Sierra Club Working on CAFO Rules
by Lila Berge

Concentrated (or Confined) Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, are growing in numbers in Wisconsin. If all the facilities awaiting permits this year are approved, it means a 40% increase to over 70 factory farms. Current regulations on family farms were never intended to address the problems created by over a thousand cows or hogs kept confined indoors. In addition, family farms are at an economic disadvantage in competing with corporate size operations. That is why our state chapter is working with family farmers and others to propose rules for CAFOs.

Several states have experienced environmental disasters caused by massive amounts of liquid manure escaping from huge storage “lagoons” on CAFOs. Five states have enacted moratoriums on permitting new CAFOs until new air and water quality protection standards are in place. New protections should include prior notice to neighbors and local governments. Far more inspectors are needed to monitor compliance of CAFOs than for family farms. CAFO workers experience more chronic health problems such as bronchitis and should be under OSHA rules like other factory workers. The corporate owners of the CAFO should be held responsible for waste cleanup and employee health problems.

The proposed Family Farm Protection Act is designed to level the economic playing field for family farmers and  promote healthy rural communities by protecting the groundwater supply and clean air. Every year hog factory operations put thousands of family farmers out of business. Livestock factories put out up to 130 times the waste generated by human neighbors, generating high levels of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. Farms and CAFOs are not covered by clean air emission regulations. Pollution of nearby streams and rivers from manure lagoon runoff has already happened in several Wisconsin counties, killing thousands of game fish.

The nitrates from manure getting into groundwater pollute nearby wells and can cause “blue baby” syndrome, spontaneous abortion and other illnesses. There are serious public health concerns from CAFOs for all of us. Raising animals and poultry in crowded indoor conditions increases their risk of disease. Antibiotics are not only necessary to keep the animals healthy, but increasingly are overused to promote more rapid growth. Antibiotics are dispensed constantly through the animals feed. Six antibiotics used just to promote rapid growth are also used to treat human diseases. Overuse of antibiotics causes organisms to develop resistance to the antibiotic. Both the bacteria and antibiotics are excreted into the environment. The World Health Organism urges a ban on using antibiotics to promote animal growth which are needed for human disease treatment.

The Sierra Club advocates the following reforms:

- Place a moratorium on new or expanding CAFOs until all existing facilities have individual Clean Water permits and new air pollution control rules are in place. 

- There must be full public participation in the permitting process.

- Ban new open-air manure lagoons, aerial spraying of liquid waste, and phase out existing operations.

- Make corporations legally and financially responsible for waste and cleanup.

- An Environmental Impact Statement must take place before locating a new CAFO.

You can check on upcoming hearings on CAFO legislation at: www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/news/hearmeet.html

APRIL-MAY CALENDAR

April 7-9: JMC Leadership Retreat at Mackenzie Environmental Center, Poynette, WI. This is open to all who want to be involved in the activities of the Sierra Club, not just Club, Chapter, or Group leaders. See March-April issue of The Muir View for schedule and reservation form.

April 13: Executive Committee Meeting, 7:00 p.m., at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand Ave. (Hwy. 11) and Pritchard Dr. in Racine. All Members are welcome.

April 19: Root River 2000 Conference for Racine students.  8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. The Southeast Gateway Group will have a display booth.  Contact Donna Peterson at 637-3141 if you can help.

April 20: Frank Edgerton, professor of environmental history and history of science at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and currently writing a history of ecology with a colleague in Paris, will present “Great Lakes Fisheries” at 7:00 p.m. at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand Ave. (Hwy. 11) and Pritchard Drive. Please come early for coffee and conversation.

April 22, 8:30-11:30: All hands needed for planting plants, shrubs and trees at the county park and boat launch off Rapids Drive near the Horlick Dam.

We’ll be planting a variety of stream bank plants along the Riverbank near the launch, shrubs and trees along the fence near Rapids Drive, and possibly some prairie grasses and forbs at the foot of the “airport hill”. This project is being supported by a Hanat Grant from the John Muir Chapter.

This is a joint Project of the Racine County Parks Department, Friends of Root River, Sierra Club-Southeast Gateway Group, and St. Catherine’s High School Environmental Club. Refreshments will be provided by Sustainable Racine.

April 29: Highway 38 Clean-up. Meet at Bob and Betty Gericke’s, 3927 North Lane at 9:00 a.m. To be followed by a luncheon pot-luck.

May 1: Deadline for the June-July Southeast Sierran. Contact information is on the back page.

May 6: Bird Walk and Lunch out led by Eric Howe. See the Group’s website or Call Eric Howe at 633-0086 for further information.

May 11: Executive Committee Meeting, 7:00 p.m., at Messiah Lutheran Church, corner of Durand Ave. (Hwy. 11) and Pritchard Ave. in Racine. All Members are welcome.

May 18: Our Annual Dinner will be held at 6:00 p.m. at the YWCA, 8th and College, Racine. The menu will be both a vegetable and a meat lasagna, salad and garlic bread. Dessert will be Spumoni ice cream and chocolate cake. Cost per person is $12.00. Bring own wine if you wish. Coffee will be served. Reservations and costs must be made/paid in advance. Send check made out to Southeast Gateway Sierra Club Group (SEGG) and return to: Nita Larson, 1512 Chatham Street, Racine, WI 53402. Reservations should be in no later than May 15. The speaker will be Don Wilson. The title of his speech will be “Illinois Beach State Park Stewardship Activities.” He will focus on plant and wildlife; marsh monitoring activities; restoration of the white fringe prairie orchid and other restoration activities including controlling alien species such as Buckthorn. He will touch on amphibian or frog populations as indicators of wetland health. Don spoke to us about frogs last year and he is very well-informed and interesting.

May 20: John Muir Chapter Awards Dinner at Blankenhaus Restaurant in Portage at 6:00 p.m. See the Mary-June issue of The Muir View for details and reservation form.

May 25: SEGG Bike Ride along the bike trail from Highway 11 in Racine to Highway E in Kenosha starting at 4:00 p.m. Contact Eric Howe at 633-0086 for further information.

May 27: Hike the Chiwaukee Prairie with The Nature Conservancy or Canoe the Root River with the Friends of the Root River. See the Group’s website or call Eric Howe at 633-0086 for further information

June 8: Executive Committee Meeting, 7:00 p.m., at Messiah Lutheran Church, comer of Durand Ave. (Hwy. 11) and Pritchard Ave. in Racine. All Members are welcome.

Hanat Grant Project

Sierra Club to Plant Native Species at Horlick Park

The Southeast Gateway Group (SEGG), in conjunction with several other groups, will be planting $600 worth of native shrubs and forbs along the bank of the Root River by the new canoe and boat landing in Horlick Park. This park is located on the east side of the Root River, just north of the Horlick Dam. It recently was cleared of many of its trees as a safety measure under orders of the Racine Commercial Airport and the Federal Aeronautics Administration. Planting date is scheduled for Earth Day, April 22.

The money for these plants will come from a Hanat Conservation Grant awarded the Group by the John Muir Chapter of the Sierra Club. It was approved by the Chapter in late February. The money comes from the income from a rather large bequest left to the Chapter by Arthur E. Hanat who died back in 1995. Currently, two other Groups within the Chapter have received Hanat Grants this year, the Fox Valley and Chippewa Valley Groups.

The Racine County Public Works and Parks Department has done some replanting in the area with smaller ornamental trees and shrubs which would stay below the flight paths safety limits, but most of these are non-native species. When representatives of the SEGG, Friends of the Root River, Sustainable Racine and the St. Catherine’s environmental classes met with staff of the County’s Parks Department and the County Naturalist, they quickly became amenable to native plantings, but were reaching the limits of their budget. When SEGG offered to apply for a Hanat Grant of up to $600 to cover the costs of native plants, they accepted our offer and met with representatives of the groups on a Saturday morning at the Park.

All persons present agreed to having the native plants we would purchase planted along the river bank north of the boat landing up toward the wet forest left standing on the north end of the Park with some hardy forbs also going in on the hillside formed by an old slag dumping site to see whether they would survive such conditions. The plants bought by the county will go predominantly along the fence line to the southeast. The river bank plantings should help stabilize the bank against erosion, minimize snowmobile damage to the bank, create good habitat for birds and small mammals, provide education opportunities for various classes and hopefully provide enjoyment for all who use the boat landing and park.

“But the plants won’t plant themselves,” said Conservation Chair and writer of the grant application,  John Berge, “we need our members to show up with their work gloves and shoes, shovels and pails (to get water from the river for the plants) on Saturday morning, April 22, from 8:30 to 12.” Students from St. Catherine’s, Friends of the Root River, and volunteers from Sustainable Racine have also been invited to come, but we need Sierrans to be there in sufficient number to get the job done by noon. The County has agreed to use their power auger to dig the necessary holes for us prior to that morning. 

“Whatever the weather, this most appropriate Earth Day event will take place,” said Melissa Warner, grant administrator and St. Catherine’s science teacher. She will be ordering the forbs and Racine County has ordered the shrubs and small trees for us through their supplier in order to get a better price than we could find. To get to the park, turn off North Green Bay Road onto Rapids Court which is one block north of Rapids Drive.

Southeast Gateway Group Annual Dinner

Don Wilson to Talk About Illinois Beach State Park

Don Wilson, who will speak at our May 18 dinner meeting, has been the Nature Conservancy steward for Illinois Beach State Park since 1989. He was raised in Zion and spent a considerable amount of his childhood in the park. As the steward for the Park, he manages a volunteer program which focuses on habitat maintenance and restoration. As steward, he has been fortunate to be involved in the Great Lakes Marsh Monitoring program for birds and amphibians, white fringed prairie orchid restoration, search for the Karner’s Blue butterfly, Illinois Riverwatch, Forest Watch and the purple loosestrife beetle pilot project.

The 4200 acre Illinois Beach State Park is the last remaining remnant of Illinois dunesland that once extended from the Wisconsin border to the Indiana border. The dunesland area was created 8,000-10,000 years ago as the last great glacier extended over Northern Illinois.

The boundaries of the park are Greenwood Avenue in Waukegan on the south, the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on the west, 7th Street in Winthrop Harbor on the North and Lake Michigan on the east. Most of the park has been designated as an Illinois Nature preserve. This area was previously known as the Waukegan Moorlands, Waukegan Flats or the Dunesland until designated as a state park in 1948. The habitat of the park is quite diverse including sand dunes, sand prairies, calcareous swales, oak forests, marshes, a river, ponds and the Lake Michigan beach.

It has been noted that nowhere else in Illinois can one find the variety of plants that are found in the park. Over 650 species of plants have been verified as occurring here. Some of these plants are native orchids, prickly pear cactus, bearberry, rattlesnake master, St. John’s Wort and searocket, to name a few. The park is also home to several threatened and endangered species of animals as well as plants.

More information about the Annual Dinner is in the calendar section.

SE Gateway Group Fundraising

We have to raise money each year to pay for mailing our newsletters, providing environmental information and education programs, and other expenses. Each fall we ask you to buy and sell the beautiful Sierra Calendars. This year we also have Sierra caps for $8.00, sturdy forest green weekender bags for $20 and backpacks for $15.00. They are available at our regular monthly meetings, or from Barb Meyocks. You can call her at (262) 654-2208 after 4:00 p.m. They make great gifts!

Watch for information later this summer about our garage sales. There will be a competition between one in Kenosha and one in Racine to see which raises the most cash. It’s a good way to recycle outgrown clothes, outdoor equipment, and household items. Start sorting and saving items now!

From the Rockin’ Chair
by Lila Berge

It looks like the old rocking chair won’t get much use in the coming months! Our Southeast Gateway Group has a smorgasbord of conferences, outings, and work projects on our calendar. I want to use this space to highlight some of them for you. The Sierra Club started over 100 years ago based on the philosophy that  getting people out of doors to explore and admire nature was the best way to recruit members and encourage their concern for preservation. This is an important part of each Sierra group’s program. Perhaps it is even more important today when we often feel overwhelmed by our careers and the attacks on the environment.

Spring is coming…so come on out and enjoy it with like-minded Sierrans! We may also soon have a local website listing events scheduled by 24 other Racine and Kenosha sport and environmental organizations, provided by a new United Environmental Council (UEC). I will be representing our group at the next UEC meeting April 1st at Riverbend.

Sierra members also can take part in John Muir Chapter and Sierra Club outings and events. The next chapter event is the Leadership Retreat April 7-9 described in The Muir View. All members are welcome, not just “leaders”. The River Touring Section outings are also in The Muir View and open to all members. Sierra Club outings are a great opportunity and very economical. The Club requires well trained leaders on all out-of-state outings because of insurance liabilities. National outings are described in the Sierra Magazine.

Our local group has been doing highway cleanups on a section of Hwy. 38 three times a year for six years. On April 29 we will meet at Gericke’s house at 9:00 a.m. to pick up trash bags and bright orange bibs to do the job once again. Afterwards we have a pot luck lunch. It takes at least twelve volunteers to do the job efficiently…why not join us? A new work project this year takes place on April 22 at the Root River boat landing off Green Bay Road near Horlick Dam. See the Hanat Grant article on page three for details. We will also participate in a national River Cleanup Week with a canoe outing on June 10th. Personally, I take a couple plastic bags along whenever hiking or canoeing to recycle bottles and cans left by the inconsiderate.

May is a beautiful month for bird and wildflower lovers. Check out our birding hike on May 6th, and the Birds and Breakfast annual event at Hawthorne Hollow on the 13th. If you have a bike, there will be a 4:00 p.m. ride on the 25th. The Nature Conservancy has events at Chiwaukee Prairie on the 27th and June 17th. I’m looking forward to Summer, too. Melissa and Jay Warner have invited us to canoe the Root River from their home June 15th, followed by a picnic. Details will be in the summer newsletters for more group outing opportunities, including two canoeing weekends. Get out of your rocking chairs and join our outings!

Congratulations to Donna Peterson on being selected to the Southeast Wisconsin Educators’ Hall of Fame. Donna was honored for the environmental education programs she has organized for thousands of Racine school children since 1984.

Ice Age Trail Work Days & Hikes

Notes: All work activities will begin at 9:00 a.m. unless otherwise noted. The highway 12 parking lot is approximately 5 miles east of Whitewater, or 2.5 miles west of LaGrange. Trail maintenance work may include grubbing to remove stumps, trimming back growth, painting blazes, installing erosion control, clearing new trail, litter control, etc. For trail work bring water, lunch, work gloves and work tools such as loppers or bow saws. Wear long pants and long sleeve shirt to protect from poison ivy, prickly bushes, etc., suitable footwear and a hat. Depending on the location and conditions, insect repellent, sunscreen or rain gear may also be useful. Contact Kangaroo to volunteer for community service or special projects at times other than those listed below.

Contact Persons:  Bill (Kangaroo) Knickrehm, (608)883-2825;  Barb or Jerry Converse, (262) 473-7304; Sue Clymer, (262) 632-6968; Gary Klatt, (262) 473-4973; Gerry Emmerich, (262) 642-5641; Dolly McNulty, (262) 728-8351; Ingrid Larson, (262) 728-6661; Sally Ward, (262) 495-8362; Vince Lazzaroni, (262) 248-824; June Wheeler, (262) 889-4240.

April 1, Saturday, 10:00 a.m. Hike to Lulu Lake; meet on Cty J, 1/4 mile east of Pickeral Lake Road.

April 10 through 13, Monday-Thursday; Lead Elder Hostel hikes of varying lengths in the Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest. Call June at (262) 889-4240 for details.

April 15, Saturday; (Gary) Maintenance. Meet at Highway 12.

April 16, Sunday; (Kangaroo) New Trail Work. Meet at Highway 12.

April 20, Thursday, 7:00 p.m.; Regular Meeting, FirStar Bank in Elkhorn.

May: Prairie seed planting; dates set at 5-16 meeting. Call for schedule.

May 7, Sunday, Noon; Hike Seno Woodland Management Center; 7 miles east of Lake Geneva, 5 miles south of Burlington. North of Hwy 50 on Cty P.

May 18, Thursday, 7:00 p.m.; Regular Meeting, FirStar Bank in Elkhorn.

May 20, Saturday; (Gary) Maintenance. Meet at Highway 12.

May 21, Sunday; (Kangaroo) New Trail Work. Meet at Highway 12.

June 3, Saturday; (Barb & June) National Trails Day. Work projects & short hikes. Call for details.

June 10, Saturday, 10:00 a.m.; Hike to Horse Riders Camp. Meet at Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest Headquarters on Hwy 59 west of Eagle.

From Your Legislative Watchdog
by Jean McGraw

Hidden Welfare

Both Congress and the Clinton Administration have expanded support for the oil industry which already receives $5 to $11 billion in subsidies a year. I thought if you were working, you weren’t supposed to receive welfare. Incidentally, the major Federal incentive for renewable energy has lapsed. Wind power, already cost competitive with fossil fuels, and solar energy are our best alternatives to fossil fuels; and if we want to slow or eliminate global warming, we should be making major efforts to develop these sources.

We can again eat tuna without a guilty conscience because in spite of NAFTA declaring our tuna protection law illegal, the major American tuna companies: Starkist, Bumblebee, and Chicken of the Sea have pledged not to sell dolphin-netted tuna. All other tuna is caught by chasing, harassing, and encircling dolphins with nets, resulting in thousands of dolphin deaths. Dolphin-netted tuna will once again be sold in the U.S. but under a misleading “dolphin-safe” label. Piggly Wiggly, Kohls, and restaurants Long John Silver, Red Lobster and the Olive Garden have also pledged to serve no dolphin-netted tuna.

New communication towers for cellular phones are causing more than 4 million annual bird deaths in the U.S. The most susceptible are night-migrating songbirds. And the birds collide and become entangled in the supporting wires. Fish and wildlife has appointed a committee to find solutions.

Locally, we are struggling with the problems of urban sprawl and disappearing farmland. The Town of Caledonia, Sustainable Racine, SEGG and other groups sponsored a 1-1/2 day conference on March 30-31 featuring Randall Arendt whose county in Pennsylvania has made great strides in promoting cluster development rather than scattered development to preserve more green space. SEGG set up an information table at the Marriott Hotel where the conference and dinner was held. SEGG supports cluster development, but only where municipal water and sewer are available.

Finally, be aware of President Clinton’s great effort to set aside 40 to 60 million acres of roadless areas as permanent, unspoiled wilderness-no logging, mining, or motorized vehicles. The Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA) has banded together with the lumber industry and off-road vehicle and snowmobile manufacturers to oppose the plan which would involve no more than one-half of one percent of the timber base in the state of Wisconsin. Only about 5% of the Nicolet and Chequamegon National Forests are still “roadless” and thus to be affected. The WCA asked all counties in the state to adopt a resolution opposing protection of the roadless areas in our National Forests, but the Sierra Club supports the plan. The SEGG Conservation Chair, John Berge, spoke in front of the Racine County Legislative Committee (the first citizen ever to do so) and convinced them to table the WCA’s resolution indefinitely.

Horicon Marsh Bird Festival - May 12,13,14

This wetland of international importance is also globally important for birds. The wildlife refuge is managed by both state and federal agencies. A total of 268 species of birds have been sighted there, not just ducks and geese. The Horicon Marsh is located in east-central Wisconsin about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee. Six staffed centers located on the marsh will be open to serve visitors all weekend. There will be hikes and activities for all ages, as well as lectures and bird banding demonstrations. A schedule of events is available from Friends of Horicon Marsh at the Horicon Service Center, N7725 Hwy. 28, Horicon, WI 53032.