joanne Rigutto @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 08:29:43 AM CST

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The CAFO (4.00 / 1)

Rosendale Wisconsin CAFO

by: count @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 09:09:54 AM CST

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Sickening (4.00 / 2)

I've only read 8 pages of the 22-page ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS AND DECISION ON THE NEED FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT (EIS) so far, but I already know it is nauseating. I'll come back to it when I recover my equilibrium.

The department's reasoning for granting the permit included the fact that Lake Winnebago and nearby tributaries are already polluted. Also, although dead zones were recognized as an issue, this application is OK because it will pollute Lake Michigan, not the Gulf of Mexico.

What, me worry?

The site will include some kind of sewage system for several human Animal Units who will work there, perhaps portable toilets.

I haven't yet found out who owns the land on which the hazardous waste will be spread.

This project was a done deal long before issuance of this permit for Phase I. Permits and construction of wells, construction permits for and construction of site facilities, etc. The 30-day comment period is a farce. I see no recourse at this point except legal action.

If Frankie and Jonnie run 70 cows on 140 acres, land application could seem reasonable. There is a point at which economies of scale becomes a ludicrous concept. Whatever that point is, Rosendale Dairy and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources passed it long ago.

by: count @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 09:54:10 AM CST

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Environmentally Disastrous CAFO? Great Idea! | 6 comments