MEA clients in Pierce County have won a major victory in a years-long fight to protect their community from the impacts of a major expansion at Ridge Breeze Dairy.
On August 24, an administrative law judge ruled that a DNR permit allowing the farm to expand its herd to more than 6,000 cows failed to ensure compliance with Wisconsin’s groundwater quality standards.
The judge found that although the permit directed Ridge Breeze to comply with Wisconsin’s groundwater standards, it gave the DNR no meaningful way to determine whether the dairy was actually following those standards—or whether its operations were polluting the water Pierce County families rely on.
“By omitting a mechanism to verify actual compliance, the Department has issued a mandate while simultaneously denying itself the tools or data necessary to know whether that mandate is broken,” the judge wrote in her decision.
The judge declared the permit unreasonable and sent it back to the DNR. The agency must now add safeguards—which could include groundwater monitoring wells—capable of detecting violations of Wisconsin’s groundwater quality standards.
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed the legal challenge on behalf of GROWW (Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin) and five individual Pierce County residents after the DNR issued a permit allowing Ridge Breeze to quadruple in size and to spread nearly 80 million gallons of liquid manure on surrounding farm fields each year.
Local residents have repeatedly raised concerns about Ridge Breeze’s ability to safely dispose of so much manure, especially in a region known to be susceptible to groundwater contamination. The decision notes that approximately 14 percent of tested wells in the county have nitrate concentrations exceeding Wisconsin’s groundwater enforcement standard of 10 mg/L. Despite these concerns, the DNR did not require Ridge Breeze to install groundwater monitoring wells when it issued the permit.
“This victory started when a handful of neighbors sat down together and decided that we wouldn’t let our health, our water or our farming heritage be treated as an afterthought,” said MEA client Ty Fisher, a Pierce County farmer and member of GROWW. “For more than three years, locals here have organized, testified, and stood together. This decision proves that when we’re organized, we can take on special interests and win.”
