Action Alert! - Factory Farm Meeting

Action Alert:

What: CAFO meeting (huge factory dairy just east of Janesville)
When: Wednesday, January 26th, 6:30 PM
Where: Janesville Senior Center, 69 South Water Street, Janesville

For more information on this meeting, please contact Dwight Brass, retired Environmental Engineer at janicen@ticon.net

"When People lead, the Leaders will Follow"

Dear Fellow Factory Farm Fighters:

This will be a lengthy notice because things are happening so fast, but I’ll try to mention the most important items first.

One: Date & Place of next meeting changed! We were not able to reserve the Janesville Library for next Thursday (or next Wednesday) so I reserved a meeting room at the Janesville Senior Center. We also wanted our attorney from Midwest Environmental Advocates to be present, and she cannot attend on a Thursday evening. Here’s the scoop:

Wednesday – January 26 – 6:30 – 8 pm
Janesville Senior Center
69 South Water Street

This is more “downtown” than the library, near the Court House. You can park behind their building, in the parking lot, and enter through the back door. We are meeting in the upstairs conference room. They are charging us $30 for an hour and a half, so please bring a couple bucks to help defray the cost. (We will look into other, free, alternatives to the library. I will check out local churches, which are usually free and more comfortable.)

Please bring two other people with you to the meeting. (Supporters, not those sitting on the fence.) If you can’t make the meeting, please recruit three other people to take your place!

Two: The EA is out!
Dr. Margaret Pulera alerted us Friday that the DNR has released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Tuls project. We have until February 4th at 4:30 pm to comment on it! Go to the link below to review it. There is a press release, the 20-page EA, and 12 pages of attachments.

http://www.dnr.wi.gov/org/es/science/eis/eis.htm

Three: Attorney Assistance As mentioned above, Miriam Ostrov, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, a public interest law firm in Madison, will join us for the meeting. For those of you who are not already aware of this, Midwest Environmental Advocates has hired an expert to review the WPDES permit application. They can also help us:

write our own comments on the permit
help us find grants to support a water-monitoring program
assist with a PR campaign against the cow factory.

I also had a conversation Friday with Peter McKeever, an attorney with Ed Garvey’s firm in Madison. They assist community groups around the state on environmental issues and have worked on the Magnolia Township factory farm case. (Peter used to be the State Director for The Nature Conservancy.)

Peter stressed that the nutrient management plan for the dairy is a crucial issue to focus on. We need to find experts to assist us with issues like: the nature of soils on the Rock Prairie, characteristics of the groundwater table, and proximity to wetlands and other water. We should learn all we can about the potential impact on streams in the area. Here is a link Peter sent to a new report on “Management practices to mitigate hazardous animal emissions.”

http://dnr.wi.gov/air/agWasteBMPs.html


Four: Outside experts knocking on our door
Karen Hudson, a national leader in the fight against CAFOs, also contacted us Friday. Karen lives near Peoria, with two CAFOs in her backyard. (Not literally.) She leads a number of groups, including the Socially Responsible Agricultural Project and Illinois Citizens for Clean Air and Water. Her and her cohorts can connect us with other experts and they have money to travel – to come consult with us, speak at public events, etc. John Ikerd, the agricultural economist and factory farm expert from Missouri, is on their board of directors. We are going to be arranging a conference call with them.

We also have the women who came to our last meeting, fighting the factory farm in Galena, to consult with us.

Five: Leadership teams As you can see, we now have plenty of help, but we need to take the lead to win this battle for self-determination! It is up to each of us. We made a great start at our last meeting. Attached is the list of all those who signed up for the Steering Committee or one of the three teams. Please look this over and let me know if I missed anyone. Let me know if you were not at the last meeting and want to volunteer for one of these teams.

It is not too soon to get started. It would be best if one of you from each team can take the initiative and contact the others and arrange a time to meet, either in person or by phone. If not, you can choose a time to meet on Wednesday evening.

I’d like to suggest that the Steering Committee meet at 5:30 pm Wednesday at the Senior Center. If this is not possible, please let me know and we can make other arrangements.

Six: How about a name?
I’d also like to suggest we choose a name for our group. Please note I’m not suggesting we incorporate, write by-laws, elect officers, hire a lobbyist, etc. But I do think we need a name. If nothing else, it will make it easier to reserve a room for a meeting if we are an actual entity.

My suggestion is we call ourselves: Citizens for _____ ________ __________. You fill in the blanks. (It’s always best to say we’re for something rather than against.) How about if you email your ideas in and/or bring them to the meeting? We can have a quick election, and keep the name as long as we feel it still suits us.

Seven: Public Action
The last thing I want to mention is that I feel we need to take some public action in the near future. This could be any number of things – meetings with public agencies or public officials, a large public event where we explain our position and gain support, etc. The idea is to get public visibility, focus the issue, and energize people.

One thought is to ask John Ikerd to come speak in Janesville. He will be in Rockford on March 28, and I think in Peoria about the same time. We could also have Karen Hudson and/or others make a public presentation. Karen mentioned two books they have been involved in producing – Animal Factory and CAFO Reader – that we could utilize. (This event should be a fundraiser too.)

Of course, we need to take some action before March 28. We must spend some time strategizing about meetings with public officials. Why not meetings in the next three weeks with the DNR, County Board members/committees, the county conservationist, and the Rock County Health Department? The latter three are potential allies, and we will need allies. Remember, we can accomplish some things as individuals, but we will be much more powerful as a group.

With all this in mind, I will attach a suggested agenda for the next meeting, which the Steering Committee can refine.

One more thing: Please consider writing a letter to the editor, and ask your friends and neighbors to do the same. There is the Janesville Gazette, Beloit Daily News, and Clinton Topper, depending on where you live. There may be other small weekly papers I’m not aware of. It’s best to focus on one specific aspect of the broader issue: water, clean air, property values, public health, economic issues, etc. Pick the one you feel most strongly about.

Don’t do what I did and try to cover everything in one piece. I wrote a 1,200- word piece and asked the Gazette to publish it as a guest editorial. They wanted me to chop it down to 500 words. (No exceptions!) I took many attempts at editing it down, and did a lot of haggling with the editor. I pared it down to about 600 words and gave up. There didn’t seem to be much left of my original argument! I will attach the original piece in case you might like to read it.

Hope to see you on Wednesday.

Sincerely,

Tom Boswell