Waste ordinance sent back to county committee

The Marathon County Board of Supervisors last week Tuesday voted 20-17 to send an updated animal waste ordinance back to the Environmental Resources Committee after its chairman, Jacob Langenhahn, in receipt of a letter from the county Farm Bureau, said he wanted to give the county’s farmers additional time to weigh in on the legislation.

The letter, read aloud by county board chairman Kurt Gibbs, said farmers wanted to comment on the proposed ordinance, but, given meeting restrictions due to coronavirus pandemic concerns, wanted the measure sent back to committee so it could be reviewed further.

Langenhahn, who voted for the ordinance change along with all other members of his committee, said taking more time with the ordinance hurts nothing and, going forward, would mean passing the ordinance on “a more solid footing.”

The committee chair said the county had no deadline to meet in passing the ordinance. ”I myself would be more comfortable if we allow additional testimony on the ordinance, he said. ”We need to respect community partnerships to see if we are missing anything.”

Conservation, Planning and Zoning land and water program director Paul Daigle told supervisors the ordinance did not involve any significant policy changes, but, instead, simply brought county rules in alignment with state statutes.

He said county staff held required public hearings on the ordinance, and, going further, held public information meetings and reached out personally to county farmers, including Farm Bureau members, to tell them about the ordinance change. He said the ordinance was the subject of a front page The Record-Review story and was written about on social media.

Daigle said the ordinance change was supported by the Big Eau Pleine Citizens Organization, agronomist Matt Oehmican and the towns of Spencer and Plover.

Randy Wokatsch, a town of Marathon Farm Bureau member, said he was one of four farmers to write the letter asking for additional committee review. The other farmers were James Juedes, Dave Hannemann and Kelly King.

Wokatsch said the ordinance prohibits the stacking of manure in a water way and uses a state definition of what constitutes a “stack.” He said a single load of manure could be considered a “stack” and that this was “crazy.” Wokatsch said the definition was a non-issue with the DNR enforcing the rule, but it could be a problem if county conservation staff were to enforce this section of law.

He said, despite the efforts of the county, most Marathon County farmers are unaware of the ordinance update and that’s why passage of the ordinance needs to be delayed.

“We’re putting on the brakes, right or wrong,” he said.

Voting to send the ordinance back to committee were supervisors Beastrom, Bootz, Buttke, Christiansen, Cihlar, Crosby, Drabek, Gabor, Gumz, Johnson, Langenhahn, McEwen, Miller, Nutting, Opall, Seefeldt, Schaefer, Schlei, Tremelling and Zriny.

Voting no were supervisors Bove, Durham, Fifrick, Gibbs, Guild, Krause, Leahy, Lo, Maszk, Overbeck, Robinson, Rosenberg, Seubert, Stark, Wagner, White and Xiong.

People can see the text of the proposed ordinance at https://bit. ly/39fgAUM.