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County waste site makes comeback – Page 2 Emergency warming centers opened – Page 2 Barn preservation program scheduled – Page 3

The Brodhead Independent

REGISTER 922 W. Exchange Street Brodhead, WI 53520

Master Gardener classes upcoming – Page 6

608-897-2193

Community news briefs – Page 13

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

SHOPPING NEWS

Science team urges town protections in CAFO report By Tony Ends Editor

TOWN OF SYLVESTER — With a 10-member team of volunteer scientists, residents here this week met a demand Wisconsin put on its rural citizens back in 2004. Lawmakers in that year forced more than 1,250 townships across Wisconsin to base direction of their agriculture on scientific facts compiled in technical guidelines and administrative rules made in Madison. The 2004 state Livestock Facilities Siting Law – passed with a single public hearing in just 6 weeks – left open a tiny window to local control. It allowed local measures to protect health and safety, based – again – on scientific facts. In a meeting Monday night in Green County Justice Center in Monroe, Sylvester’s Board of Supervisors had to raise that

window high. Placed into their hands to craft local safety rules was a 130-page report, including 14 pages of 24 protections recommended that both town and county supervisors adopt. Senior Ecologist Steven Apfelbaum, who chairs the 37-yearold Applied Ecological Services and Taylor Creek Restorations south of Brodhead, led the team of 10 scientists. Together, they compiled the document, with a name as extensive as its scope and weight: “Environmental Human Health and Safety Risk – to Water Quality, Air Quality, Soil Quality and Natural Areas from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations - CAFOs.” Other scientists volunteering time and insight to the team were Dr. Meredith Tripp, senior research analytical chemist; Nathan Gingerich, a natural

areas manager; Bethany Emond Storm, an environmental biologist; Dr. John Larson, senior wetland ecologist; Dr. Fugui Wang, a remote sensing analyst; David Aslesen, a geospatial analyst; Lori Huntoon, senior hydrogeologist; Susan Lehnhardt, a senior ecologist; and Jason Carlson, a geospatial analyst. The team also sought advice on protecting local health and safety from medical Drs. Bruce Duemler and Jim Caya of Monroe Hospital; Dr. Grace McLaughlin, a wildlife eco-toxicologist; Paul Linzemeyer, Thedacare Sustainability Program Leader; and Michael Finney, the Oneida Tribe’s Eco-Services Department Manager. Findings of fact in the report to Sylvester Township’s LargeScale Livestock Facility Siting Committee took the team of scientists 3 months to compile. The findings are expansive, and in

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terms of massive feedlots and concentration of liquid manure, they are worrying. Scientists examined and compiled 14 pages of maps revealing a broad range of township and county features that make siting huge livestock facilities here problematic: • Shallow depth to bedrock – “exposed at the surface or less than 5 feet below the soil surface” across more than 60 percent of Green County; • Karst geological features such as highly fractured bedrock conduits for liquid waste and surface contaminants to enter well waters rapidly; • Groundwater vulnerability due to shallow depths less than 15 feet in much of the county and a water table in some areas of Sylvester Township less than 24 inches; • Highly permeable soils “characterized by an inability to

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restrict the infiltration of groundwater” on about 50 percent of the county’s land; • A Sylvester Township “air drainage basin” with a lay of the land uniquely affecting air quality with airborne contaminants that during “fairly common still air conditions” could affect residents as far as Decatur Lake and Brodhead; • Vulnerable populations to potential contaminants from nitrates and bacteria, water and airborne diseases from leaching, land application and runoff of tens of millions of gallons of liquid manure (32 to 56 percent of residents in the county and township are 45 to 95 years old, another 17 to 24 percent are youth, both highly susceptible populations). Documentation in the report on CAFO health and environ-

See CAFO REPORT, Page 16

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