Farmers Irked By Timetable for New Nutrient Management Plans

Several months ago Bill Schuster, head of the Door County Soil and Water Conservation Department, warned members of the committee that has oversight for his department that they would be hearing a lot of “angst” in connection with the department’s crackdown on nutrient management plans after an internal audit of eight plans last fall revealed falsehoods in all eight plans.

Members of the Soil and Conservation Committee got a taste of the angst Schuster mentioned at its March 19 meeting when several farmers showed up to air complaints about a recent notification landowners in the county received alerting them to the need for honest nutrient management plans.

Dan Vandertie, owner of an award-winning Holstein farm in Brussels, was one of the farmers in attendance. He said the March 1 letter “put a lot of farmers back on their heels” because the nutrient management plans are due April 1.

“We all want clean water,” Vandertie said. “Because of an incident here, an incident there, doesn’t make us all bad farmers. I’m the fifth generation. We’ve got the sixth generation possibly coming. We all have vested interest in this. But when we get letters like this that basically make you feel you’re not doing the right job, and we have been. We haven’t polluted the water. I think there’s a better way of writing these letters and talking to these farmers. As farmers we do a bad job of promoting the good things we do.”

Vandertie said the letter should have gone out Sept. 1, not March 1.

But on Sept. 1, the two incidents that prompted the nutrient management plan crackdown had yet to happen – a contractor for Haberli farms spread liquid manure over a sinkhole on Sept. 8, contaminating the wells of 12 area residents; and on Sept. 16 the largest manure spill in Door County history took place when 640,000 gallons of liquid manure escaped from a storage facility on the Kurt DeGrave farm in Brussels.

It was after those incidents that Schuster ordered an audit of nutrient management plans and found them wanting.

“A lot of guys dug their heels in because you had 30 days to change everything,” Vandertie said. “Give some time. Don’t throw us a 30-day window.”

Dennis Schopf of Schopf’s Hilltop Dairy in Carlsville said he farms his own 600 acres and rents considerably more land from others.

“The letter that went out, it kind of pointed fingers,” Schopf said, adding that he took about 15 phone calls from people he rents land from who received the letter.

“The letter made it sound as if farmers did wrong and weren’t doing plans right,” Schopf said. “We’re not here to pollute wells and create problems. We’re here to produce food for everybody and we do it as safe as we can.”

Schuster pointed out that he and his staff have been working on this for several months, including talking with planners for large farms, after the “very disappointing” results of the audit.

“We realized we had a bigger problem than we knew we had in the past,” Schuster said.

He also said nothing in the process has changed. Farmers know they have to have a nutrient management plan filed by April 1.

“What’s really changed is our finding out the deficiency of nutrient management planning in Door County,” Schuster said.

While he said he is willing to take responsibility where it is due, “I am not going to stand in front of a group of people with bad wells and say I didn’t use all my authority.”

While the department does not have the staff to audit every nutrient management plan that is submitted, Schuster said the department would conduct “focused audits” of nutrient management plans based on total volume of manure. He said six plans would undergo the focused audit this year.

“If they come in significantly incorrect, we will reject them. We’re hoping that doesn’t happen,” Schuster said. “We want compliance, not enforcement.”

Schuster also brought up again the January Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that found once manure leaves the field and enters the aquifer, it is a pollutant. The ruling overturned a 2013 2nd District Court of Appeals ruling that manure is considered a nutrient, not a pollutant.

The case involved a Washington County farm couple and neighbors whose well was contaminated by liquid manure. The farm couple filed a claim with their insurance company to compensate their neighbors for the tainted well, but the insurance company balked, saying its policy excluded coverage for damage caused by pollutants.

What this means, Schuster said, is that almost all normal liability insurance excludes pollutants, which makes the landowner and farmer responsible for the cost of tainted wells.

He said the insurance industry responded to the ruling by offering environmental insurance to farmers. However, Door County was excluded from coverage, he said, because of the higher than average groundwater risk due to shallow soils and fractured bedrock.

Schuster said he explained to insurance industry officials that his office has stepped up its watchdog role of nutrient management plans, and they were willing to offer environmental insurance policies to Door County farmers.

“After discussing our problem, they are now open to having insurance in Door County. That’s good news!” Schuster said.

Because so much farmed land is rental property, Schuster is also leading a charge to make landowners aware that they are as responsible as the farmers for what takes place on their land. With the assistance of Corporation Counsel/Interim Administrator Grant Thomas, the department has come up with a sample cropland rental agreement with conservation options (available online at map.co.door.wi.us/swcd).

Schuster said the reasoning behind offering the sample land agreement was that it seemed many landowners were unaware of their responsibilities. He said he had landowners yelling at him, asking why he didn’t make farmers do things right on their land.

“My answer has been for a while, ‘It’s your land. If you want something done or not done, make that part of the rental agreement. Don’t be unhappy with me. Provide them with a lease agreement with options.’

“The landowner, in most of this, is first in line for potential liability and enforcement,” Schuster said. “We want to make sure that landowners are aware of their responsibility.”