Willow River State Park video courtesy of Jon Botzet / See his work on Facebook

Emerald Sky Dairy, requested to increase to 6,288 cows.
The sewage will equal an immense disaster we can't afford.

In fact, more sewage than the populations of Milwaukee, Minneapolis and St Paul combined.

Dairy runoff

More than 40 diseases can be transferred to humans through manure polluted waterways. Animal waste contains pathogens such as Salmonela, E. Coli
and Cryposporidium, this is 10 to 100 times higher than human waste.

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cow Waste

Ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen that occurs during waste disposal, can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before being dumped back into the water where it causes algal blooms and fish kills in or creeks, rivers and lakes.

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DIScharge permits

Only 45% of factory farms have discharge permits to drain the waste from the cesspools, but an estimated 75% of farms contribute to pollution, unregulated and pathogens end up on our water table under our feet.

Expanding to 6,288 cows will cause severe damage to our water table.

 

Factory farms use massive open-air lagoons. Unfortunately, these cesspools are spill proof facilities, but are prone to leaks. Some factory farm owners also routinely drain the cesspools by spaying the waste onto neighboring lands. When this happens the excess nitrogen and phosphorus from the manure causes massive algae blooms that take up all the water's oxygen, killing all other marine life. High levels of toxins make it to domestic water supply posing a serious risk to the public health. 90 homes in a 2 mile radius >

 

Our Town of Emerald bedrock topography will act as
a conduit of pollutants to your well water

 

St.Croix County, including Emerald Township, has “karst” bedrock underneath our topsoil. This bedrock is like “swiss cheese” with lots of fissures, caverns, caves, underground streams, sinkholes, etc. Because water moves through fractured bedrock very quickly, carrying sediment (and pollutants) the potential for pollutants to move quickly to groundwater and eventually into our wells can represent a significant problem.

Visit here for more details >

 

Risking contamination by life threatening bacteria and excess nitrates.

 

Emerald is at one of the highest points in the County and in the watershed district for several trout streams including the Kinnickinnic, Rush River, Willow River, Beaver Creek, Anderson Springs, and Nye Creek, as well as the St. Croix River, a National Scenic Riverway, part of the National Park System. Follow the flow of Dry Run Creek to the South Fork of the Willow River, to the Willow River through New Richmond and Willow River State Park, through Lake Mallalieu straight to the St. Croix River, a shared border with Minnesota and eventually to the Mississippi River.

 

Contaminated water will travel fast throughout our water table. Harmful bacteria will enter our water table and will contaminate our drinking water. Also, it will fill up our creeks, lakes and rivers with deadly bacteria.

A random sample of 320 wells in Kewaunee County (east of Green Bay/south of Door County) found that 110 (34.4 percent) were contaminated with bacteria or unsafe levels of nitrates.

The Legislative Audit Bureau report found the DNR failed to send violation notices in 94% of the nearly 560 instances its policies said it should have over the past decade.