By Lee Bergquist of the Journal Sentinel

State regulators approved plans to allow Rosendale Dairy to expand the
dairy farm to 8,000 cows, making it the largest dairy operation in
Wisconsin.

The Department of Natural Resources said Friday that it has approved a
permit by the Fond du Lac County farm to expand its herd from 4,000 to
8,000 cows.

The farm has come under fire from some neighbors and environmentalists
who fear that manure will harm groundwater supplies.

The DNR said that Rosendale, to date, has had two violations of its
state permit, but neither infraction resulted in harm to the
environment.

Rosendale said the farm represents an investment of more than $70
million.

It is finishing work on a second milking parlor, and a spokesman for
the dairy farm, Bill Harke, said the owners hope to complete most of
the expansion of cattle before the end of the year.

Although milk prices have fallen sharply, Harke said the business plan
of Rosendale was predicated on the long-term demand for milk.

University of Wisconsin-Madison agriculture economists said this week
that the farm commodity revenue in the state declined by $1.8 billion
in 2009, with most of it coming from falling wholesale milk prices.

Despite the DNR approval, an attorney for Clean Wisconsin, an
environmental organization, said the new permit will open the door to
more large dairy farms.

Melissa Malott, director of the organization's water program, also
said she believed the expansion at Rosendale will lead to groundwater
contamination in the area.

She said the farm should have been required to install a wastewater
treatment plant for the manure.

"This permit absolutely fails to protect the environment," she said.

Rosendale said it spent $6 million on a partial sewage treatment plant
to make it easier for farmers to spread manure over farmland.

The new permit will expand the footprint for manure spreading from
4,000 acres to 12,000 acres.

The DNR said language in the farm's water-protection permit is
stronger than state law requires.

"We've taken existing laws as far as they can go to assure that
significant safeguards are in place to maximize protection for the
environment," the DNR's Gordon Stevenson said in a statement.

He oversees the DNR's permit program for large farms.

The additional limits in the permit will:

• Specify how much manure can be spread under different conditions.

• Restrict manure spreading to no closer than 200 feet of a well.
State law limits spreading by large farms to 100 feet.

• Require groundwater monitoring.