Work group proposed for manure issue
By Kevin O’Brien
Farmers and others couldn’t agree Tuesday on whether banning manure spreading in February and March was a good idea, but members of the Environmental Resources Committee were open to forming a working group to study the issue and see if a compromise can be reached on cleaning up the county’s watersheds.
Of the 10 people who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting, only two of them expressed sup-
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port for a proposal that would prohibit all farms, regardless of size, from spreading liquid or slurry manure in February and March and also place tighter restrictions on spreading whenever the land is frozen or snow-covered. However, the committee also received letters from seven different organizations, including the Eau Pleine Partnership for Integrated Conservation (EPPIC), expressing support for the proposal or at least encouragement in cleaning up the watershed.
The proposal is still in the idea stage at this point. No amendment to the county’s animal waste ordinance has been drafted, but officials from Conservation, Planning and Zoning (CPZ) have come up with a general framework for how the new restrictions could be implemented.
CPZ representatives have gotten mixed feedback on the idea, with some smaller farmers saying it could bankrupt them and others supporting it as a necessary step to reduce phosphorus in the Big Eau Pleine watershed.
All of the farmers and rural township officials who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting said they were either opposed to a winter spreading ban or at least questioned if it was feasible based on the cost of adding enough manure storage to last through the winter.
James Juedes, a dairy farmer in the town of Easton, said he was “taken by surprise” when he got a notice from CPZ about the possible spreading restrictions, especially since he farms outside the Big Eau Pleine watershed.
In addition to spending up to $250,000 to build temporary manure storage, he said extra time and money would be required to dump manure into a pit and then haul it back out again instead of spreading directly on farm fields.
“If this proposal goes through, the cost to the small farmers to build manure storage units, even small ones, would be enormous,” he said. “Some have even told me that they would quit farming before they would install anything.”
Juedes said the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir at the southern end of the county was built in the wrong place, downstream from so much farmland, and now farmers are being asked to bear the full responsibility of cleaning up the watershed.
“To me, how the reservoir is managed is the bigger problem,” he said. “It was made to supplement the flow of the Wisconsin River in times of low water levels to help with power generation and river health, but now it has become a popular fishing and vacation spot, so the reservoir is not flushed enough to clean it out.”
Randy Wokatsch, a town of Marathon farmer who raises 30 to
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60 beef heifers per year, said he sees no problems with winter spreading on his land, as it is not located near any creeks or rivers and he does not believe it contributes to the phosphorus problems in the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir. “This manure ordinance proposal will end any possibility of me having animals if passed as currently written,” he said. “I cannot afford a pit, and even if I could, I believe it to be a waste of money and resources.”
Wokatsch said he’s had a nutrient management plan (NMP) for years and tries to follow it the best he can, so he wondered why the county couldn’t just require all farmers in the county to adopt NMPs rather than restricting winter spreading. If the current proposal is adopted, he predicted it would result in millions of dollars being spent and farmers giving up their animals without any real improvement in water quality.
“Please table this proposal until a workable and practical plan can be crafted that will yield the desired results,” he said.
One farmer, Patrick King from the town of Cassel, questioned how farmers could haul manure to neighboring manure pits – as suggested by CPZ officials – when highway weight limits are in effect, and another farmer, James Gunderson, Rietbrock, urged the county to look into the paper mill waste that is spread on the land in his area.
“I don’t know if you’re familiar with it or not, but this stuff stinks,” he said.
A couple of town officials also spoke, including Rietbrock town chairman Lyonel Wisnewski, who said the five largest dairies in his township met with town officials in 2022, and even though everyone approached the meeting with trepidation, he said they came away with a strong sense of cooperation. He suggested the county consider a permitting system that would change over time as farmers demonstrated their ability to comply with the rules and clean up their waste.
“We need to have strong methods of control,” he said. “Strong fences make good neighbors.”
Dwight Tolk, Athens, director of the Marathon County Farm Bureau, said he appreciated the CPZ staff presenting their proposal to the group at a recent meeting, but his organization cannot support the plan as written.
“We believe the county has significantly underestimated the costs of manure storage construction and provided inaccurate information regarding available cost-sharing funds, making this impractical for many farmers,” he said. “The plan also does not adequately involve all relevant stakeholders in phosphorus reduction efforts.”
Two speakers said their organizations are in favor of the winter spreading ban.
John Kennedy, vice president of the Big Eau Pleine Citizens Organization, said he doesn’t personally own any land along the reservoir, but he knows from studying the issue that nutrient runoff causes the water to turn green with algae, kills off large numbers of fish and makes the beaches unsafe to swim at. Kennedy said it’s “just common sense” to stop spreading manure during a time of year when thawing ice and falling rain washes it all into the waterways.
“All it does is mobilize the manure and take it off the landscape,” he said.
Ben Niffenegger, manager of environmental affairs for the Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company, which manages the state’s system of dams, said WVIC has a long history of supporting Marathon County’s efforts to improve water quality in the reservoir.
“It’s all directly related to phosphorus running off the landscape,” he said. “Simply put, liquid manure on frozen ground, regardless of what month it is, it really has no place else to go when the snow melts and the rain comes, and it goes directly into waterways that feed the Big Eau Pleine Reservoir.”
Pits and buffers
In response to previous questions from the ERC, county conservationist Kirstie Heidenreich and conservation analyst Matt Repking presented the committee with information about the 94 idle manure pits in the county. Repking said CPZ believes 44 of those are suitable to be used again by farmers who currently don’t have enough storage capacity to get through the winter.
Heidenreich said it’s estimated that these 44 manure pits could hold up to 25.1 million gallons of manure, which is well over the estimated 9.2 million gallons generated over two months by the 62 farms in the county that currently have to haul manure on a daily basis because they do not have their own storage facilities.
Maps displayed by Repking showed the distances between daily hauler farms and useable manure pits, with some of them falling within a one or two-mile radius. Heidenreich noted that CPZ has not yet reached out to the owners of idle manure pits to see if they would be interested in renting them out. “We do not know who would be interested in that and who wouldn’t,” she said. “I think it’s safe to assume that not everyone would say ‘Sure, yes, absolutely.’” Based on feedback from public hearings, however, Heidenreich said one idea that seems to generate a lot of support is planting vegetative buffers along creeks, streams and rivers to slow and stop runoff. She said encouraging more of them could be part of a larger phosphorus reduction plan.
“I feel like that is something that this entire county has agreed on at this point, is a general love of buffers,” she said.
Heidenreich also asked the committee for permission to form a working group of farmers and other stakeholders who could meet on a regular basis for several months before making recommendations to the ERC and, eventually, the full county board. Based on initial conversations, Heidenreich said she has a list of about a dozen people so far who would be interested in joining the group.
Committee members seemed generally receptive to the idea, with chairman Jacob Langenhahn saying he would prefer something informal that doesn’t need to be approved by the full board and could come up with any recommendations they saw fit.
“It might not even necessarily need be the adoption or amendment of any ordinance,” he said. “It could just be something that requires outreach and education so that we encourage best practices in the county.”
Randy Wokatsch
John Kennedy
Kirstie Heidenreich
