Released 08/08/06 Contact Tami Jackson (lakeinfo @ wisconsinlakes.org)

Are large corporation profits more valuable than clean drinking water?

Your legislature seems to think so.

Last Thursday there was a joint meeting of the State Senate and Assembly Agriculture committees to hear public testimony on Manure Management Discharge Rules (NR 243).

The Senate Agriculture Committee voted to return proposed rule (NR 243) to the DNR for unspecified modifications. Many members of the Assembly Committee didn’t even show up for the hearing, and the Senate Committee members missed five out of eight hours of public testimony before they voted. Unfortunately it appears the wants of Wisconsin’s 150 large factory farms outweigh the basic human needs of our state’s citizens.

Many Wisconsin citizens had taken the day off work and had traveled considerable distances to testify on how manure runoff had contaminated their wells and drinking water, degraded the water quality of lakes, killed fish, and undermined the dollars invested to restore and keep our water resources safe and healthy. Unfortunately they got a rude awakening as to whose concerns rank most important under our Capitol dome.

The Manure Management Discharge rules (NR 243) apply only to Wisconsin’s 150 Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), those farms that have so many manure producing animals they require a discharge permit under the federal Clean Water Act. CAFOs make up less than 1% of Wisconsin’s farms, but produce more than 10% of the manure.

Farmers choose to become a CAFO. And, because they are large, they need to take responsibility for their actions and operate their businesses in a manner that does not harm their neighbors.

But Agribusiness lobby groups—many of which negotiated compromises on the proposed NR 243 as members of the DNR advisory team that drafted the rule—convinced the Agricultural committees that these few large farmers should be treated differently from other polluters. They advocated that the few bad actors that are causing people to become sick and degrading our shared resources because of poor manure management should not be “burdened” by having to take responsibility for their actions or follow rules.

We don’t believe that most farmers willfully want to make their neighbors sick, lower water quality, and hurt our fish and our lakes. But it’s happening, all over the state. People are getting sick. Fish are suffocating. Plants are choking to death in a watery haze of manure.

The many, many Wisconsin farmers who operate responsibly and are good stewards of our land should be embarrassed by and ashamed of their lobby groups and the few farmers that don’t follow good manure management practices.

Let us be clear.

When people are getting sick from their own tapwater, that is not ok.

When manure runoff makes our lakes unswimmable because of e coli and fecal coliform bacteria, that is not ok.

When manure runoff makes our nationally renowned trout streams and lakes are unfishable because all the fish are dead, that is not ok.

When manure runoff changes clear lakes into algae basins, that is not ok.

When manure runoff creates nutrient rich waters invasives like Eurasian water milfoil prefer, that is not ok.

When our elected representatives take the paid lobbyist positions more seriously than the public health of their constituents, that is not ok.

We needed these rules before another spring pockmarked by manure runoff events, sick kids, and dead fish. The legislature has let all of us down.