As you may have followed, I have not been enthralled with
the newspaper reporting of the status of our wells in Kewaunee County. For example, we have read over and over “30%
of the wells in Kewaunee County are contaminated.” That is simply not true, and that myth needs
to be corrected. If 30% of the wells in
our county were contaminated, we’d have a whopping 1,440 wells contaminated,
when in fact, we have so far validated that 180 wells are contaminated and that
translates to 3.79% of our county wells in the county with known contamination
at this time. Bit of a difference, isn’t
it? One would only hope that some of
this data might be published.
I will also reiterate, I continue to believe we have a serious
problem with both the surface and groundwater in the county and, I also will
work with whomever to solve the problem.
This will not happen overnight though.
Although our goal should be to have 100% of our wells clean, I believe I
can safely say, that no matter what this county does to correct the problem it
will never achieve a 100% record.
Why? Because there are too many
sources of contaminates that can cause a well to go bad.
In the following tables I have taken the cumulative percent
of unsafe wells voluntarily tested by township for the period 2004 -2014. This data has been amassed by Davina Bonness
who is the Department Head of our Kewaunee County Land and Water Conservation
group. That information in the following
tables is highlighted in blue.
Unfortunately, we do not have an accurate breakdown of the
number or wells by each township. We do
however, have the rural address points, and by taking the number of rural
address points and dividing it into the total number of wells in the county, we
can closely estimate the number of wells in each township. It is not perfect, but very close. The reason it is not perfect is, some
addresses have more than one operational well.
This data is highlighted in yellow on the tables.
When reviewing the data from this perspective, it reveals about 3.79% of the
counties wells tested were found to be contaminated. This
considers that we only have data on
13.05% of all county wells that have been tested. It also clearly highlights that the vast
majority of the problems are in the townships of Red River, Lincoln, Casco and
Luxemburg where we have the Karst featured land. These
four townships represent 42.4% of the counties wells and 71.1% of the
contaminated wells.
I happen to believe Agriculture can continue
to grow and flourish in Kewaunee Co. but at the same time they will have to
play a major role in contributing towards cleaning up our water problem. This will take investment by all farms in the
county because as I recall, all cows poo and pee, not just cows on the
CAFOs. Last December I presented a plan
to the board on manure processing and how, with manure processing we could
effectively reduce the amount of manure going to the fields by 70%. Since that meeting I have been closely
watching the advances being made in the manure treatment field.
As you may recall, a company called Digested Organics was
at that board meeting and answered some questions as to how their IMMS technology/system
worked. I had reviewed a number of
systems and found them to have a fully integrated and modular manure treatment system that harvests
energy and generates biogas, concentrates and captures nutrients for crops and
reclaims clean water for farm use.
Their first commercial installation of this system is being
commissioned this month at Majestic Meadows dairy in Sheboygan Falls. I have been keeping a very close eye on the
results, and am extremely encouraged by what I am seeing so far. It appears the performance metrics they were
projecting are going to be achievable.
Simply stated, they are removing about 65% of the water from the manure
and turning it into potable water for the cows to drink. What does this mean? A 2,000 cow dairy today produces about 9.8 M
gallons of liquid manure when you consider the parlor water into that
number. By removing 65% of the water, 6.4
million gallons of that manure would be removed as reusable water for the
animals or farm and would not have to go out on our roads in manure trucks or on
the fields. The remaining 35% would
contain more concentrated amount of nutrients that is both separated and
captured for more targeted delivery to the fields.
Another benefit is that all that water doesn’t have to be
stored, therefore freeing up space in pits which would eliminate the emergency
spreading situations we seem to find ourselves in almost every year. Digested Organics is just one of the
companies building and developing manure treatment facilities in Wisconsin.
This technology is both commercially available and at our doorstep and it won’t
be long before our farmers start having them constructed in Kewaunee. As I have
said before, we need a proactive strategy that incorporates these kinds of
treatment technologies to help improve our ground & surface water while
continuing to support the important dairy industry and the hundreds of jobs
that it employs.
I will continue to keep you apprised of developments as
we advance our overall County strategy.
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