Yes, We're Live
Clean water for Emerald
Supervisor: Action on large-scale livestock operations will let stakeholders talk about issue.
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Board on Wednesday, with a voice vote, approved a six-month moratorium on the licensing or any expansion greater than 20 percent on large-scale livestock operations with at least 1,000 animal units.
KEWAUNEE COUNTY, Wis. (WBAY) – Recent rainfall has left one Kewaunee County couple with tainted water. Not only is it undrinkable, but you wouldn’t want to wash your dishes or shower in it. Rob and Erika Balza live about a mile outside Luxemburg. When they went to brush their teeth before bed last night, they saw brown water that smelled like manure coming out of their bathroom faucet. The brown, murky water is also in their toilets.
“I mean it’s gotten to the point where the nitrates have gotten so bad in the water that twice now they’ve eaten through copper pipes in the basement,” Rob Balza said.
“We have simply too much manure being spread over what is a very vulnerable geology in northeast Wisconsin,” said Luft.
DNR employees didn’t have time to adequately review annual reports submitted by concentrated animal feeding operations or plans describing how millions of gallons of manure they generate annually would be kept out of lakes, streams and groundwater. The DNR didn’t meet its goals for inspections and failed to document that it took any action for months or even years in five incidents where monitoring wells showed feedlots were contaminating groundwater with substances harmful to human health, auditors said.
State Sen. Rob Cowles: “I can tell you the DNR board is steaming mad,” Cowles said last week. “This was a surprise to them. Three of them called me, and a lot of my constituents did, too.”
Stepp touted the plan as a first-of-its-kind “business plan” detailing agency functions in ways that should help shield the department from budget cuts and make the shrinking DNR workforce happier and more efficient.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources leaders on Wednesday announced a sweeping reorganization aimed at providing relief to overburdened workers in its troubled water quality program and making state parks and wildlife management more efficient. George Meyer, a former DNR secretary who directs the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, said some of the changes could prove helpful, but the ailing DNR needs more employees, not a reorganization, Meyer said. The DNR has come under fire from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for deficiencies in Clean Water Act enforcement and by the audit bureau for failing to conduct timely inspections of large dairy operations or adequately review manure spreading plans or annual compliance reports.
