By Bennet Goldstein, Wisconsin Watch
EMERALD, WI – (We continue from where this article left off last week.) The Department of Natural Resources referred each case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, and Attorney General Josh Kaul levied a total of $145,000 in fines.
Under the weariness of past experience, Dupre, co-founder of St. Croix County Defending Our Water, and other environmental advocates swiveled their spotlight onto Breeze Dairy Group’s spills.
From 2013 to 2017, equipment failures at the company’s Waushara County farm released a total of 95,000 to 135,000 gallons of manure into an adjacent wetland and a neighbor’s pond on three occasions.
The Department of Natural Resources required a cleanup but determined the spills did little environmental damage.
Meanwhile, a 50,000-gallon spill at Lake Breeze Dairy in 2014 killed most fish in a creek that flows into Fond du Lac County’s Lake Winnebago. However, the local health department concluded the discharge didn’t contaminate groundwater.
The following winter, a broken line released up to 2,000 gallons of manure into a ditch before the farm contained the spill and pumped it back into a lagoon.
Manure hauling mishaps caused some of Breeze’s spills over the years. In five documented incidents between 2014 and 2023, haulers released about 15,000 gallons due to equipment failure or trucker error. On one occasion, faulty wiring caused a manure release valve to open when a driver activated a turn signal.
Spills are not inevitable, Wolf said, “but the risk is always there.” Yet as technology advances at dairies, he believes risk has fallen.
Croix Breeze Dairy doesn’t truck its manure but pumps it through hoses, which automatically shut off when pressure drops. To reduce field runoff, workers blend manure into the soil using a disc-like tractor attachment.
“It’s just a matter of putting procedures and training in place,” Wolf said, “setting up systems that just don’t fail or have lower risk of failing.”
How common are spills?
Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.
In 15 years, reported incidents statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.
Instead, they contend people, most often manure haulers and farmers, increasingly notified authorities.
That makes sense to Kevin Erb, a UW-Extension training director, who helped plan the state’s first live-action manure spill demonstrations for farmers, applicators and haulers.
Wisconsin’s regulations require all farms, regardless of size, to relay news of spills that threaten health, safety or the environment. But large livestock farm operators must report any incident. Erb said state data overrepresents CAFO-involved spills, which typically are minor compared to those reported by small farms.
“Mechanical failures are gonna happen,” Erb said. “The true measure in my mind is when an accident happens, was it dealt with properly, was it cleaned up and was it reported?”
Over time, the percentage of reported spills that occurred during manure transport increased, and they more frequently involved CAFOs than small operations. Now spills tend to occur in equal measure during hauling and on the farm, such as when a manure lagoon overflows.
Erb attributes the rise in transport spills to the increasing concentration of ever-larger volumes of manure, which haulers must truck to fields. Some are several miles from CAFO buildings, increasing road time and risk.
The volume of most reported spills ranged between 50 and 1,000 gallons. Nearly half of incidents affected surface waters or roadside ditches that were filled with standing water.
To permit or not to permit?
The Department of Natural Resources tries to use a soft touch when compelling CAFO operators to follow state manure regulations. Still, like the case of Emerald Sky, the law leaves room for escalation, up to referring a case to the Department of Justice for possible citation or even criminal prosecution.
“There’s a million different factors at play,” said Ben Uvaas, a department employee who specializes in farm runoff rules.
Variables like a spill’s preventability, the operator’s mitigation efforts and impacts to health and the environment all shape the agency’s response.
But how do spills impact permitting?
The department is “definitely allowed” to consider a farm’s compliance history, including spills, said Jeff Jackson, who works in the state’s CAFO program and drafted Emerald Sky’s wastewater permit.
Large livestock farms must resolve violations before the state can reissue their permits. If they don’t, staff can hold off or impose new requirements like groundwater monitoring.
More than 60 attendees opposed the reissuance of Emerald Sky’s permit at a 2023 public hearing. Dupre presented a petition with 145 signatures, calling for operating requirements like cover crops and an animal cap due to the farm’s “less-than-stellar track record.”
“I appreciate that producers need a level of certainty in their business,” she said in an interview, “but homeowners need the same level of certainty in the investment we make in our properties.”
But Wisconsin’s wastewater permitting process isn’t designed to litigate past misdeeds, punish farmers or put chronic offenders out of business. Instead, the regulatory system sets conditions under which entities like sewer treatment plants and CAFOs can safely pollute.
In the normal course of business, large livestock farm operators request agency approval for a wastewater discharge permit. The department outlines restrictions, along with self-monitoring and reporting requirements.
The agency generally can’t deny a permit if an operator agrees to abide by stipulations, said Paul LaLiberte, a former department employee who worked in water programs for 35 years.
Additionally, regulators can’t deny permits based on potential environmental damage to a region, according to the agency, nor preexisting ecological issues.
The department doesn’t claim that large livestock farms present “zero risk” or that their required nutrient management plans — which outline the location, timing and quantity of nutrients operators will apply to farmland — guarantee no impacts to water quality.
This might explain why residents sometimes perceive a contradiction between seemingly preordained permit approvals and the agency’s stated mission to “protect and enhance” natural resources.
Wisconsin law broadly limits the department’s authority to deny permits.
In practice, department officials don’t deny permits or expansions to get farmers to follow the law, LaLiberte said.
“They have to go through the courts and pummel them into compliance.”
Ideally, a violator determines that cooperating costs less than accumulating fines.
“Of course, the day after they get the reissued permit, they could go back to their old habits,” LaLiberte said. “DNR doesn’t have the ability like a judge would for chronic violations to take away somebody’s driver’s license.”
Running on good faith
The Department of Natural Resources reissued Emerald Sky’s permit, stating the dairy resolved its infractions. Staff said they had no justification to deny the expansion because the farm has enough storage for manure and cropland on which to apply it.
The agency’s limited authority means protecting water increasingly depends on farmers’ “good faith,” said Hudson resident Celeste Koeberl, whose home of 31 years adjoins Lake Mallalieu in western St. Croix County.
Algae blooms cover the water’s surface each summer, fueled by phosphorus runoff, traced to area agriculture.
The dairy’s expansion is “just one more thing that’s gonna make our lake gross,” she said. “These are public waters.”
Wolf said Breeze Dairy Group will earn the community’s trust. He works with a local grower and intends to plant cover crops, which help reduce soil runoff.
Tim Stieber, St. Croix County’s conservation administrator, is extending the company the benefit of the doubt.
He, Jackson and another county staff member recently visited the property and were encouraged to learn of several more upgrades Breeze made, including an incinerator to dispose of deceased livestock and a web-based manure monitoring system.
“A new owner,” Stieber said, “it’s actually an opportunity.”
This story is part of a partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.
