Tag: water

Most Nitrate, Coliform In Kewaunee County Wells Tied To Animal Waste | Wisconsin Public Radio

Source: Most Nitrate, Coliform In Kewaunee County Wells Tied To Animal Waste | Wisconsin Public Radio

This is what the water looks like coming out of wells in Kewaunee County. Photo from Kewaunee County Land and Water Conservation Dept.

Please excuse me while I go on a bit of a rant here but I have to get this off my chest. I’ve talked about this before but the situation is so damned frustrating. It is hitting the media again and it’s about time it does because it is a situation I can’t believe hasn’t been dealt with properly.

Wisconsin has a very, very serious problem with water pollution, and one that has gone largely under the radar for decades until it was announced a few years ago that more than 60% of the wells in Kewaunee county were contaminated with dangerous levels of bacteria, nitrates and other substances. While the focus had remained largely centered on Kewaunee county, over the last couple of years it has been discovered that other parts of the state were just as bad. Almost half of the wells in Iowa, Grant and Lafayette counties are contaminated, as are thousands of water wells all across the state. And all because of CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, large dairy operations that concentrate many hundreds or even thousands of cows on a single farm).

When the problem first started to come to the attention of the public, a lot of the farms and dairy organizations at first tried to claim it wasn’t their fault, and that the contamination was coming from faulty septic systems, not farms. But no one really believed that, not even the people pushing that explanation, and now there is positive proof that the contaminants are coming from these large farming operations. And it has gotten to the point now where even Wisconsin’s legislature, packed with the finest politicians a lobbyist can buy, can ignore it any longer.

So, why are we having these problems? It’s simple, really. Just one adult cow produces about 18 gallons of excrement and urine a day. And there are 1.28 million cows in Wisconsin. That means cows are producing 23 million gallons of what is essentially raw sewage a day in the state.

Let’s say a farm has 3,000 cows. That’s 54,000 gallons of manure every day. That gives you 19,710,000 gallons of manure every year. From just one farm. Almost 20 million gallons of sewage being produced by a single farm every year.

And that manure is largely disposed of by simply dumping it on farm fields with little or no treatment.

And then people are surprised because our water is being contaminated?

So what is the state doing about it? Well, the legislature is right on top of that. They’ve formed a task force…

Oh, please, a task force? What the legislature is doing is trying to make it look like they’re doing something when, in fact, they are doing nothing to deal with the problem. There are no questions left to answer, there is nothing left to investigate. What they’re doing down in Madison is hoping desperately that the attention the media has focused on this issue will move to the next scandal or disaster and they can keep on raking in all that yummy money from the dairy industry’s lobbying groups.

Lilies, Peppers, Water and Stuff

One of the lilies is finally coming into flower and it’s been worth the wait. I love these things and grin like an idiot whenever I walk past this plant.

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For some reason MrsGf went pepper crazy this year and we’ve ended up with something like 30 pepper plants of various types out in the gardens. One of the raised beds is full of them, and then they’re tucked away in odd corners all over the flower beds as well. They’re all starting to blossom now.

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This particular one is supposed to be a small, round, hot pepper called a cherry bomb if I remember right, although it’s hard to keep track of what’s actually planted where. There are at least 4 or 5 different types out there. Both of us really love peppers, especially fresh from the garden, but there’s no way we’re going to be able to use all of these this year. I think it’s a hint that the family wants me to make and can a big batch of pickled peppers this year. The pickled peppers were an experiment last year and turned out so good we’re down to one or two pints left. I certainly don’t mind, but damn, that’s a lot of pepper plants…

Now that I’m not working I’m going to blow up like a balloon if I don’t exercise, and walking around town day after day is pretty darn boring so I went and got myself a bicycle. Biked about five miles down to the old stone bridge outside of town.IMG_0391.jpgIMG_0393.jpgIMG_0389.jpg

the bridge goes over a shallow, slow little river that dries up into a mud hole by mid-summer usually. I never really paid much attention to it before because usually I’m going over the bridge in a car. I realized it’s really kind of pretty down there, especially with the sky reflecting off the water.

Four thirty in the morning? Really? Ick… Why do I keep getting up this early? I have turned into one of those most obnoxious of people, a “morning person”. As soon as the sky begins to turn light in the pre-dawn, my idiotic brain has decided I need to be up. Right now. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s annoying because I don’t want to be up at bloody 4:30 or 5 in the morning.

The cats are delighted by this, of course. Being the utterly annoying little goofballs they are, they’re generally all sitting outside of the bedroom door by 4:30 anyway because they want their breakfast. So I’m out here, bleary eyed, still half in the dark, trying to make coffee and tripping over cats, stumbling over cats, having cats butting against my legs (it’s not a sign of affection, they’re trying to trip you, you know) and having cats yelling at me. And trying to keep things quiet so MrsGF can get an extra half hour of sleep or so.

If they’re especially bored or hungry, they will drag their food bowl all the way across the room and put it directly in front of the bedroom door so I trip over it when I come stumbling out. One of them has developed the habit of going through the house, finding every cat toy she can, and depositing it in the empty food dish. Apparently she’s under the impression that if she makes some kind of offering the cat food gods will refill her bowl?

Come to think of it, it works, doesn’t it? She puts her toys in the empty food dish and like magic I show up and refill it.

Drought, Climate and Agriculture. Like it or not, Change is coming.

Water is an increasingly precious commodity across the country, and lack of water has become an extremely serious issue in Southern California where a years long drought continues. I ran across this item over at Ag Professional’s website and while brief and far from in depth, it does talk a bit about the problems that are going on and the changes that are starting to take place.  California Drought is a U.S. Problem | Ag Professional

The ongoing drought in California is driving a lot of farmers over there into bankruptcy and causing others serious problems as they scramble to fight with cities and other users over an increasingly scarce resource. During his campaign Donald Trump claimed that there is no real drought in California and the other south western states, and he could bring the water shortage to an end if he was elected. But no, Trump is not going to end the drought by simply claiming it doesn’t exist. Even if the new administration changes or repeals existing water regulations, it doesn’t do you much good when there isn’t any water to begin with, which is the situation southern California and Nevada are facing.

With ground water being pumped out of aquifers at rates so high it’s causing the ground to sink, that wells are drying up wells all over that part of the state, and with surface water already being rationed, simply declaring there is no drought and blaming it on regulations is ridiculous. Sooner or later those aquifers are going to be completely depleted or drawn down so far that it is no longer possible to drill deep enough and build pumping systems powerful enough to deal with it.

Are there things that could be done to improve access to water? Sure. But it would take tens, even hundreds of billions of dollars in new infrastructure, new dams, new aqueducts, new pumping systems, etc. And even then they’d have to steal water from other parts of the country, suck rivers dry and pretty much ruin every river system they tap into in order to do it. From an engineering standpoint it could be done, but economically and politically? No state is going to stand by idly and allow it’s water be siphoned off to irrigate crops, water lawns and golf courses and fill swimming pools in states like California and Nevada.

Could the situation out there be solved some other way? Sure. But it would require change. And people don’t like change. The agricultural industry would have to fundamentally change how it works. Not just changing how they farm, but what they farm. Water intensive crops that require irrigation would have to go. Some types of agriculture, like dairy, would probably have to move elsewhere entirely. Consumers would have to get used to the idea of not having “fresh” produce of certain types available every month of the year. It would require a lot of changes that a lot of people don’t want.

And it isn’t just in California and the other states in the south west. How we use water, how we manage our water resources, is going to have to change. The changes are coming whether people like it or not.