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New math would ease farm rules

By Anita Weier
January 19, 2006

"This bill will contribute to the growing list of manure spills, well contaminations, sick kids and fish kills that Wisconsin saw in 2004 and 2005," said Andrew Hanson, a staff attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates Inc.

There were 52 recorded manure runoffs between July 2004 and June 2005 in Wisconsin, according to the environmental group, and more have occurred since then.

The bill, authored by Sen. Dan Kapanke, R-La Crosse, would change the way animals are counted to the method used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency instead of the way the state Department of Natural Resources counts when deciding whether to require a pollution discharge permit. The change also would affect new state livestock siting rules regarding local government permit decisions.

The state counts all types of animals on a farm; the EPA counts only one type.

The state counts a mature dairy cow as 1.4 units, a dairy calf as 0.2 units, a beef steer as 1 unit and a pig as 0.4 units. A farm with 1,000 or more units requires a permit.

The bill would not include different kinds of animals, just one.

Consequently, under the proposed rules, a livestock operation could have 600 milking cows and 900 heifers and still be under the DNR's limit because only the 840 units for the milking cows would be counted. But an operation that had 720 milking cows (1,008 units) would require a discharge permit.

"It is important that this committee understands the implications of this proposal," Gordon Stevenson, chief of runoff management for the DNR, said during the public hearing.

"Wisconsin just had its worst year in recent memory in terms of both frequency and severity of manure runoff. At least one of the 10 or more operations that would fall under the 1,000 animal unit threshold under this bill was associated with a severe well contamination event."

Stevenson also pointed out that 6.5 million gallons of liquid manure are generated each year by 1,000 cows, an amount that would fill a football field 20 feet deep. Put another way, he added, one cow equals 18 people in discharge potential. So a city roughly the size of Middleton wouldn't have a sewage treatment plant anymore, he said.

"This bill would roll back the regulatory activity we have been doing for a long time. We have about 150 very large livestock operations under a discharge of pollutants permit. We would lose at least 10 and as many as 16 large farms from our permit list," Stevenson said in an interview.

The count is also important in determining when a local government can require a livestock siting or expansion permit. A farm would need a permit for 500 or more animal units under a state rule that is nearing completion.

Kapanke's staff said the change was requested by the agriculture industry. Amy Winters, a lobbyist for Gold'n Plump, submitted testimony supporting the change during a Senate committee hearing Wednesday.

"Gold'n Plump currently partners with 130 local farms in Wisconsin and have a vested interest in ensuring that the expansion of livestock operations in Wisconsin is not jeopardized," she stated.

Both the DNR and the Agriculture Department have offered compromises to Kapanke, whose staff said this morning that he is considering a compromise so that the change in animal count would not affect the DNR discharge permit system but would affect agriculture siting through a rule change.

"The DNR has proposed a compromise we hope they will consider," Stevenson said. "It sustains the status quo but also fulfills EPA expectations. There would not be any significant expansion of the regulatory program but it would hold the line rather than roll back.

"We would have a two-tiered approach. We would use the mixed-animal calculation as we do now and also ask producers to use the EPA methodology, the single-animal approach. If either approach reached 1,000, the farm would have to have a permit."

Dave Jelinski, director of land and water resources for the Department of Agriculture, said today that a compromise is being considered regarding the livestock siting rule that the department is revising at the request of legislators who wanted a simplified odor standard. Within a local zoning permit, water quality and odor standards have to be met.

"The proposed bill could potentially mean that a farmer could have more animals and not have a permit," Jelinski said. "We have indicated our interest in working with Senator Kapanke's office. Secretary (Rod) Nilsestuen is willing to consider a limited application of the federal method of counting animals."

The EPA says that on a dairy farm, you do not have to add up the heifers and calves, just the milk cows, and that you do not have to include mixed species, so you would not have to count chickens on the farm. Nilsestuen would consider proposing that the livestock siting rule be changed so that mixed species would not be counted but that replacement animals heifers and calves would still have to be counted with dairy cows

The committee took no action following the hearing Wednesday.