Wisconsin Town Gets Sued for Regulating Factory Farms

Wisconsin Town Gets Sued for Regulating Factory Farms

Editor’s Note: Even when local governing units make decisions for the welfare of the environment, state laws are designed to crush them. The following story covers how a small town is getting sued for passing a local ordinance to prevent pollution from factory farms. The basis of the lawsuit is that the ordinance is against the state law of Wisconsin. This story was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.

This lawsuit is far from one of its kind. Similar lawsuits have been filed against a local government for trying to protect the environment against corporate interests. DGR News Service covered a series regarding the fight of Lake Eerie Bill of Rights in the state of Ohio. Read more about it here.


By John McCracken / Grist

The small community of Laketown, Wisconsin, home to just over 1,000 people and 18 lakes, is again at the center of a battle over how communities can regulate large, industrial farming operations in their backyards.

The town, which is half an hour from the Minnesota border, is the target of a lawsuit supported by the state’s largest business lobbying group, which claims the town board overstepped its role when it passed a local ordinance to prevent pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs*.

Filed in Polk County Circuit Court in October, the lawsuit pits local farmers against the municipality, where decisions are made by a single town chair and two supervisors. Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, or WMC, a lobbying group that defines itself as the state’s “largest and most influential business association” is representing the residents suing the town through its litigation center.

Early this year, WMC sent a letter to the town board that they would see legal action if the ordinance was not repealed. The notice of claim, sent in April, argues the town passed an ordinance with various illegal provisions under state law. The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, who have previously filed lawsuits to rollback state protections against water pollution, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“They see this ordinance, if not challenged, as something that may become more the norm around the state,” Adam Voskuil, staff attorney for the nonprofit law office Midwest Environmental Advocates, told Grist. This law office has issued its support for Laketown’s ordinance in the past but is not representing the municipality in this ongoing litigation.

As the agricultural industry increasingly forces farmers to “get big or get out,” CAFOs have become plentiful across Wisconsin and the country at large, with more and more animals living on CAFO operations in recent years. The size of these farms varies within a state but generally are seen as operations with 2,000 or more pigs, 700 or more dairy cattle, or over 1,000 beef cattle.

The growth of these operations has been linked to public health problems like various cancers as well as infant death and miscarriages, caused by water contaminated with waste runoff from farms. On the other side of Wisconsin, residents in Kewaunee County have seen manure coming out of their faucets from one the largest CAFOs in the state, who sued the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource last year when they were denied a request to nearly double their size.

An indoor farms lots of pigs, corralled in different stalls

As more confined animal feeding operations, like the hog farm pictured, pop up across the country, towns and counties have attempted to regulate their growth. chayakorn lotongkum / Getty Images Grist

When communities try to respond with local-level enforcement, both industry interests and a lack of power at the local level cause townships to get creative with their responses.

Every state has some form of a “right-to-farm” law, which stops farms from being targeted for nuisances related to the daily operations of the industry, such as odor, noise, and effects on the environment. From there, each state has some form of a regulatory process that outlines how large farms are allowed to operate.

In Iowa, which leads the country in CAFOs, the state government sets all regulatory requirements and local towns and counties are out of luck when it comes to enforcement, according to John Robbins, Planning and Zoning Administrator for Cerro Gordo County, Iowa. He said the county once had a restrictive ordinance for CAFO zoning on the books, but after a state law took control, counties now have “very limited authority.”

Last year, when a Missouri hog farm spilled 300,000 gallons of waste into nearby waterways, two counties attempted to regulate CAFOs differently than the state government. Those counties had to sue to challenge state-level laws and are now awaiting trials in the state Supreme Court.

Further West, Gooding County, Idaho has seen the whole gambit of what Wisconsin towns could be facing. In 2007, the central Idaho county named after a famed state sheep rancher passed an ordinance regulating CAFOs in the county limits. A month later, industry groups Idaho Dairymen’s Association and Idaho Cattle Association started a court battle with the county that ended two years later, with the state supreme court ruling in the county’s favor. Gooding County’s legal representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Wisconsin’s Livestock Facility Siting Law generally restricts how local municipalities can stop or slow new CAFOs or expansions to current facilities. This law is at the crux of arguments in opposition to Laketown and other surrounding communities’ proposed or passed ordinances.

Other Wisconsin communities have enacted local level ordinances to regulate these large farms. In 2016, northern Bayfield County enacted a CAFO ordinance that imposed a one-time fee and required operators to have increased manure storage options. After a large hog farm estimated to produce over 9 million gallons of manure a year was proposed in Polk County a few years ago, the county attempted a moratorium on CAFOs, but the measure did not pass.

Since then, at least five neighboring towns of Laketown have passed similar ordinances.

“This is one of the first times I’ve seen a town refuse to back down to some of these letters.”
Adam Voskuil, Midwest Environmental Advocates staff attorney

The Laketown ordinance that sparked the lawsuit is an operations ordinance, unlike Bayfield’s ordinance which focused on zoning. Laketown CAFO operators are asked to file a one-time fee equal to a dollar for every animal unit as well as give detailed plans of how they will prevent ground and air pollution stemming from their facilities. Passed in 2021, the ordinance states it is based upon Laketown’s obligation to “protect the health, safety and general welfare of the public.”

All along the way, industry groups Venture Dairy Cooperative and the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance, its website features the slogan “Fighting for CAFOs Every Day,” have sent threatening letters to towns that passed ordinances or moratoriums, with the help of WMC.

“This is standard operating procedure for the Big Ag boys,” said Lisa Doerr, a Laketown resident of over 20 years who raises horses and commercially farms hay and alfalfa with her husband.

Doerr has been involved at the local level in opposition to CAFO since Polk County learned of a proposed 26,000-hog farm. Doerr, who worked with the Large Livestock Town Partnership, a multi-town committee that examines the environmental impact of CAFOs, said she worried that the landscape of the town and county would change if local action wasn’t taken.

“The name of our town is Laketown because we’ve got lakes everywhere,” she said. “We still have a middle class farming community. We haven’t had corporate ag take over everything.”

In its recently filed response letter, Laketown’s attorney said WMC’s argument falls flat as it is based solely on the state-level zoning law, while the town’s ordinance regulates the operations and conduct of a facility. They also noted that since the ordinance passed, no facilities have applied for a permit, which means the town has not yet enforced any actions WMC says are unlawful. Laketown board chair Daniel King declined to comment, citing the ongoing lawsuit.

Midwest Environmental Advocates attorney Voskuil said he was heartened to see that Laketown has been holding its ground. “This is one of the first times I’ve seen a town refuse to back down to some of these letters,” he said.

Farther south in Wisconsin, another county is reeling from letters threatening legal action. Crawford County, which borders Iowa, enacted a CAFO moratorium in 2019 but did not renew the moratorium after studying the issue for a year. Forest Jahnke, a coordinator with the Crawford Stewardship Project, said the decision to not renew the moratorium was highly influenced by the deluge of similar threats of litigation and backlash, which had a “chilling effect” on efforts to move forward.

“The fear of litigation is a very strong and deep one in our local municipalities and county governments,” Jahnke, who was a member of the committee studying the CAFO moratorium in Crawford County, said.

Since the moratorium rolled back, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources greenlit a Crawford County hog farm, home to 8,000 pigs and expected to generate 9.4 million gallons of manure each year


Featured Image: Hog farm by via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0)

Swarm: A Roving Caravan Strategy for Crushing Snakes and Other Capitalist Parasites

Swarm: A Roving Caravan Strategy for Crushing Snakes and Other Capitalist Parasites

Editor’s Note: This zine is an excellent read, and we encourage you to study it thoroughly. However, we’d also like to point out that the fossil fuel industry is not dying—it’s unfortunately very robust and growing. We say this only because our strategies must be based on realism, and our realism leads us past non-violent direct action to Decisive Ecological Warfare.


Intro to Swarm

The Earth is gasping for air and so are all the living beings on her. The tightest knots around our throats are black snakes, the pipe-lines that pulse out of the oil fields in Alberta carrying climate-killing carbon across land and water. The fights against these pipelines em-body a series of battles in the war for the future of life on this planet: The Tar Sands Blockade. Standing Rock. Unis’tot’en Camp. L’eau Est La Vie Camp. These are places we have made our stands against annihilation. But the battle goes beyond these camps. This is a fight for every one of our futures, and defeat is not an option.

Through hard fought struggle, we have forged and sharpened our tactics in order to adapt and win. This zine has been written and edited by a number of frontline veterans in the climate struggle, hoping to address new concepts around how we fight those who would drive us to extinction. Specifically, we wish to introduce the concept of swarming and the strategy of roving caravans, using the Mississippi Stand campaign as a case study.

Swarm tactics are the use of autonomously-acting cells on the battlefield, acting in coordination without a centralized or hierarchical command structure. This way of carrying out actions mimics swarms in nature, such as bees or piranhas. Humans have used swarm tactics for thousands of years, especially for guerrilla and insurgent forces facing better-funded occupying forces.

The mobile caravan tactic takes the analysis of the pipeline fight as an asymmetric, “guerrilla” struggle against an occupying force to its logical next step. Rather than relying solely on stationary camps set up to block a pipeline, the mobile caravan approach relies on disrupting production up and down the pipeline, stretching police and security forces thin and maximizing disruption.

We aim to bring these ideas into the consciousness of the broader movement for discussion, debate, and subsequent application in the field. This zine has been written in the context of the brewing Line 3 struggle across Ojibwe and Dakota lands and the watersheds of northern Minnesota. However, we believe that the lessons we explore here and the experiences we gain through struggle will find relevance well beyond this particular pipeline fight. We believe that if adopted, these tactics can significantly increase the effectiveness of our struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure.

Read the full zine here: https://conflictmnfiles.blackblogs.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/409/2019/04/Swarm-READ.pdf

33 Days on Twin #66: Walk the Enbridge Pipeline

33 Days on Twin #66: Walk the Enbridge Pipeline

By Sacred Water Sacred Land

Sacred Water Sacred Land is sponsoring a tar sands awareness walk through Wisconsin along Enbridge’s proposed Twin Line #66 starting with a kick-off event in Delevan or Walworth on June 8th.

33 Days on Twin #66, a Sacred Water Sacred Land sponsored walk, begins at the entry point of the Enbridge pipeline system, just south of Walworth, WI and follows the route northwest to Superior, raising awareness about the existence of, and proposed expansion to, the Enbridge crude and dilbit pipeline corridor along the way.

33 Days on Twin#66 will consist of consecutive daily 10-15 mile segments with community engagement talks in a revival type setting at overnight encampments at many points along the way. The 420-mile pipeline route is broken into four major sections: northern, upper central, lower central and lower.

Winona La Duke, who has fought tirelessly against the Sandpiper expansion in Minnesota, and her sister Lorna, will be riding with us on horseback along several sections of the walk.

Affected communities and landowners will be engaged by representatives of SWSL – Sacred Water Sacred Land, CELDF – Community Environmental Defense Fund, and WiSE – Wisconsin Safe Energy Alliance, through an ecological forum where the impact of the expansion and a broader conversation about the adverse effects of Canadian tar sands extraction and transport will be explained. Guest speakers will also address climate change and traditional ties to the land while local residents will be encouraged to share their stories and efforts towards healing it.

Through this effort, SWSL endeavors to not only draw attention to the tremendous hazards of tar sands/Bakken oil transport but also help communities imagine and co-create a more sustainable, health conscious society with an emphasis on renewables and non-toxic food systems.

 

 

We are looking for additional sponsors to lend credence and build support for the Walk. Sponsorship is welcome in many forms. We encourage you to share the Walk with your membership and follow us on Facebook where specific details will be posted as they solidify. If you wish to participate in greater measure, please contact SWSL directly.

It is past time to unify our efforts and promulgate ecological systems literacy. We hope you will join us as we work together towards a paradigm shift of social and environmental justice for the natural world and the next seven generations.
Cosponsored by WiSECELDF, and SWSL 

Screenshot (173)

Schedule:

1 ~ June 8th – Walworth*, Kick-off!
2 ~ June 9th – Delavan*
3 ~ June 10th – Richmond
4 ~ June 11th – Whitewater*
5 ~ June 12th – Fort Atkinson*
6 ~ June 13th – Lake Mills*
7 ~ June 14th – Sun Prairie*
8 ~ June 15th – Columbus*
9 ~ June 16th – Wyocena
10 ~ June 17th -Portage*
11 ~ June 18th – Oxford*
12 ~ June 19th -Westfield
13 ~ June 2oth – Adams/Friendship*
14 ~ June 21st – Cottonville
15~ June 22nd – Lake Arrowhead
16 ~ June 23rd – Nekoosa*
17 ~ June 24th – Vesper
18 ~ June 25th – Marshfield*
19 ~ June 26th – Spencer
20 ~ June 27th – Riplinger
21 ~ June 28th – Owen/Withee*
22 ~ June 29th – Lublin
23 ~ July 30th – Gilman
24 ~ July 1st – Sheldon
25 ~ July 2nd – Ladysmith*
26 ~ July 3rd – Imalone
27 ~ July 4th – Meteor
28 ~ July 5th – Hauer-Stone Lake
29 ~ July 6th – Hayward
30 ~ July 7th – Gordon*
31 ~ July 8th – Salon Springs
32 ~ July 9th – Hillcrest
33 ~ July 10th – Superior*, Renewable Energy Independence Day!

* Denotes Revival

Gogebic Taconite hires private paramilitaries to keep protesters off mine site

By Stephen C. Webster / The Raw Story

Heavily-armed, masked paramilitary forces descended upon the Gogebic Taconite mining site in Wisconsin over the weekend, much to the chagrin of local residents and elected officials.

“I’m appalled,” state Sen. Bob Jauch (D) told The Wisconsin State Journal on Monday. “There is no evidence to justify their presence.”

Jaunch sent a letter to Gogebic President Bill Williams on Monday demanding the company remove the guards, which he called “common in third world countries,” but stressed that “they don’t belong in Northern Wisconsin.”

The company brought in the paramilitary forces after being confronted by a group of about 15 protesters in June. At least one of the demonstrators, a young woman, was hit with misdemeanor charges for trying to take a camera away from one of the company’s geologists. Gogebic claims they’ve since caught several people illegally camping on their property and did not want to take any chances.

The company hired by Gogebic is Arizona-based Bulletproof Securities, which boasts that many of their employees are ex-military and many of their clients are celebrities and government officials. They certainly look the part, too: photos of Bulletproof guards at the Gegebic site published by the Wisconsin progressive blog Blue Cheddar show men who look very much like special forces soldiers, complete with assault rifles and black masks.

“Do they have the authority to use those weapons? If so, on who?” Jauch asked the Journal. “I don’t know if there’s a hunting season right now except maybe for rabbit, but you shoot a rabbit with that, all you’ll end up with is fur. What would you use those weapons for except to hurt somebody?”

The mining site they’re protecting in the Penokee Mountains is highly controversial and critics say in violation of a treaty with Native Americans.

Video shot by Wisconsin-based website Indian Country TV over the weekend featured at least one of the paramilitaries wearing full camoflage and a military-style net over his face — an image that would have been completed by an assault rifle, if he hadn’t left it sitting on the passenger’s seat of his vehicle, right next to a cameraman.

“What happened to your fancy guns?” the cameraman asked. “Look at that. Very close by. Who are you going to shoot?”

“It’s a security protocol,” the guard replied, refusing to provide his name or his employer’s name.

“You’re being caught up in a national phenomenon,” the cameraman informed the guard. “We’ve got reporters calling from all over the country wondering about the occupation of Penokee Mountains Heritage Park by people who’ve got automatic weapons. And the question is, ‘Why?’”

A spokesperson for Gogebic told The Cap Times on Tuesday that they’re considering restricting their drilling sites from public access, which wouldn’t be an option until December when the state begins accepting applications.

This video is from Indian Country TV, published July 7, 2013.

From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/09/private-paramilitaries-guard-wisconsin-mining-site-from-protesters/

Press Release: Mountain-Top Removal Mining: Now Threatening Wisconsin!

Press Release: Mountain-Top Removal Mining: Now Threatening Wisconsin!

By Thistle Pettersen and Beth Ulion / Deep Green Resistance

A proposed iron mining effort would create the largest open pit mine in the world in northern Wisconsin.The 22,000 acres of mountain-top removal-style strip mining would potentially dump millions of tons of waste rock into the headwaters of the Bad River, polluting everything downstream including beautiful Copper Falls State Park, the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation, crucial wetland Kakagon Sloughs, and Lake Superior.

Many local residents fear that the huge mine will eat into nearby sulfide-mineral deposits, causing sulfuric acid mine drainage to leach into the surrounding watershed for decades.

The Wisconsin State legislature recently slashed environmental regulations in an attempt to make an easier entry for Gogebic Taconite (G-Tac), a Florida-based company owned by the Cline Group, is also well known for its coal mining operations in Illinois and West Virginia.

This is just one struggle in a worldwide battle against extreme resource extraction – but this time, it’s one we can win.  Activists have a good head start, and there is a lot of dedicated support for those who are planning to occupy the Penokee Hills to deliver a message to G-Tac: we are drawing a line in the sand, and they will not be allowed one inch of this sacred land.

Bad River Tribal members are asking for solidarity from allies all over the Great Lakes Region.

Activists will gather at the Central Wisconsin Action Camp May 17-19th in Stevens Point, WI.

This is a great opportunity to meet others from around Central and South Wisconsin and throughout the midwest, and build direct-action skills for this historic struggle.

The crew organizing this event could really use a little help, too!  Especially for those of you who are in or near Stevens Point or Madison, assistance in organizing logistics like camp setup, food, etc, as well as additional skill trainings, are greatly appreciated!

As capacity may be somewhat limited, and with the intention of building a solid group of anti-mining activists who can move into the future together, organizers are asking that you please register on the website:

centralwiactioncamp.wordpress.com

centralwiactioncamp@gmail.com

If you are unable to make it to the action camp, you can still plug in by traveling even farther north the following weekend, May 24th-26th for a benefit variety show and camp out at Copper Falls State Park. The variety show fund raiser will be at the Bad River Lodge and Casino on Friday night, the 24th. Money raised at this community-building event will go towards the Penokee Hills Education Project to defend the land from harmful mining. The Red Cliff hoop dancers, Thistle and Thorns, and Barbara With are all acts on this bill that will make it a very special night of performances and comradeship with locals.

The campout is being organized by members of the Bad River Tribe and will include tours of the land where the mine is slated to be put in. Mike Wiggins, chair of the Bad River, will greet and spend time with campers. It will be a beautiful and educational weekend in the great north woods!

If you are interested in attending either of these two weekends or both of them, please contact DGR member Thistle Pettersen to plug into ride shares happening from Madison. thistle@riseup.net.