Kewaunee County water contaminated. For the umpteenth time.
Months ago, Kewaunee County clean water activist Nancy Utesch said enough was enough.
More about Nancy and Lynn Utesch, here.
We asked the US Environmental Protection Agency for an investigation into the cause and source of well water contamination in our 2014 Safe Drinking Water Act petition, but the EPA has yet to address it...
Central Sands has the Wysocki CAFO. We have 16 CAFOs. Wisconsin should long ago have stopped acting confused as to the cause and source of known, widespread contamination and moved instead to protect Kewaunee County residents and water resources of people statewide...
Without real investigations, will we ever know the full extent and costs from the illness and suffering resulting from agribusiness here?
Why has it taken this long?
We have waited long enough.
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| Manure flowing from a Kewaunee CAFO, years ago. |
Witnessing the degradation of the water quality of local rivers and streams—and the high contamination rate of tested wells in Kewaunee County spurred the Utesch family into advocacy. Lynn and Nancy worked with fellow residents James Olson and Dr. William Iwen to establish Kewaunee Citizens Advocating Responsible Environmental Stewardship (Kewaunee CARES) in 2011 for concerned residents to have a voice in the local and statewide debate over the need for greater water protection and sustainable farming.But this was a headline and story on Friday.
Kewaunee County warns neighbors about drinking water after manure spill
The issue is disgustingly repetitive. This is from 2016:
July, 2018:
Residents criticize Kewaunee board as manure spill reportedAs is this:
A report from the WI manure-toxified front - - Kewaunee County
Here's an update circulated by Kewaunee Cares activists and environmentally-sensitive farmers Lynn and Nancy Utesch:
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Many believe that Kewaunee County's problems are rooted in "run-off" issues-- spreading that unfortunately ends up leaving its intended site, more often than not, meeting up with water, and causing pollution.
What is occurring in Kewaunee County is criminal, willful negligence that harms the landscape, our water and air, and the people living here. Please look at the attached photos, taken last week, of recent applications to spreading fields in Kewaunee that resulted in run-off reaching the Ahnapee River [on the EPA's impaired waters list], and ultimately Lake Michigan.How much patience would you have? I'd say Kewaunee County has definitely waited too long for action. Maybe when Speaker Vos gets back from Italy, his slow-moving clean water task force will do something.
July, 2018:
WI Central Sands the next Flint? Kewaunee County already soaks up that honor
2 comments:
At every step of the way the regulators have the authority to shut all of this down but they refuse to at both the state and national level. The local pols end up bought off and the people end up with the mess. Sadly it leaves the people looking for help from judges who have little understanding or desire to increase their understanding of the issues both legal and technical. These farms that consistently violate their permits should be shut down. Period. Instead the rank and file in the DNR recommend "enforcement" and then the higher ups water down what "enforcement" actually means so that a simple letter to the offender with a request to comply with their permit is deemed to be "taking an enforcement action". Gutlessness is not new unfortunately. Years of this torment of the environment and despoiling of the water for local residents has gone on all while the CAFO's take their hundreds of millions in profits and spread a healthy chunk of it to the GOP in Wisconsin. Meanwhile they portray themselves as a quaint old red barn in a field with a farmer plowing the field, the wife setting pies out on the kitchen window to cool and the kids playing in the yard. That way when we complain they accuse us of trying to hurt "family farms".
And now the area has had several rainstorms over the past week, with more likely to come. Nice combination, isnt it?
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