By Patricia Wolff • of The Northwestern • 

PICKETT – An environmental group says laws to protect the environment
are lagging so far behind the times as to threaten the lives of
Wisconsin residents, and the agency empowered to make a difference is
shirking its duties.

That's the sentiment Attorney Melissa Malott, water program director
for Clean Wisconsin, an environmental group that advocates for clean
water, holds regarding the imminent enlargement of Rosendale Dairy
near Pickett.

Malott has challenged the dairy and the Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources to do more to protect the environment by requiring
the dairy to install bio digesters or a wastewater treatment plant on
site to handle animal waste.

The owners of the dairy – Jim Ostrom, Todd Willer and John Vosters –
say they already have addressed the handling of waste in the best ways
available.

"We're 80 percent to clean water. The technology to take it to 100
percent is not there yet," Ostrom said.

The dairy owners have asked the DNR for modifications to their dairy
permit that would clear the way for expanding their herd from 4,000 to
8,000 cows and to increase the area upon which the dairy spreads
liquid manure from 5,600 acres to nearly 13,000.

The DNR held a public hearing on the permit changes in early December
and is expected to make a decision on those modifications early in
2010. If the modifications are approved, Rosendale Dairy will become
the largest dairy in the state.

Malott considers the dairy's expansion plan dangerous for Wisconsin, a
state that is already plagued by water pollution from agricultural
runoff. The dairy's plan to spread liquid waste over all those acres
in an area that is close to wetlands, streams and lakes is asking for
trouble, she said.

Worse still, she said, Rosendale Dairy's own nutrient management plan
– the farm's plan for handling its estimated annual 92 million gallons
of liquid waste by spreading it over nearby farm fields, suggests
phosphorus runoff will occur into already troubled area waterways.

"Rosendale's own plan for manure discharge shows they have a high to
excessive probability to discharge phosphorus into Lake Winnebago and
the Fox River," Malott said.