Final

TESTIMONY BEFORE

INFORMATIONAL HEARING TO ISSUE

A WISCONSIN POLLUTANT DISCHARGE

ELIMINATION SYSTEM (WPDES) PERMIT

No.WI-0062421-01-0

 

Sedelbauer Farms Inc. - Heifer Operation, W14804 Hwy 95, Hixton, WI 54635

Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Black River Falls, WI

 

PERMIT DRAFTER: 

Robert Rohland, DNR

 910 Hwy 54 East

Black River Falls, WI  54615

(715) 284-1429

 

 

HEARING OFFICER:

Charles Hammer - Staff Attorney, DNR

101 S. Webster Street -LS/5

Madison, WI 53702

(608) 266-0911

 

 

TESTIMONY PROVIDED BY:

Tom Wilson,

Representing Northern Thunder

316 Eau Claire Street

Eau Claire WI  54701

 

Suite 201 Landmark Center

500 East Jefferson Street

Viroqua, WI 54665

608-637-3356

resenergy@mwt.net

 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.  My name is Tom Wilson.  I presently live in Viroqua but I resided in Jackson County for over 15 years and still own property and have a cabin here.  I represent Northern Thunder, a grassroots environmental organization that has been active in Western Wisconsin which has stood for clean air and water and sustainable agricultural practices since 1970.  Although I am a building scientist by trade, I have tracked ill-designed and executed farming practices and have provided what proved to be accurate testimony for both the proposed Primera Egg farm and the ill-fated Jon De Farm, had input into the Buffalo/Trempeleau River Basin Water Quality Management Pln of 1996 and Have taught Environmental Science with a water quality focus at the high school level both here in Wisconsin and at the Freie Waldorf Schule in Prien Germany Germany.

 

I would like to make it clear that I am not anti-farming. My home in Viroqua is surrounded on three sides by activefarm property and I consider it a blessing to be able to both hear the bellowing of the cattle and, yes, even smell the odors from well-managed family farm operations.  I live in the heart of small scale organic dairy and beef cattle country where farmers are proving every day that through sound management practices, a good living can be had without resorting to industry-scale practices that overburden the carrying capacity of the land they occupy.  I take offence at the statement in the Environmental Assessment that “Large scale operations have rapidly become an economic necessity due to changing pricing structures and the need to reduce capital inputs while maximizing production.” [1] This is both an insult to sound farming practices and a sign of an inherent bias on the part of the drafter toward large industrial operations at the expense of both moderate scale family farms and appropriate environmental concerns.

 

There are certainly many aspects of this Environmental Analysis (EA)that we could discuss today, and there are certainly individuals speaking here more qualified than I to address many issues of local concern or of specific environmental threats.  I actually suspect there would be even more folks present here to testify were they not perhaps scared away by the prospect of being sued for libel by the permit applicant just days before an informational hearing –hardly a good neighbor policy or an invitation to sound exchange of viewpoints and good governance.

 

Personally I do not know the Sedelbauers and have nothing either good or bad to say about them. Even a casual read of both the EA and the permit, however, raises more questions than it answers.  The greatest contradiction that I see both between the Permit and the EA and within each document is an apparent inability to reconcile the fact that these documents call for planned disposal of waste materials based on weather and soil conditions but do not require any long term storage of waste materials, accepting of the fact that the Sedelbauers do now, and plan to continue to spread manure on a more or less continuous basis irrespective of these variables.

 

The permit calls for “Manure and other process wastewaters shall be collected and safely spread on land, treated or stored until it can be safely landspread.”[2] But there is no such storage capacity called for or designed.  The EA proclaims “If the operation conducts landspreading in accordance with an approved Manure Management Plan, maintains an adequate land base for landspreading, and properly inspects and maintains manure storage facilities and runoff control systems, the threat to groundwater and surface water should be minimal under normal operating and climatic conditions.”[3] (emphasis added)

 

Or similarly, the EA admits that “The primary physical impact associated with the facility is that odors in the immediate area could be objectionable on certain days of the year.  Odors from the facility, especially during landspreading activities, are an unavoidable impact.  The facility will minimize this impact landspreading when humidity, ambient temperature and winds are such that odor is minimized.”[4] (emphasis added)  I find this recommended scheduling hard to imagine without long-term waste storage.

 

In both cases, those conditions that would make field spreading inadvisable are also those conditions that would most likely lead to catastrophic failure of Sedelbauer’s present manure handling system.

 

The permit lists lots of requirements and expectations of the Sedelbauers, but is very short on any specifics, relying mostly on boiler plate from the department’s rules and giving no evidence that the environment will be protected: “Plans shall be generated…”  “…according to State guidelines”  “The permittee shall retain records of all monitoring information…” etc.   The implication is that neither the DNR, nor the county nor the Sedelbauers know exactly what they are going to do at this time. Nonetheless, the DNR is willing to issue them a permit with the implied assumption that the agency’s abundant staff personnel will be working closely with the Setelbauers in the future to work out an acceptable plan and assure that it is being followed.  That’s all well and good –were it possible.

 

I’m afraid, however, that even the DNR does not have such high expectations of its ability to oversee such developments. By point of reference, I would like to append here excerpts from the September 4, 2002 issue of DNR News. 

 

The impaired waters list is often called the "303 (d) list" because it’s required under Section 303 (d) of the Clean Water Act. Wisconsin’s draft list includes only those waters with the worst problems: waters that fail to meet water quality standards necessary to support the fish species or recreational uses they should be able to support.

 

Over the next 15 years, states are expected to develop for each water a comprehensive plan known as a "Total Maximum Daily Load," or some other approach to serve as a guide for eliminating the impairment.

 

A Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, sets a maximum level of pollution a waterbody can receive from all sources and still support the fish community and aesthetic and recreation uses it should be able to support. The plan must also spell out by how much the sources must reduce pollution, the strategies for reaching those goals, and ongoing monitoring.

 

Whether those same waters actually fully return to water quality standards depends on reducing nonpoint pollution, which hinges on how well Wisconsin can implement new rules requiring farmers, municipalities, developers and others to reduce the polluted runoff flowing from their land – and that depends in large part on available public funding. The state can’t enforce the rules against farmers unless the state pays for at least 70 percent of the cost of the manure containment structure or other measure to reduce runoff.

 

In addition, waters with a blend of pollution problems may not receive the complex modeling and monitoring they need to make the biggest gains. To meet budget cuts, the agency has had to eliminate four positions dedicated to working on TMDLs and monitoring activities needed to generate those pollution caps. "We’ll continue to work on cleaning up these waters, but we won’t be able to put our best effort forward," (emphasis added)[5]

 

The bottom line is that the severe budget cuts being imposed on the DNR (even as of 2002) have limited their ability to strictly enforce non-point impacts and do full 303d analysis on all impacted waterbodies. In fact, some personnel admit that this program is in shambles. The South Fork of the  Trempealeau is just such an impaired resource.[6] Water wells down stream from the existing operation are already showing elevated Nitrate levels.  The evidence seems to clearly indicate that this proposed expansion is that the carrying capacity of this land and present cropping conditions are unlikely to absorb these nutrients for any extended period of time.   Were this expansion allowed to proceed, I see only four alternatives:

• Greatly expand the land area on which to spread this manure
• Develop some supercrops that will greatly expand their nutrient uptake
• Further pollute surrounding groundwater
• Further aggravate the impaired status of the watershed

Which will it be?  Given that neither of the first two options is considered in this project plan and the apparent inability of the DNR to adequately staff existing needs (the local office isn’t even open on Mondays), it seems obvious that it will likely be either groundwater or the watershed that will take the hit.  If it is the groundwater that is destroyed, it will be a sad day for Jackson County.  If it is the Trempealeau watershed that is being asked to absorb this added nutrient loading, then the DNR has a lot more explaining to do.

 

Under SS § 227.114, the DNR must analyze the economic impact of this project on small business in the area.  In section 5 of the EA the DNR dismisses this obligation with the off-hand observation that “There may also be socio-economic concerns such as …the trend towards large-scale farming in the state, impacts larger-scale farming may have on the viability of smaller operations and concerns of smaller operations and non-farming rural inhabitants regarding changes in the agricultural landscape associated with CAFOs. …These socio-economic issues are beyond the scope of the proposed WPDES permit and the Department’s overall regulatory authority.” [7]  Under the DNR’s mandate to oversee the EPA’s Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) system, any ruling which allows an industry with a sad historic environmental record to add pollutants at this scale to any waterway (especially an already impaired one) will of necessity limit future development along that watershed by “using up” the allowable pollutant allocation for that system including future opportunities for moderate growth for other existing local farmers and even local residential and other economic development.

 

I have asked this question several times before the DNR and it has never been adequately addressed.  Let me please be specific here. Mr. Hammer, as staff attorney, please address this question in your notice of determination from this hearing:

 “Given that a project of this magnitude will obviously tax the limited carrying capacity of this already impaired watershed, why does the DNR refuse to address the 303d limitations placed on that watershed and the implicit strong negative impacts on present and future economic development in this area as per SS § 227.114?

 

I would love to see a time when both county and state environmental offices had the resources to work closely with all our farmers on an ongoing basis, assure compliance with best practices and assist in funding farmer’s costs at meeting these lofty goals as is implied in ATCAP 50.[8] Unfortunately, budgets do not now—and they are not likely to change in the near future—they do not allow the luxury of such close oversight.  Given that fact, the DNR should act on a precautionary basis and require all such grand expansions to have all design and implementation elements in place before issuing a permit to despoil. Monitoring wells should be installed, present animal unit occupancy should be reduced to unpermitted legal levels and baseline nitrate ground and surface water levels should be documented for at least a year. Then, and only then, should a plan be designed that will guarantee zero discharge into the already impaired environment. Monitoring wells should not only be required, as Mr Rohland indicated “if there are violations.”  There already are violations and it is time to discover the extent of these impact of these violations before allowing the violator to expand his operations. Time and time again, we see these operations fail miserably, destroying invaluable resources and sacrificing those elements which make all of us want to live or recreate in Jackson County.

 

Thank you for the opportunity to address you this morning. I request a copy of the notice of determination from this hearing to be sent to my address in Viroqua..