Leveling the Playing Field: How Strong Environmental Protections Benefit Family Farms

by Peg Sheaffer, MEA Communications Director

In recent years, powerful lobbying groups representing Wisconsin’s largest farms have launched coordinated legal attacks aimed at rolling back environmental oversight in our state. Their goal is to weaken the regulations that protect rural communities and help level the playing field for sustainable family farms. But thanks to the combined efforts of family farmers, environmental advocates, and legal experts, one such effort was recently defeated—not just once, but twice. These victories demonstrate that by working together—and using the power of the law—everyday people can preserve the strong environmental protections they depend on and hold even the most powerful interests accountable.

Two Big Wins for Clean Water and Rural Communities

In August of this year, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling in a case called Wisconsin Dairy Alliance v. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The decision affirmed the authority of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to regulate the state’s largest livestock operations.

The case began in 2023, when Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) sued the DNR on behalf of Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and Venture Dairy Cooperative. The powerful lobbying groups alleged that the DNR had no legal authority to regulate concentrated animal feeding operations (commonly known as CAFOs), and that requiring CAFOs to apply for water pollution permits was unlawful.  

Nonprofit law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA) quickly intervened in the lawsuit on behalf of Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU), a grassroots organization that advocates for the interests of sustainable family farmers and rural communities. WFU and MEA got involved in the case to ensure that CAFOs are held accountable to our state’s environmental laws.

In January of 2024, the circuit court judge who heard the case sided with MEA and WFU. After the lobbying groups appealed the ruling, the case was sent to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. 

MEA and WFU filed legal briefs defending the DNR’s authority. They argued that state agencies must have the power to protect the public and the environment from pollution. Without that power, Wisconsin would lose one of its most important tools for safeguarding clean water.

In August 2025, the Court of Appeals ruled in favor of MEA and WFU, affirming the DNR’s right to require CAFOs to obtain permits. This was a major victory for Wisconsinites who believe that responsible agricultural practices are the foundation of a clean environment.

“Family farmers understand that stewardship of the land and water is key to long-term success,” said Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden in response to the decision. “Ensuring that large livestock operations follow commonsense permitting rules protects our shared resources and the future of farming in Wisconsin.”

What Was at Stake

A win for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and its allies would have dismantled the main system Wisconsin has developed to monitor and manage the massive amount of waste produced by the state’s largest farms.

Under the Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) program, all CAFOs must apply for and receive a WPDES permit before they can legally operate. In Wisconsin, CAFOs are defined as livestock or poultry operations housing more than 1,000 animal units. That’s the equivalent of approximately 700 dairy cows, 1000 beef cattle or 2,500 hogs.  

WPDES permits are essential for effective environmental oversight. Without them, CAFOs could operate without accountability for the manure and wastewater they generate—posing serious risks to Wisconsin’s lakes, rivers, and groundwater.

“Wisconsin’s CAFO permit program creates transparency,” says Von Ruden. “It helps ensure that large livestock operations are accountable—not only to regulators, but also to their neighbors, who have a right to know what’s happening in their communities.”

As farms have become bigger and fewer in the past two decades, CAFOs have come to represent an increasing percentage of Wisconsin’s livestock industry. With over 330 permitted CAFOs in the state today—up from just 135 in 2005—the stakes have never been higher.

When industrial-scale farms operate without environmental accountability, they gain an unfair advantage over the thousands of small and mid-sized farms that follow best practices, invest in environmental stewardship, and bear the costs of doing things the right way. These farmers may spend thousands annually to maintain buffers, control erosion, plant cover crops and carefully manage nutrient applications to prevent runoff.

By contrast, operations that ignore or sidestep environmental safeguards can cut costs—but those savings come at a high price for surrounding communities: polluted wells, lower property values, and contaminated rivers and lakes.

“Holding the largest, most powerful actors accountable levels the playing field,” said Adam Voskuil, an attorney at Midwest Environmental Advocates. “It ensures that the cost of pollution isn’t passed along to rural residents and that farmers who are doing the right thing aren’t put at an even greater competitive disadvantage.”

A Dangerous Trend in Other States

What Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce attempted here in Wisconsin is not new. Similar efforts have succeeded in other states—and the results have been devastating for rural communities, family farmers, and the environment.

In Indiana, more than 800 CAFOs currently operate without pollution discharge permits. These facilities generate millions of gallons of untreated manure each year, much of it stored in open lagoons or spread on fields with little or no oversight. This lack of regulation has led to elevated nitrate levels in drinking water, fish kills in rivers and streams, and a public backlash from rural homeowners forced to install costly filtration systems—or abandon contaminated wells entirely.

The situation is even more extreme in Iowa, where over 95% of the state’s 4,200 CAFOs operate without permits. Iowa’s unregulated CAFO boom has contributed to some of the most polluted rivers in the country. The Des Moines Water Works, one of the state’s largest drinking water utilities, has spent millions on nitrate removal to make river water safe to drink—costs ultimately passed on to ratepayers. Rural counties across Iowa have documented widespread private well contamination and sharp increases in nitrate-linked health risks, including cancer and birth defects.

In both states, attempts to challenge the lack of regulation have been met with resistance from powerful agricultural lobbies and anti-regulatory lawmakers. Communities have been largely stripped of their ability to push back, while state agencies—under political pressure—have scaled back enforcement and public transparency.

This is the outcome WMC sought to bring to Wisconsin: a system where the biggest polluters are exempt from oversight, and ordinary people have little recourse when their water is contaminated or their air becomes unbreathable.

Community-Led Legal Action is Paying Off

The appellate court victory in Wisconsin Dairy Alliance v. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is just the latest milestone in a long-running  grassroots effort to hold  Wisconsin’s largest agricultural operators accountable to our environmental laws. For over two decades, Midwest Environmental Advocates has worked with rural communities around the state to ensure that CAFOs follow the law, protect water resources, and operate transparently.

One of the most significant victories came in 2021, after a ten-year legal battle that went all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In that case, MEA represented neighbors of Kinnard Farms, a massive dairy CAFO in Kewaunee County. The neighbors, many of whom could not safely drink their water, took legal action after the Department of Natural Resources repeatedly failed to require Kinnard Farms to do more to prevent manure from contaminating drinking water.

In 2014, an administrative law judge agreed with them, finding that Kewaunee County’s drinking water crisis had been caused by “massive regulatory failure.”

Despite years of appeals and procedural delays, Kinnard’s neighbors refused to give up, and eventually their case reached Wisconsin’s highest court. Finally, in 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in the case, affirming that the Department of Natural Resources has both the authority and the obligation to require CAFOs to comply with permit terms and conditions meant to protect water resources. The Supreme Court’s decision laid the foundation for subsequent legal wins, including the successful outcome in Wisconsin Dairy Alliance v. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.  

These hard-fought legal victories are part of a larger strategy to give rural communities back the power they’ve lost to well-funded industry groups.

“Too often, legislators have picked their voters, rather than voters picking their legislators,” says Voskuil, referring to the gerrymandering and political dysfunction that has weakened environmental oversight and accountability in Wisconsin. “In that vacuum, industry groups have stepped in to rewrite the rules.”

But legal action—guided by public interest law firms like MEA—is proving to be an effective way to restore balance and protect the public good. These recent court victories show that legal action can not only protect our environment—it can help create a system where doing the right thing doesn’t put family farms at a disadvantage.

Peg Sheaffer is Director of Communications at Midwest Environmental Advocates and is a proud resident of rural Green County. She has over twenty years of communications experience in the fields of sustainable agriculture, natural resources and conservation.