How many manure spills is too many? St. Croix County residents scrutinize big farm’s new owner

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Gregg Wolf vows “to put a new step forward” at a northwest Wisconsin dairy.

Appleton-based Breeze Dairy Group, where he serves as CEO, purchased Emerald Sky Dairy in March, shortly after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approved the St. Croix County farm’s expansion.

Along with 2,400 spotted cows, four odiferous freestall barns and a milking parlor, the company also acquired the dairy’s checkered reputation.

During its eight years under previous ownership, the farm — since rechristened Croix Breeze Dairy — racked up a litany of manure violations, including two major spills.

The incidents drew rebukes from county officials and residents.

Residents fear that the farm’s growth will only increase contamination of St. Croix County’s water, some of which already contains nutrients commonly found in crop fertilizer and manure that can make people sick.

Wolf has worked to improve the dairy’s image. Trash was removed. The lawn seeded and green. Even the cows, a special crossbreed with hides covered in patches of black, white and almond fur, will be replaced.

“We don’t really have anything to hide,” he said in June over the hum of the milking parlor. “I think the former owners didn’t communicate the best, and I would say farmers, in general, we’re terrible at PR.”

Convincing locals that the dairy can be a good neighbor will be a hard sell.

“One would like to hope that a change in management would bring better management than what we’ve had,” said Kim Dupre, a former Emerald resident, who moved to Minnesota after Emerald Sky’s first spill.

Breeze has distanced itself from its predecessor, but residents — already skeptical of large farms and the state agencies that regulate them — also are scrutinizing the company’s record.

In April, Breeze had an inauspicious introduction when a broken roadside signpost pierced a contractor’s manure application hose, releasing 500 gallons into a ditch before workers contained the small spill.

And across roughly a decade, Breeze or its contractors spilled an estimated 147,000 to 202,000 gallons of manure in 11 other reported incidents, state records show.

“When you’re moving millions of gallons of manure, unfortunately, equipment breaks, people make bad decisions,” Wolf said. “We report ourselves as you're supposed to legally do and work with the DNR and clean up anything that might have happened.”

Breeze errs on the side of “overkill” when it comes to reporting, Wolf said — reporting, cleaning up, learning from spills.

Croix Breeze Dairy sits on the corner of 250th Street and County Road G — a main drag for drivers. It’s surrounded by dozens of households.

“He's gonna have a lot of eyes on him,” Dupre said.

Wisconsin residents increasingly are informing state regulators of manure spills. Although experts doubt their frequency truly is rising, communities like Emerald ask how many spills the state expects them to tolerate before authorities prevent problems from developing.

“That’s a word we don’t like to hear in relation to a CAFO,” said resident Barbara Nelson, who lives near Croix Breeze. “Even if it isn’t a major spill, it’s still a spill.”

St. Croix County sees changes in farming and water quality

Five families formed Breeze Dairy Group in 2002, and the company has steadily grown. Before the Emerald Sky acquisition, it owned four large livestock farms — known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Breeze has a pending request with the state to enlarge another operation, which, if approved, could expand the company’s authorized capacity to more than 20,000 cows across five farms.

Wolf, a La Crosse County native who grew up on a 50-cow dairy, said herd sizes depend on the milk market and demand. The company lacks incentives to fill a dairy to maximum capacity if milk processors pay too little.

Although Croix Breeze’s new permit grants the farm authority to grow to 3,300 cows, Wolf said the company has no plans to exceed the current count. But broadly speaking, he said, farms need to expand as operational costs rise faster than milk prices .

In fact, said the dairy’s former owner Todd Tuls, the inability to expand Emerald Sky to his intended size of 5,000 to 6,000 cows was one reason he sold it.

St. Croix County is experiencing a familiar story of farm consolidation and growth.

Its 93,000 residents see less pasture, which dropped by half in just five years, and more soybean and wheat fields.

Midsize dairies also are disappearing, while larger operations have expanded herds. Cows produce more milk and manure in increasingly centralized locations. Applicators spread the dung on farmland.

Doing so improves soil, incorporating nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — nutrients plants use to grow. But fertilizing the ground in excess or subpar weather can contaminate water with pathogenic bacteria and viruses and nitrates .

Alongside farming changes in St. Croix County, water contamination worsened in recent decades.The county's share of private wells with unsafe nitrate concentrations rose from 10% to 13% between 2010 and 2022.

County conservation staff attribute the elevated levels to row cropping, exacerbated by the region’s porous bedrock, which enables water to rapidly enter the aquifer.

Many in the community view Emerald Sky’s expansion as the harbinger of future spills.

Environmental group alarmed over spills

In the winter of 2016, up to 275,000 gallons of liquid manure flowed through a cracked pipe into wetlands on the Emerald Sky property.

Tuls told local media , and still maintains, that heavy snow obscured the spill from dairy staff, delaying detection, although prosecutors disputed his claim.

“Four feet of snow on it and people are like, ‘How do you not know?’” he said in an interview. “You don't know because you can't see it.”

In a 2019 incident that attracted attention, the dairy’s liquid manure was applied to a sloped field before it rained, allowing some to flow into a nearby creek, killing fish.

Tuls said the day’s weather was unexpected and the Department of Natural Resources could not prove the fish kill resulted from runoff linked to his field.

The Department of Natural Resources referred each case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, and Attorney General Josh Kaul levied a total of $145,000 in fines.

Under the weariness of past experience, Dupre, co-founder of St. Croix County Defending Our Water, and other environmental advocates swiveled their spotlight onto Breeze Dairy Group’s spills.

From 2013 to 2017, equipment failures at the company’s Waushara County farm released a total of 95,000 to 135,000 gallons of manure into an adjacent wetland and a neighbor’s pond on three occasions.

The Department of Natural Resources required a cleanup but determined the spills did little environmental damage.

Manure hauling mishaps caused some of Breeze’s spills over the years. In five documented incidents between 2014 and 2023, haulers released about 15,000 gallons due to equipment failure or trucker error.

Spills are not inevitable, Wolf said, “but the risk is always there.” Yet as technology advances at dairies, he believes risk has fallen.

Croix Breeze Dairy doesn’t truck its manure but pumps it through hoses, which automatically shut off when pressure drops. To reduce field runoff, workers blend manure into the soil using a disc-like tractor attachment.

How common are spills?

In 15 years, reported spills statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.

Instead, they contend people, most often manure haulers and farmers, increasingly notified authorities.

That makes sense to Kevin Erb, a UW-Extension training director.

Wisconsin’s regulations require all farms, regardless of size, to relay news of spills that threaten health, safety or the environment. Large livestock farm operators must report any incident. Erb said state data overrepresents CAFO-involved spills, which typically are minor compared to those reported by small farms.

“Mechanical failures are gonna happen,” Erb said. “The true measure in my mind is when an accident happens, was it dealt with properly, was it cleaned up and was it reported?”

Over time, the percentage of reported spills that occurred during manure transport increased, and they more frequently involved CAFOs than small operations. Now spills tend to occur in equal measure during hauling and on the farm, such as when a manure lagoon overflows.

Erb attributes the rise in transport spills to the increasing concentration of ever-larger volumes of manure, which haulers must truck to fields. Some are several miles from CAFO buildings, increasing road time and risk.

To permit or not to permit?

The Department of Natural Resources tries to use a soft touch with regulating CAFO operators. Still, like the case of Emerald Sky, the law leaves room for escalation, up to referring a case to the Department of Justice for possible citation or even criminal prosecution.

Variables like a spill’s preventability, the operator’s mitigation efforts and impacts to health and the environment all shape the agency’s response, said Ben Uvaas, a department employee who specializes in farm runoff rules.

But how do spills impact permitting?

The department is “definitely allowed” to consider a farm’s compliance history, including spills, said Jeff Jackson, who works in the state’s CAFO program.

Large livestock farms must resolve violations before the state can reissue their permits.

More than 60 attendees opposed the reissuance of Emerald Sky’s permit at a 2023 public hearing. Dupre presented a petition with 145 signatures, calling for operating requirements like cover crops and an animal cap due to the farm’s “less-than-stellar track record.”

“I appreciate that producers need a level of certainty in their business,” she said in an interview, “but homeowners need the same level of certainty in the investment we make in our properties.”

But Wisconsin’s wastewater permitting process isn’t designed to litigate past misdeeds, punish farmers or put chronic offenders out of business. Instead, the regulatory system sets conditions under which entities like sewer treatment plants and CAFOs can safely pollute.

In the normal course of business, large livestock farm operators request agency approval for a wastewater discharge permit. The department outlines restrictions, along with self-monitoring and reporting requirements.

The agency generally can’t deny a permit if an operator agrees to abide by stipulations, said Paul LaLiberte, a former department employee.

Additionally, regulators can’t deny permits based on potential environmental damage to a region, according to the agency, nor preexisting ecological issues.

Wisconsin law broadly limits the department’s authority to deny permits.

In practice, department officials don’t deny permits or expansions to get farmers to follow the law, LaLiberte said.

“They have to go through the courts and pummel them into compliance.”

Ideally, a violator determines that cooperating costs less than accumulating fines.

Running on good faith

The Department of Natural Resources reissued Emerald Sky’s permit, stating the dairy resolved its infractions. Staff said they had no justification to deny the expansion because the farm has enough storage for manure and cropland on which to apply it.

The agency’s limited authority means protecting water increasingly depends on farmers’ “good faith,” said Hudson resident Celeste Koeberl, whose home of 31 years adjoins Lake Mallalieu in western St. Croix County.

Algae blooms cover the water’s surface each summer, fueled by phosphorus runoff, traced to area agriculture.

The dairy’s expansion is “just one more thing that’s gonna make our lake gross,” she said. “These are public waters.”

Wolf said Breeze Dairy Group will earn the community’s trust. He works with a local grower and intends to plant cover crops, which help reduce soil runoff.

Tim Stieber, St. Croix County’s conservation administrator, is extending the company the benefit of the doubt.

He, Jackson and another county staff member recently visited the property and were encouraged to learn of several more upgrades.

“A new owner,” Stieber said, “it’s actually an opportunity.”

This story is part of a partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk , an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How many manure spills is too many? St. Croix County residents scrutinize big farm’s new owner