Laketown Rebuffs Ag Lobby Legal Claim
Real Leadership for Laketown
In 2021, Bruce and Mark promised to pass the strongest factory farm ordinance possible. They got the job done!
Last fall Wisconsin's two largest business lobby groups sued our tiny town. Their billionaire members want to take away local control over their huge livestock factories.
Bruce and Mark got to work protecting your health and property by signing on the law firms of Bassford Remele and Fredrikson. These firms consider the case to be so important that they are defending Laketown at no cost.
Without our ordinance, developers can put 2,499 hogs just 100 feet from the shoreline. They would not be required to control any of their air pollution or even make a plan for what to with the carcasses if thousands of animals die.
All of the hard work you and your family have invested in your property is at risk. For example, property values in Green County, WI dropped by 27% when the hogs moved in and there is constant plume of foul air.
“The smell is so bad that I can smell it on the hair on my arms when I come in from outside,” the Green County homeowner Todd Knutson said.
Other communities have seen drops of up to 88%!
There is nothing hypothetical about attempts to build large swine factories in Laketown.
Several landowners were solicited to sell to Cumberland LLC, a shell company for an Iowa company that owns thousands of sows. Cumberland has a deal on land for a farrowing plant with up to 26,000 hogs in the neighboring Town of Trade Lake. Cumberland is in the process of getting DNR permits to build that factory. Its hogs will go to Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods.
Of course, this is just the latest of many attacks that big business is making around the state to intimidate local officials. In Kewaunee County, they've fueled a decade of litigation for the giant Kinnard 8,000-cow dairy. In that case, this behemoth says they don't need to do any well monitoring even though they are spreading raw feces and urine over 16,000 acres. That is 25 sections of land or almost 3/4 of a township!
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Laketown developed our ordinance in partnership with five neighboring towns - Bone Lake, Eureka, Luck, Sterling and Trade Lake. A panel including legal, environmental and engineering experts guided the ordinance’s development. It will protect us.
State laws do almost nothing. DNR's large livestock regulations cover manure but enforcement is almost non-existent. An operation just across the line in St. Croix County spilled 275,000 gallons before a whistleblower turned them in. Kinnard Farm in Kewaunee County recently settled for ongoing violations committed from 2018 to 2022!
None of Laketown's current farm operations are affected by the ordinance.
However, if a large livestock factory wants to move in they have to submit plans laying out how they will manage manure, air pollution, water usage, carcass disposal, biosecurity, fire protection and road damage. They will have to pay for enforcement of their plans. They must also post a bond to cover any clean up if they go out of business.