From the Valders Journal Thursday October 24, 2019:
Water Warning
George Meyer, executive director of Wisconsin Wildlife Federation
and former secretary of the state Department of Natural
Resources, spoke to the Manitowoc County Lakes Association
on Friday in St. Nazianz. He highlighted growing problems with
lake water quality.
By Todd S. Bergmann
George Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and former secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources, talked about that disturbing trend in water quality at the annual meeting of the Manitowoc County Lakes Association at Meat’s Opera Haus in St. Nazianz on Friday night.
“With the current policies that are in place in this state and the current programs, we will never, ever reach water quality standards in our lakes and streams in this state,” he said. “It is technically and physically impossible.”
While state and federal programs reduced pollution from industry and sewer treatment plans, Meyer said runoff from farms and streets continues to contaminate ground and surface waters.
“We have put hundreds of millions of dollars into the program,” he said. “We are going backwards on many of our waters.”
Bullhead Lake near Collins is suffering from a glut of phosphorous, added Tom Ward, president of the Manitowoc County Lakes Association.
“The fish are not what they used to be,” he said.
That lake will have to undergo an expensive alum treatment, Ward said.
The state needs an effective program to reduce phosphorous and nutrients in waters, Meyer said.
“It is time to stop saying, ‘We’re going to get there’ if we are not going to get there,” he said.
Wisconsin will have to require farmers to develop and follow a nutrient management plan and provide funding to cover costs, Meyer said.
“I get it,” he said. “Farmers don’t like regulation.”
When he was growing up on a farm just west of New Holstein, Meyer said, his father demonstrated conservation by example.
“Dad and all the neighbors were really good farm operators,” he said. “They really respected the land and were stewards. They did not use words like ‘the environment.’ We did not know what that was.
“They took care of the land. They were careful on how they used chemicals.”
While he was attending St. Norbert College in De Pere in the 1960s, students often went into the Fox River, Meyer said.
“If you went in that river…you either had an ear infection or a rash,” he said. “It was contaminated. There were 10 paper mills upstream.”
The river contained carp but no game fish, Meyer said.
At the same time, he said paper mills discharged so much sulfur and mercury in the Wisconsin River that no one could eat fish from it.
In the past 50 years, Meyer said the quality of the Fox River has improved.
“Now, it is a world-class walleye fishery,” he said.
After St. Norbert, Meyer attended law school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked part time as a law clerk for the DNR.
During this time, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, which required states to implement a permit process to make waters fishable and swimmable by 1983, Meyer said.
“They needed lawyers to do the work,” he said.
After graduation from law school, Meyer got a job as a DNR lawyer.
Before the Clean Water Act, many municipalities merely had primary treatment to catch the big stuff before sewage went in the water, Meyer said.
The act added secondary treatment to keep bacteria out of the water in the 1970s and tertiary treatment to keep phosphorous out of the water in the 1980s, he said.
The state spent $3 billion to help municipalities clean wastewater they discharged into streams and lakes, Meyer said.
With the federal act, he said paper mills could no longer threaten to leave Wisconsin because they would have to meet the same pollution standards in other states.
After industry and municipalities reduced contamination, Meyer said it still flows off farmlands and streets, beyond state control.
“We knew it would not be as easy,” he said. “There is no way of actually forcing it to happen.”
A $200 fine for killing fish did little good, Meyer said.
Farm runoff not only kills fish in streams, but also contaminates well water, he said.
People across the state complain at meetings about bad water in their wells, Meyer noted.
“It is tough to drill a new well and have the second well contaminated after a short time,” he said. “They cannot sell their homes. It is pretty hard to sell a house with a bad well.”
New wells and current programs will not end the problem, Meyer said, adding that the state needs a stricter requirement to reduce phosphorus and nitrate runoff from farms.
State law requires farmers do certain things, such as store manure away from streams, and promised 70% state funding, while the Legislature appropriated only a small portion, Meyer said.
“We still end up with phosphorous and nitrogen coming off the land,” he said. “In most bodies of water, we are going backwards in terms of runoff.”
The only requirement for farmers to do anything to reduce runoff, normally through nutrient management plans, applies to a minority of farmers in federal programs, Meyer said.
“Farmers can develop a nutrient management plan on how much nutrients they can put on the land, how they are applied, when they are applied, so they do not run off into lakes and streams,” he said.
Only 37% of Wisconsin farmers have a nutrient management plan and of those not all are following them, Meyer said.
“We’ve got to get serious about this,” he stressed.
To eliminate the economic burden on farmers, Meyer proposed 100% government funding of nutrient management costs.
The cost of reducing farm runoff is much less than this nation spent cleaning up sewer discharge years ago, he said.
“You ask a logical question,” Meyer said. “Where is that money going to come from?”
People and politicians in Wisconsin do not want to raise taxes.
“It is just a matter of political will and setting priorities,” he said. “We’re doing this for our grandkids.”
Meyer’s solution is to dedicate the $98 million of annual state sales tax revenue on firearms, ammunition, fishing supplies, boats and binoculars to solving the problem.
“I have friends who hike and bike in the outdoors,” he said. “They are very willing to pay money for conservation.”