02/16/2025
We met one of these community members last year who is trying to stop CAFO expansion just north of Milwaukee -- in the watershed of the Milwaukee River.
When is a farm growth too much for a community!
The Town of Trenton is working on redoing there agricutural zones with the amount of animal units. Currently, the Town allows up to 999 animal units. Recently, the Town is looking to raise the animal units to 4999 in response to an area farm asking for the Town to allow it to become a feed lot or Concentrated Agricurtual Feed Operation CAFO. Many call this type of farm an Industrial Farm. With this type of farm the animals live indoors and create alot of manure. Currently, this farm creates over 9 million gallons of manure per year. With the expanded increase they are asking for 2500 animal units would create over 16 million gallons of manure per year. The manure is then sprayed on fields throughout Washinton and Ozaukee counties. The problem with CAFO manure is that it has high amounts of nitrates and phosophorus and also contains antibiotics and detergents used to keep the cows from getting diseases and to clean the barn daily. This is sprayed on fields and can pe*****te into our surface water causing well contamintation. If a landowner rents to the farmer and a nearby well gets contaminated then who is responsible for the well? In 2012 in the Town of Trenton there was a case where a farmer spreading manure contaminated neighboring wells and the residents had to pay to have there wells repaired, not the farmer.
Please refer to the case here: https://www.corneillelaw.com/2015/supreme-court-reverses-appellate-decision-to-hold-manure-is-a-pollutant
Over 800 residents signed a petition last year asking the Town not to allow a CAFO in there community. The reasons were quite simple, This type of Industrial farm lowers the quality of life with horrible ammonia smell in the air, unbearable traffic from trucks moving manure and bringing in feed, worrying about well contamination and expense of constant well testing, dealing with swarms of flies, and the fact that property values near a CAFO often decrease in value up to 35-50 percent as seen in Kewaukee WI.
The Town government has disregarded the petition and has moved forward introducting an agricultural zoning district that would allow up to 4999 animal units, creating a Town who wants Big Agriculture and choking out the small family farmer. At the meeting on February 10th in the Town of Trenton, they asked the farmer what he thought was enough land to have 4999 animal units on and he said 180 acres, the exact amount of land he has!
Residents in our community need to get out the message to our Town that we do not want a factory farm in our community. Ask the Town to keep the animal units at 999! When we purchased our homes the animal units were 999 how can they change it to 5 times that number! This type of farm only benefits the Industrial farm itself, it does not create more jobs in our community and it destroys our community and how we live!
Please help stop indutrial farms in our community!
Picture showing the farm dumpiing manure at an unathorized manure pit! Showing the farm is not trustworthy. Still this date they have not cleaned up the manure that spilled into ditch leading to a small stream!
Make America Healthy Again!
