Door County Environmental Council’s Position on CAFO Expansion

The phosphorus pollution of northeastern Wisconsin’s ground and surface water is a serious and undeniable problem. All of the facts and science behind this water contamination are not currently known.

However, what is known is that there are multiple sources of this phosphorus pollution, including lawn fertilizers and failing septic systems. There also is, we believe, no question that one of the main causes of water contamination is poor manure management by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) engaged in milk production.

A cow, it seems, produces approximately 18 times the waste of one human being. That means a CAFO with 4,000 cows produces the waste equivalent of a city of 72,000 people. Unfortunately, the big difference is that existing CAFOs do not have waste treatment systems for their animal waste like cities do. The animal waste from these operations – in a liquefied format – is simply being spread on the ground or sprayed into the air via central pivot sprayers....