State regulators are creating a website to court concentrated animal feeding operations.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, charged with protecting the state’s environment, is creating a website portal to help large-scale developers and the operators of factory farms.
“The purpose of the [project] will be to assist businesses and other customers through the complicated permitting processes while recognizing internal efficiencies,” states an internal memo obtained by Isthmus through a records request. The DNR says the undated memo was produced in September.
To help in its effort to improve the permitting website, the DNR has recently convened two focus groups. The first group, which included “eight consultants that assist farmers with submitting permits and plans for concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs, met in Green Bay on July 30, according to a summary of meeting highlights also obtained through this request.
The summary states that the participants had all been involved in getting permits for “large dairy farms (1,000+ animals)” during the last three years. A second focus group of individuals who work on large-scale development projects convened in Fitchburg on Aug. 4.
DNR spokesman Jim Dick says the agency “is working to fully define the scope” of the business portal project and does not know when it will be done or how much it will cost. He calls a DNR analysis obtained by Isthmus that projected a $185,625 cost to create the portal plus $55,685 a year to maintain it “an early and preliminary estimate” that is no longer valid.
Kimberlee Wright, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, was unaware of the portal project prior to a reporter’s inquiry: “This is the first I’ve heard of it.” Her nonprofit law center makes extensive use of the factory farm data posted on the DNR website.
“It’s disturbing to not be thought of as a stakeholder” in this discussion, Wright says, given that her group has invested “a significant amount of time and money to ensure that information on CAFOs is available to public health officials, citizens and industry.”
Dick’s response: “As the name suggests, this is a business portal. It is designed to help businesses stay in compliance with the law.” Input was solicited not on environmental standards or rules, which “are not changing.” Rather, the goal was to get “feedback from the business stakeholders who will be using the system to get the information they need so they can remain compliant with current law.”
While other states have more CAFOs than Wisconsin, the number here has grown steadily in recent years, especially large dairy farms. A DNR chart shows there were more than 200 dairy CAFOs in Wisconsin last year, up from less than 50 in 2000.
But the DNR’s efforts to ease the process for CAFO operators, presumably as part of Gov. Scott Walker’s “Open for Business” ethic, does not sit well with some Wisconsin residents.
“I think the DNR should not be a partner with any industry which has a track record of massive environmental problems,” says Mary Dougherty, a member of a citizens group opposing the siting of a massive pig farm in Bayfield County.
Dougherty believes DNR staffers are trying to do a good job in response to the proposed pig megafarm, which as proposed would consist of 7,500 sows, 18,750 pigs and 100 boars. It has agreed to require an environmental impact statement, even though the project could have been approved without one. But she believes the agency lacks the funding or staff “to do what’s necessary to monitor 26,000 animals.”
Besides concerns over animal welfare, CAFOs are controversial because they generate huge quantities of fecal waste, which can contaminate the air and water, and adversely affect human health. For this reason, they are subject to stricter permitting rules and more stringent regulation.
While the focus groups were specifically devoted to CAFOs and large-scale developers, Dick says the purpose of the portal is to assist “all types of businesses in getting through the permitting process,” and help them stay in compliance with existing laws. “It will also increase the efficiency of our permit writing staff who can arrive at permitting decisions quicker since customer questions can be answered online before an application is submitted.”
But the DNR faces other critics to its plan besides anti-CAFO activists.
“The general mood/tone of participation of the CAFO focus group was fairly skeptical about the usefulness or value of an enhanced Business Portal,” states the DNR summary. “In fact, some participants called into question whether the Department was simply striving for a ‘high gee-whiz’ factor rather than addressing what they perceive to be the real issues: 1) lag time in permit approvals and 2) subjectivity in permit requirements for certain projects.”
The summary said that both the CAFO and large-scale development focus groups “do not see a new Business Portal as a solution to all of the problems or frustrations they experience with the current permitting process. It will, therefore, be important to communicate appropriately about the Business Portal.”