By Bennett Goldstein, Wisconsin Watch

This article was first published by Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.

Gregg Wolf vows “to put a new step forward” on “a new day” at a western 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 acquired an undesired aspect of the $11 million property: 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. One went unreported for months until an anonymous tipster notified authorities.

The incidents drew rebukes from county officials and residents, who complained that the state’s lax penalties would not deter future offenses.

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.

Now, after growling excavators and dozers regraded parts of the property, Wolf has worked to improve the dairy’s image, with a farm face-lift and managerial improvements. 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’re more of an open book. 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 recently expanded 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 manure spill. “But I guess the proof will be in the pudding.”

Breeze has committed to safety and 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 — it’s part of company culture.

Residents will be checking.

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

Renovations to the grounds at Croix Breeze Dairy, a 2,400-cow livestock farm in Emerald, were underway on June 11, 2024. St. Croix County residents are disenchanted with the dairy’s reputation, recalling a series of manure spills under its previous owner. (Credit: Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)

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

Wisconsin residents increasingly are informing state regulators of manure spills. Although researchers and authorities 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 less than a mile from 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 of its operations, 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, joined Breeze four years ago. He said herd sizes depend on the milk market and demand, and the company lacks a definitive target. It lacks a financial incentive to fill a dairy to maximum capacity if milk processors don’t pay enough to make a return on investment.

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.

Gregg Wolf, CEO of Breeze Dairy Group, stands in a freestall barn at Croix Breeze Dairy on June 11, 2024, in Emerald. The 2,400 cows at the dairy are milked three times per day for 10 months of the year. Breeze Dairy Group, based in Appleton, owns five dairies across Wisconsin. (Credit: Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)

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

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.

Mid-sized dairies also are disappearing, while larger operations have expanded their 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, the latter of which, when consumed above the national health standard, increases the risk of birth defects, thyroid disease and colon cancer.

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, whose cracks and fissures enable water to rapidly enter the aquifer.

Many in the community also view Emerald Sky’s expansion as the harbinger of additional manure spills at a farm that has seen many in its history.

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. Certain locations amassed deposits three feet deep.

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.

Dead forage minnows were recovered from Hutton Creek near Emerald, Wisconsin, following a November 2019 manure spill involving the former Emerald Sky Dairy, which has since been sold and renamed. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

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.

“We didn’t go to war with the DNR on that one ’cause it’s just like in our mind we handled everything that needed to be done,” he said. “I don’t know of a single perfect person in the world. People want cheese on their pizza and they want ice cream at Dairy Queen and they want milk in the fridge when they go get their cereal and they want half-and-half with their coffee and they don’t understand how hard it is to actually produce that milk.”

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.

Meanwhile, a 50,000-gallon spill at Lake Breeze Dairy in 2014 killed most fish in a creek that flows into Fond du Lac County’s Lake Winnebago. However, the local health department concluded the discharge didn’t contaminate groundwater.

The following winter, a broken line released up to 2,000 gallons of manure into a ditch before the farm contained the spill and pumped it back into a lagoon.

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. On one occasion, faulty wiring caused a manure release valve to open when a driver activated a turn signal.

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.

“It’s just a matter of putting procedures and training in place,” Wolf said, “setting up systems that just don’t fail or have lower risk of failing.”

How common are spills?

Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.

In 15 years, reported incidents 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, who helped plan the state’s first live-action manure spill demonstrations for farmers, applicators and haulers.

Wisconsin’s regulations require all farms, regardless of size, to relay news of spills that threaten health, safety or the environment. But 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.

The volume of most reported spills ranged between 50 and 1,000 gallons. Nearly half of incidents affected surface waters or roadside ditches that were filled with standing water.

To permit or not to permit?

The Department of Natural Resources tries to use a soft touch when compelling CAFO operators to follow state manure regulations. 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.

“There’s a million different factors at play,” said Ben Uvaas, a department employee who specializes in farm runoff rules.

Variables like a spill’s preventability, the operator’s mitigation efforts and impacts to health and the environment all shape the agency’s response.

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 and drafted Emerald Sky’s wastewater permit.

Large livestock farms must resolve violations before the state can reissue their permits. If they don’t, staff can hold off or impose new requirements like groundwater monitoring.

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.”

Kim Dupre stands next to the Stillwater Lift Bridge in Stillwater, Minnesota, on June 11, 2024. The former Emerald resident left the unincorporated community in western Wisconsin following a large manure spill in 2016. She is concerned about St. Croix County’s water quality and co-founded an advocacy group intended to raise awareness and take steps to mitigate the growing problem. (Credit: Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)

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 who worked in water programs for 35 years.

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

The department doesn’t claim that large livestock farms present “zero risk” or that their required nutrient management plans — which outline the location, timing and quantity of nutrients operators will apply to farmland — guarantee no impacts to water quality.

This might explain why residents sometimes perceive a contradiction between seemingly preordained permit approvals and the agency’s stated mission to “protect and enhance” natural resources.

A cow is milked in the parlor at Croix Breeze Dairy on June 11, 2024, in Emerald. The large livestock farm is home to 2,400 cows and was recently sold to an Appleton-based company. (Credit: Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)

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.

“Of course, the day after they get the reissued permit, they could go back to their old habits,” LaLiberte said. “DNR doesn’t have the ability like a judge would for chronic violations to take away somebody’s driver’s license.”

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 Breeze made, including an incinerator to dispose of deceased livestock and a web-based manure monitoring system.

“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. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network.