The Pierce County Land Management Committee has sent a letter to your town board members to find out if your township is in favor of the moratorium on large industrial size farms. This is an issue new to Pierce County and we need regulations to control the siting of the large manure lagoons, which hold over five million gallons. Clay lined lagoons are allowed to leak a certain amount and they do.
A study by Kansas State found that over the course of one year a one-acre clay lined lagoon leaks 0.1 inches a day resulting in approximately one million gallons of leakage into the groundwater. The bedrock in Pierce County consists of fractured limerock. This makes our county very vulnerable to groundwater pollution from clay lined lagoons. Several states now require concrete lined lagoons with covers and leakage monitors and also have restricted the amount applied to fields.
Our county also is very hilly, which results in more runoff from field application of large amounts of liquid manure into our streams and rivers. We are spending tax dollars to clean up the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers therefore we should not add to the problems we already have.
This is not a permanent ban but a temporary moratorium to give us time to study and if needed impose regulations or restrictions. Pierce County does not have zoning to regulate these large units and the State of Wisconsin has only five people to cover the entire state. Pierce County zoning now allows a five to ten million-gallon manure lagoon to be placed three hundred feet from your property line or village limits.
The moratorium is not going to affect existing farms. The latest
figures just published in the "Census of Agriculture" taken by the U.S.D.A.
shows the size distribution of dairy herds in Pierce County as follows:
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The U.S. Government, State of Wisconsin and Pierce County are all working on regulations for large animal waste facilities in order to protect our health, groundwater and natural resources. The temporary moratorium will give them time to complete their work.
If you have any questions please call me or if you would like to attend
one of our Izaak Walton meetings, we meet on the first Tuesday of each
month at 7:30pm at the Martell Town Hall.
Sincerely,
Harold Fosmo, Jr.
President
Western WI Chapter
Izaak Walton League of America