Jay Dee Nichols stamped and packed stiff willow branches between maple wood posts, with muffled crunches.

At 63, the semi-retired handyman from the Wisconsin city of Black River Falls has trapped beavers before. But he’s never heard of a mock beaver dam — much less constructed one.

“It gives you an appreciation for what beavers do,” Nichols said over the shrill beeping of a skid loader. A scratch on his forearm oozed blood, drying into a scarlet smudge.

“They’re one of the hardest-working animals out there, I guess.”

Nichols’ muck boots sloshed in a pool of water that already was forming behind the freshly constructed beaver dam analog, or BDA. The semi-porous wooden structures are often installed across streams to redirect water or capture sediment.

Nichols and three other workers were as busy as beavers for a week in October constructing 12 of them in a forested wetland. 

It’s all part of Jim Hoffman’s latest project.

The BDAs span an unnamed, man-made channel that drains overflow from a reservoir on Hoffman’s cranberry farm, north of Alma Center in Jackson County. The water runs into South Fork Halls Creek, a trout stream where actual beavers have taken up residence.

Hoffman, 60, hopes the BDAs, which could pool up to 1.7 acre-feet of water during floods, improve water quality, stabilize eroded stream banks and enhance wildlife habitat. Most of all, he seeks to trailblaze a path through the state’s onerous dam-permitting process so other Wisconsin landowners can follow in his footsteps.

“There’s a lot of different streams and tributaries that could benefit from this,” Hoffman said.

As average Wisconsin temperatures and precipitation increase in response to climate change, scientists, environmentalists and regulators point to the promise of nature-based solutions. 

Enter the beaver.

North America’s largest rodent is infamous for wood munching. Where they chew, wetlands often follow. The natural sponges filter water and offer flood protection.

The U.S. once was home to 60 million to 400 million beavers, which inhabited a range extending from the northern Mexican deserts to the Arctic tundra. But European and American settlers hunted them to near extinction.

As their population dwindled and agriculture and urban development expanded, wetlands disappeared. Wisconsin, like the rest of the country, lost roughly half since the late 1700s.

Without maintenance from nature’s “ecosystem engineers,” many of the nation’s once multi-threaded streams also became single-channeled and incised — disconnected from their floodplains. When this happens, water tables sink, water temperature increases and plants die. If torrential floodwaters funnel through the simple stream systems, they flush out wildlife and wood.

Nature can repair itself, but the process of restoring stream complexity can take millennia. Mock beaver dams can jump-start the process, reducing the timing to mere decades.

They also can slow the flow of runoff and allow watersheds to store more water. Hoffman sees their potential to limit flooding in Wisconsin, potentially saving taxpayer dollars and creating wildlife habitat.

Watershed councils, conservation districts, Indigenous tribes, and state and federal natural resources agencies frequently deploy them in the American West. But their use in Wisconsin, a state with a historically tempestuous relationship with beavers, is novel. Many regulators believe the critters’ dams harm trout, and the state’s fisheries and forestry divisions contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to wipe out beavers that live on designated streams.

Fewer than a dozen permitted projects that incorporate BDAs or similar wooden structures have been built in Wisconsin to date. The Department of Natural Resources recently approved two on trout stream tributaries, signaling an openness to test their potential despite concerns from fisheries managers. Construction is underway in other Mississippi River basin states too, including Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri.

Wisconsin regulators generally treat BDAs as dams that impound water, making for an arduous and expensive permitting process. 

Hoffman spent more than a year and $20,000 to obtain his permit. He is the CEO of a vast Wisconsin construction company and has a running joke.

“The one thing you never do is call the (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources) and ask them, ‘Do I need a permit for this?’” he said.

What are beaver dam analogs? 

A healthy streamscape requires space for water to slowly meander. That requires messy wood obstructions like fallen trees and debris-filled logjams.

Much like real beaver dams, the analogs obstruct water and disperse the flow across a wider area. Water pools above and below the dams, and upstream surface height increases.

Sediment accumulates behind the obstructions, sometimes transforming an upstream pool into a wetland and eventually a meadow. But nature’s randomness means beaver dams or analogs can fail.

BDAs are not in themselves a solution, experts say, but tools that initiate natural processes that mend degraded waterscapes. 

While their popularity increased in the 2000s, historic drawings indicate that small wicker and log dams were constructed as early as the 19th century to “correct” streams in France.

Construction these days hasn’t changed much, with workers pounding posts directly into a streambed and weaving willow or juniper branches between them. Gaps can be plugged with sediment. The analogs, which are biodegradable and transient, function well when constructed in sequence like natural beaver dam complexes. Proponents hope that using natural materials and hand labor reduces building costs, enabling more miles of restoration.

When human and beaver engineers meet

When Hoffman installed his cranberry marshes more than 20 years ago, a developer taught him an important marketing lesson: christen the business after the resource you are destroying. The developer named his housing division Fox Ridge. Hoffman, in turn, called his cranberry operation Goose Landing.

Yet, in Hoffman’s case, he didn’t necessarily displace geese. Hundreds occupy his reservoir on a given day, leaving droppings that serve as free fertilizer.

The 1,000-acre property serves as a laboratory of earthworks and a wildlife cornucopia. 

Hoffman, a Stanford engineer by training, returned to Wisconsin from San Francisco Bay in 1989 and joined the road construction business his great-grandfather started more than seven decades prior, before the United States had an organized highway system.

After starting the cranberry operation, Hoffman mined frac sand, then obtained his commercial fish farming license. Now, he’s stocked the former mining pits — since filled with water — with an angler’s dream: walleye, hybrid muskie, perch, crappie, bluegill and bass.

Hoffman sped past one of the ponds in his Ford Bronco, pointing out the artificial islands he created. To add vegetation, he grabbed trees by their rootballs and shoved them into the virgin soil.

“I like to change my environment,” he said. “I’m an earthmover by character — by business.”

Hoffman’s efforts to “rewild” his land led him to plant turnip and radish plots for deer along with oak trees to recreate a piece of Wisconsin’s historical savannas. He’s replaced row crops with prairie grass and intends to install an osprey nesting box on one of his ponds — even if it means the birds of prey eat his fish.

Mock beaver dams are Hoffman’s latest push.

His interest in them blossomed after he helped a Nordic skiing buddy release an orphan beaver on his property. They constructed a lodge for the two-year-old rodent, tucking in a stuffed teddy bear to keep it company.

“Well, it instantly swam into the pond, and that was the last we saw it,” Hoffman said.

In a section of forest far from the cranberry marshes, the drainage ditch turns into what appears to be a natural stream, which cuts through steep banks.

On both sides lies what resembles a 3- to 4-foot-tall effigy mound running perpendicular across the creek bed. Hoffman wonders if beavers were the original architects.

“It might be hundreds of years old,” he said. “I’m hoping the beavers come back here and say, ‘Well, we almost got a dam built!’”

Mock beaver dams used out West

Science backs Hoffman’s belief in the restoration power of beaver dam analogs. In one of the first major studies, researchers evaluated their trout impacts and potential to reverse stream incision.

Bridge Creek, a high-desert watershed in north-central Oregon, bore the signs of livestock overgrazing and beaver removal. Following severe storms, the main channel gradually disconnected from the landscape’s floodplain — conditions that persisted even 20 years after cattle stopped chomping on surrounding vegetation.

The researchers monitored conditions before and after installing more than 130 BDAs in Bridge Creek. They compared those sections of creek to areas that lacked BDAs — some that beavers called home and others they did not.

Prior to the study, Bridge Creek contained some beaver dams, but they frequently blew out during major floods. Sediment didn’t have time to accumulate and reconnect the channel to the landscape.

But the BDAs acted as reinforcements. 

Beaver dams in the study area increased more than sevenfold within the first eight years after the scientists added them.

In the BDA sections, land inundated with water increased by 228% and side channels increased by a whopping 1,216%, considerably more than the Bridge Creek sections that lacked them.

As the analogs rehydrated the aquifer, vegetation increased. Groundwater killed off scrubby plants, such as sagebrush, and water-loving willow trees took root.

Could mock beaver dams block or fry fish? 

The impact of beavers on fish remains a hot topic in Wisconsin. For some, it’s axiomatic that beaver dams block trout passage — a belief with a long history.

But that wasn’t a problem at Bridge Creek.

The researchers tagged about 100,000 juvenile trout, enabling antennas to detect fish movement at specific stream locations. They surveyed the stream for more than a decade.

The scientists determined that the installation of mock beaver dams increased the survival, density and reproduction of juvenile trout. They detected no changes to upstream migration in the tagged trout despite the massive increase in human and beaver-made dams. Several spawners passed through upwards of 200 during their migration.

Other studies conducted in California concluded trout easily cross BDAs, either by jumping or swimming up side passages.

Another objection to beaver dams stems from the belief they invariably increase stream temperature: Beaver ponds increase a stream’s surface area, which is warmed by the sun.

But at Bridge Creek, water temperature remained constant or decreased, even during summer. The researchers suggested that pooled water upstream of the dams percolated into the ground, forcing cool groundwater to upwell downstream and mix with that on the surface. An offset to the sun.

The complexes affected temperatures in other ways. 

On one hand, they buffered water temperatures. Stream temperatures periodically fluctuate with day-night cycles and across seasons, but the mock beaver dams compressed the rises and falls. On the other hand, the complexes created variety, filled with warm and cold spots, offering fish a buffet to choose from.

Some studies have documented downstream warming from the analogs. And others from the upper Midwest have documented increased temperatures below natural beaver dam complexes and in beaver ponds, but academics have questioned the research’s scientific rigor.

Nick Bouwes, a Utah State University faculty member who worked on the Bridge Creek study and co-authored a manual that many consider the BDA bible, agrees that the structures could block fish or raise water temperatures in certain ecosystems in his native Wisconsin.

But until there is solid evidence, he said, ultimately those remain assumptions that should be studied.

“It makes you wonder what fish did 3- or 400 years ago when there was an order of magnitude more beaver and an order of magnitude more fish in these systems,” Bouwes said.

Upholding the public trust

In September, Mike Engel, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, oversaw the installation of beaver dam analogs at Briggs Wetland near Beloit, Wisconsin.

The workshop brought together ecologists, consultants, resource managers and regulators from local, state and federal agencies, most of whom dipped their toes into BDA waters for the first time.

Although passionate about such tools, Engel says beavers and BDAs aren’t a panacea for all degraded wetlands or a warming climate.

“There’s certainly people who will grab a hold of the cute, fuzzy critter and like the idea,” Engel said, standing atop a beaver dam that formed a network of ponds adjacent to the Briggs property. “But I think more people will be interested in managing the amount of water they have — whether they need more or they need less due to climate change.”

In other words, what would a well-functioning watershed look like, and what tools and techniques can achieve those ends? The case for mock beaver dams depends on the setting.

“Out West, they have miles and miles and miles of public land,” said Thomas Nedland, who conducts wetland and waterway permitting with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

If the BDAs fail, “all the water that’s backed up ends up going into the woods or the floodplain” without risk to infrastructure, he said. 

“That’s not quite the setting we have here in Wisconsin.”

Such projects might lead to conflicts with property owners, especially if beavers move in and enlarge the structures. They might swamp adjacent corn fields or flood a road or backyard.

Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine also requires regulators to consider the public’s access to natural resources when making permitting decisions. The Department of Natural Resources may impose requirements to maintain the rights to boat, swim and fish, even on artificial ditches that are considered navigable waterways.

Hoffman’s project rang alarm bells for the local county conservationist, who fears the BDAs will attract beavers to the area, leaving floods and unfishable streams in their wake.

Getting the dam permit

State regulators must consider many factors in considering a beaver dam analog.

Throwing some sticks across a streambed is relatively simple, but several Wisconsin installations have relied upon consultants, federal workers or nonprofit organizations to navigate permitting.

“They’re really important devices. They have a lot of functionality. They’re very simple and inexpensive to install,” said Hoffman’s contractor, Clay Frazer, a restoration ecologist. 

“And they’re way too complicated to permit right now for the average person.”

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources required Hoffman to conduct hydrologic modeling and topographic surveying before regulators approved his BDAs, which stand roughly 3 feet high.

To satisfy regulators that the analog wouldn’t overturn when water pooled behind it, he had to load test the wooden posts.

Joel Pennycamp, a Hoffman Construction Company employee, strapped a scale around the top of one. Hoffman stood on the streambank holding onto the end of a neon orange string that stretched across the BDA. When Pennycamp tugged, each post could move no more than an inch. 

Analog proponents say the rigid requirements to build transient structures unnecessarily increase costs and dampen enthusiasm to use nature-based solutions for landscape repair. A potentially laborious permitting process also misses the broader point that process-based riverscape restoration is unpredictable.

“You don’t have to be an engineer. You don’t have to be able to operate large machinery. You’re not going to completely redesign a stream to what you think it should be,” Bouwes said. “Let the stream figure it out.”

One permitting difficulty stems from, in several instances, the state’s classification of the porous structures as dams. Regulators and applicants debate a principle point: Does a mock beaver dam actually impound water or, as researchers say, merely slow or delay it? State employees say they lack latitude to interpret because BDAs, plain and simple, fit the legal definition.

“I often hear back from applicants and they’re like, ‘Well, it’s not very big,’ or, ‘It’s not intended to be there for long,’ or whatever,” said Uriah Monday, a state dam safety engineer. “But they always acknowledge that they need that pool of water to create the energy it’s going to take to do whatever they’re trying to achieve.”

For instance, he said, a raised pool of water is necessary to saturate wetlands, carve stream meanders and trap sediment upstream.

Hoffman’s stream tributary may be artificial, but the state still considers its waters navigable and thus protected. Normally, when dams obstruct public passage, the Department of Natural Resources requires the posting of a portage route. 

For now, the agency isn’t requiring it, but Hoffman hopes to run with the idea.

“So I’m having some signs made up for the beavers in case they get confused when they’re swimming upstream and hit the dam,” he said, grinning widely.

The department also has authorized BDAs through a streamlined general permitting process. Hoffman’s mock beaver dams, however, did not meet the criteria to qualify.

“I don’t blame the DNR for it,” he said. “It’s just that they don’t have a system to accommodate our request.” 

Kyle Magyera, who performs government outreach with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, believes regulators should carve out exceptions from the dam rules. 

Monday thinks the existing permitting system can work, as it already has, and will ease as the department learns more about the structures. That will include monitoring at Briggs Wetland and Goose Landing.

“We’re actually hopeful too,” Nedland said. “If there’s an efficient, cost-effective way for people to do these kinds of projects in a much easier way that results in less disturbance to the landscape, like boy, that’s a win.”

BDA permitting challenges are not unique to Wisconsin. Even the Bridge Creek researchers were unable to conduct a follow-up round of restoration due to regulatory hurdles.

“It seems like every state, you have to go through the growing pains of getting people familiar with these approaches,” Bouwes said. “When they see what we’re actually doing — we’re throwing sticks in the stream to slow the water down — they become a lot more comfortable with it.”

Balancing human and beaver needs

By mid-afternoon at Hoffman’s farm, evidence of the day’s construction littered the ground adjacent to the channel where the BDAs stood: empty plastic Powerade bottles, gasoline cans, a chainsaw.

Before getting off work for the day, Nichols and Pennycamp loaded it onto a utility vehicle. Hoffman, meanwhile, browsed through a printout of his state-issued permit, reviewing the details through reading glasses he perched across his nose.

“‘The water is a cool-cold headwater. The proposed dam will not result in significant adverse effects on this resource upon compliance with the conditions in the order,’” he read aloud. “In other words, don’t flood too much, don’t warm the water up too much. Okay, well we’ll debate that later.”

He flipped the page.

The beavers living at Hoffman’s farm are dispersing across the property. One colony chewed down some of his pines and aspens and plugged a culvert, expanding the shoreline as part of a project Hoffman didn’t plan.

It doesn’t bother him because he has more trees to spare and wants to live among the rodents, but he doesn’t begrudge beaver-bothered people. The critters create profound impacts.

Humans and beavers share a common drive to engineer their environment to live. 

“We’ve got to find a way to balance the different needs of each species,” Hoffman said. “You know, us included.”

Why is he doing all this? Permitting, pounding, portage-routing. Really, why bother?

Hoffman’s campaign is more than just a new permitting process. It’s an exhortation to the state 

to reconsider its treatment of beavers. If he can show that mock beaver dams don’t heat the water or block fish, perhaps the state will stop removing beavers and their dams from trout streams.

“We’re going to hopefully show to them that the beavers in the ecosystem are actually beneficial,” Hoffman said.

Going through the trouble is simply part of a kindred ecosystem engineer’s balancing act.

This story is a product of Wisconsin Watch. It was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk with support from the Solutions Journalism Network.

The post An ecosystem engineer’s vision: mock beaver dams to restore Wisconsin wetlands appeared first on MinnPost.

Gregg Wolf vows “to put a new step forward” on “a new day” at a northwest Wisconsin dairy.

Appleton-based Breeze Dairy Group, where he serves as CEO, purchased Emerald Sky Dairy in March, shortly after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approved the St. Croix County farm’s expansion.

Along with 2,400 spotted cows, four odiferous freestall barns and a milking parlor, the company acquired an undesired aspect of the $11 million property: the dairy’s checkered reputation.

During its eight years under previous ownership, the farm — since rechristened Croix Breeze Dairy — racked up a litany of manure violations, including two major spills. One went unreported for months until an anonymous tipster notified authorities.

The incidents drew rebukes from county officials and residents, who complained that the state’s lax penalties would not deter future offenses.

Residents fear that the farm’s growth will only increase contamination of St. Croix County’s water, some of which already contains nutrients commonly found in crop fertilizer and manure that can make people sick.

Now, after growling excavators and dozers regraded parts of the property, Wolf has worked to improve the dairy’s image, with a farm face-lift and managerial improvements. Trash was removed. The lawn seeded and green. Even the cows, a special crossbreed with hides covered in patches of black, white and almond fur, will be replaced.

“We’re more of an open book. We don’t really have anything to hide,” he said in June over the hum of the milking parlor. “I think the former owners didn’t communicate the best, and I would say farmers, in general, we’re terrible at PR.”

Convincing locals that the recently expanded dairy can be a good neighbor will be a hard sell.

“One would like to hope that a change in management would bring better management than what we’ve had,” said Kim Dupre, a former Emerald resident, who moved to Minnesota after Emerald Sky’s first manure spill. “But I guess the proof will be in the pudding.”

Breeze has committed to safety and distanced itself from its predecessor, but residents — already skeptical of large farms and the state agencies that regulate them — also are scrutinizing the company’s record.

In April, Breeze had an inauspicious introduction when a broken roadside signpost pierced a contractor’s manure application hose, releasing 500 gallons into a ditch before workers contained the small spill. 

And across roughly a decade, Breeze or its contractors spilled an estimated 147,000 to 202,000 gallons of manure in 11 other reported incidents, state records show. 

“When you’re moving millions of gallons of manure, unfortunately, equipment breaks, people make bad decisions,” Wolf said. “We report ourselves as you’re supposed to legally do and work with the DNR and clean up anything that might have happened.”

Breeze errs on the side of “overkill” when it comes to reporting, Wolf said; reporting, cleaning up, learning from spills — it’s part of company culture.

Residents will be checking. 

Croix Breeze Dairy sits on the corner of 250th Street and County Road G — a main drag for drivers, especially during the summer county fair season. It’s surrounded by dozens of households.

“He’s gonna have a lot of eyes on him,” Dupre said.

Wisconsin residents increasingly are informing state regulators of manure spills. Although researchers and authorities doubt their frequency truly is rising, communities like Emerald ask how many spills the state expects them to tolerate before authorities prevent problems from developing.

“That’s a word we don’t like to hear in relation to a CAFO,” said resident Barbara Nelson, who lives less than a mile from Croix Breeze. “Even if it isn’t a major spill, it’s still a spill.”

St. Croix County sees changes in farming and water quality

Five families formed Breeze Dairy Group in 2002, and the company has steadily grown. Before the Emerald Sky acquisition, it owned four large livestock farms — known as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

Breeze has a pending request with the state to enlarge another of its operations, which, if approved, could expand the company’s authorized capacity to more than 20,000 cows across five farms.

Wolf, a La Crosse County native who grew up on a 50-cow dairy, joined Breeze four years ago. He said herd sizes depend on the milk market and demand, and the company lacks a definitive target. It lacks a financial incentive to fill a dairy to maximum capacity if milk processors don’t pay enough to make a return on investment.

Although Croix Breeze’s new permit grants the farm authority to grow to 3,300 cows, Wolf said the company has no plans to exceed the current count. But broadly speaking, he said, farms need to expand as operational costs rise faster than milk prices.

In fact, said the dairy’s former owner, Todd Tuls of Rising City, Nebraska, the inability to expand Emerald Sky to his intended size of 5,000 to 6,000 cows was one reason he sold the operation.

St. Croix County is experiencing a familiar story of farm consolidation and growth.

Its 93,000 residents see less pasture, which dropped by half in just five years, and more soybean and wheat fields.

Mid-sized dairies also are disappearing, while larger operations have expanded their herds. Cows produce more milk and manure in increasingly centralized locations. Applicators spread the dung on farmland.  

Doing so improves soil, incorporating nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium — nutrients plants use to grow. But fertilizing the ground in excess or subpar weather can contaminate water with pathogenic bacteria and viruses and nitrates, the latter of which, when consumed above the national health standard, increases the risk of birth defects, thyroid disease and colon cancer.

Alongside farming changes in St. Croix County, water contamination worsened in recent decades.The county’s share of private wells with unsafe nitrate concentrations rose from 10% to 13% between 2010 and 2022.

County conservation staff attribute the elevated levels to row cropping, exacerbated by the region’s porous bedrock, whose cracks and fissures enable water to rapidly enter the aquifer.

Many in the community also view Emerald Sky’s expansion as the harbinger of additional manure spills at a farm that has seen many in its history.

Environmental group alarmed over spills

In the winter of 2016, up to 275,000 gallons of liquid manure flowed through a cracked pipe into wetlands on the Emerald Sky property. Certain locations amassed deposits three feet deep.

Tuls told local media, and still maintains, that heavy snow obscured the spill from dairy staff, delaying detection, although prosecutors disputed his claim.

“Four feet of snow on it and people are like, ‘How do you not know?’” he said in an interview. “You don’t know because you can’t see it.”

In a 2019 incident that attracted attention, the dairy’s liquid manure was applied to a sloped field before it rained, allowing some to flow into a nearby creek, killing fish.

Tuls said the day’s weather was unexpected and the Department of Natural Resources could not prove the fish kill resulted from runoff linked to his field.

“We didn’t go to war with the DNR on that one ’cause it’s just like in our mind we handled everything that needed to be done,” he said. “I don’t know of a single perfect person in the world. People want cheese on their pizza and they want ice cream at Dairy Queen and they want milk in the fridge when they go get their cereal and they want half-and-half with their coffee and they don’t understand how hard it is to actually produce that milk.”

The Department of Natural Resources referred each case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, and Attorney General Josh Kaul levied a total of $145,000 in fines.

Under the weariness of past experience, Dupre, co-founder of St. Croix County Defending Our Water, and other environmental advocates swiveled their spotlight onto Breeze Dairy Group’s spills.

From 2013 to 2017, equipment failures at the company’s Waushara County farm released a total of 95,000 to 135,000 gallons of manure into an adjacent wetland and a neighbor’s pond on three occasions.

The Department of Natural Resources required a cleanup but determined the spills did little environmental damage.

Meanwhile, a 50,000-gallon spill at Lake Breeze Dairy in 2014 killed most fish in a creek that flows into Fond du Lac County’s Lake Winnebago. However, the local health department concluded the discharge didn’t contaminate groundwater.

The following winter, a broken line released up to 2,000 gallons of manure into a ditch before the farm contained the spill and pumped it back into a lagoon.

Manure hauling mishaps caused some of Breeze’s spills over the years. In five documented incidents between 2014 and 2023, haulers released about 15,000 gallons due to equipment failure or trucker error. On one occasion, faulty wiring caused a manure release valve to open when a driver activated a turn signal.

Spills are not inevitable, Wolf said, “but the risk is always there.” Yet as technology advances at dairies, he believes risk has fallen.

Croix Breeze Dairy doesn’t truck its manure but pumps it through hoses, which automatically shut off when pressure drops. To reduce field runoff, workers blend manure into the soil using a disc-like tractor attachment.

“It’s just a matter of putting procedures and training in place,” Wolf said, “setting up systems that just don’t fail or have lower risk of failing.”

How common are spills?

Wisconsin researchers are among a select few to document manure spill trends.

In 15 years, reported incidents statewide jumped from about 40 to roughly 200 annually, but Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension staff don’t believe their frequency actually increased.

Instead, they contend people, most often manure haulers and farmers, increasingly notified authorities. 

That makes sense to Kevin Erb, a UW-Extension training director, who helped plan the state’s first live-action manure spill demonstrations for farmers, applicators and haulers.

Wisconsin’s regulations require all farms, regardless of size, to relay news of spills that threaten health, safety or the environment. But large livestock farm operators must report any incident. Erb said state data overrepresents CAFO-involved spills, which typically are minor compared to those reported by small farms.

“Mechanical failures are gonna happen,” Erb said. “The true measure in my mind is when an accident happens, was it dealt with properly, was it cleaned up and was it reported?”

Over time, the percentage of reported spills that occurred during manure transport increased, and they more frequently involved CAFOs than small operations. Now spills tend to occur in equal measure during hauling and on the farm, such as when a manure lagoon overflows.

Erb attributes the rise in transport spills to the increasing concentration of ever-larger volumes of manure, which haulers must truck to fields. Some are several miles from CAFO buildings, increasing road time and risk.

The volume of most reported spills ranged between 50 and 1,000 gallons. Nearly half of incidents affected surface waters or roadside ditches that were filled with standing water.

To permit or not to permit?

The Department of Natural Resources tries to use a soft touch when compelling CAFO operators to follow state manure regulations. Still, like the case of Emerald Sky, the law leaves room for escalation, up to referring a case to the Department of Justice for possible citation or even criminal prosecution.

“There’s a million different factors at play,” said Ben Uvaas, a department employee who specializes in farm runoff rules.

Variables like a spill’s preventability, the operator’s mitigation efforts and impacts to health and the environment all shape the agency’s response.

But how do spills impact permitting?

The department is “definitely allowed” to consider a farm’s compliance history, including spills, said Jeff Jackson, who works in the state’s CAFO program and drafted Emerald Sky’s wastewater permit.

Large livestock farms must resolve violations before the state can reissue their permits. If they don’t, staff can hold off or impose new requirements like groundwater monitoring.

More than 60 attendees opposed the reissuance of Emerald Sky’s permit at a 2023 public hearing. Dupre presented a petition with 145 signatures, calling for operating requirements like cover crops and an animal cap due to the farm’s “less-than-stellar track record.” 

“I appreciate that producers need a level of certainty in their business,” she said in an interview, “but homeowners need the same level of certainty in the investment we make in our properties.”

But Wisconsin’s wastewater permitting process isn’t designed to litigate past misdeeds, punish farmers or put chronic offenders out of business. Instead, the regulatory system sets conditions under which entities like sewer treatment plants and CAFOs can safely pollute.

In the normal course of business, large livestock farm operators request agency approval for a wastewater discharge permit. The department outlines restrictions, along with self-monitoring and reporting requirements.

The agency generally can’t deny a permit if an operator agrees to abide by stipulations, said Paul LaLiberte, a former department employee who worked in water programs for 35 years. 

Additionally, regulators can’t deny permits based on potential environmental damage to a region, according to the agency, nor preexisting ecological issues.

The department doesn’t claim that large livestock farms present “zero risk” or that their required nutrient management plans — which outline the location, timing and quantity of nutrients operators will apply to farmland — guarantee no impacts to water quality. 

This might explain why residents sometimes perceive a contradiction between seemingly preordained permit approvals and the agency’s stated mission to “protect and enhance” ​​natural resources. 

Wisconsin law broadly limits the department’s authority to deny permits. 

In practice, department officials don’t deny permits or expansions to get farmers to follow the law, LaLiberte said.

“They have to go through the courts and pummel them into compliance.”

Ideally, a violator determines that cooperating costs less than accumulating fines.

“Of course, the day after they get the reissued permit, they could go back to their old habits,” LaLiberte said. “DNR doesn’t have the ability like a judge would for chronic violations to take away somebody’s driver’s license.”

Running on good faith

The Department of Natural Resources reissued Emerald Sky’s permit, stating the dairy resolved its infractions. Staff said they had no justification to deny the expansion because the farm has enough storage for manure and cropland on which to apply it.

The agency’s limited authority means protecting water increasingly depends on farmers’ “good faith,” said Hudson resident Celeste Koeberl, whose home of 31 years adjoins Lake Mallalieu in western St. Croix County. 

Algae blooms cover the water’s surface each summer, fueled by phosphorus runoff, traced to area agriculture.

The dairy’s expansion is “just one more thing that’s gonna make our lake gross,” she said. “These are public waters.”

Wolf said Breeze Dairy Group will earn the community’s trust. He works with a local grower and intends to plant cover crops, which help reduce soil runoff.

Tim Stieber, St. Croix County’s conservation administrator, is extending the company the benefit of the doubt. 

He, Jackson and another county staff member recently visited the property and were encouraged to learn of several more upgrades Breeze made, including an incinerator to dispose of deceased livestock and a web-based manure monitoring system.

“A new owner,” Stieber said, “it’s actually an opportunity.”

This story is part of a partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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HAVRE DE GRACE, Md. — As environmental groups and policy analysts in the Mississippi River basin seek solutions to shrink a massive “dead zone” that forms off the coast of Louisiana each year, they have looked to a regional clean-up program in the Chesapeake Bay as a model.

A key component of that effort, known as the Chesapeake Bay Program, is regulation.

For nearly 15 years, it’s included a legally enforceable, multi-state pollution quota — one of a select few in the nation. This “total maximum daily load” aims to reduce the amount of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, that run off into the Bay’s waters. 

Too much of chemicals that derive from these elements, commonly used to grow crops and fertilize lawns, can cause algae blooms and die-offs that rob waters of oxygen and suffocate aquatic life.

But the Bay program’s scientific advisors recently noted the strategy is imperfect. 

After two missed deadlines to reduce nutrient runoff, and a third looming, Mid-Atlantic state and federal officials are reevaluating their options.

A unique legal agreement

In 1983, the Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia governors along with the mayor of Washington and administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency signed the Chesapeake Bay Agreement, a pledge to reduce the pollutants and sediment entering the Bay that contribute to the loss of organisms like seagrasses, shellfish and waterfowl.

The tapering of nitrogen and phosphorus remained the focus of subsequent agreements, but the jurisdictions did not meet their goals voluntarily, so in 2010 the EPA created the country’s most expansive pollution quota. It applied to six states — Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia — and the District of Columbia.

The quota’s creation and enforcement took political arm-twisting, including an act of Congress, a presidential executive order and multiple lawsuits. It requires nutrient plans from each jurisdiction and “reasonable assurances” each will take steps to control pollution from “nonpoint sources” like farm fields and parking lots. 

If states fail to meet their obligations by set deadlines, the EPA can implement stricter limits, force unregulated polluters to get permits, and redirect or condition grant money.

Signatories believed they would achieve the program’s primary goal — improving habitat for the Bay’s aquatic life — if they capped nitrogen and phosphorus entering the Chesapeake each year at 214.9 million and 13.3 million pounds, respectively, and sediment at 18,587 million pounds per year.

Instead, scientific modeling estimated that 258 million pounds of nitrogen and 15 million pounds of phosphorus entered the Bay in 2021, a reduction from previous years thanks to upgrades to wastewater treatment plants and lower airborne emissions, but still off the mark. The program did hit its sediment target.

The Bay program’s advisors say those declines represent achievements. Without the nitrogen and phosphorus reductions, things could be a lot worse as the region’s waters warm, urban population grows and agriculture expands. The Bay’s 1-cubic-mile dead zone also might be even larger. 

Nonetheless, the sluggish progress remains an inconvenient truth. Officials have concluded they will not meet a 2025 deadline to stem the flow of nutrients after failing to achieve benchmarks set for 2000 and 2010.

“At the rate we’re going, it’s going to take about 150 years,” said Denice Wardrop, a Bay program science advisor who directs the Chesapeake Research Consortium. “We better learn how to do it better.”

The program offers lessons for the Mississippi River basin too.

Something is better than nothing

Efforts in the Mississippi River, where environmental regulations are comparatively lax, to reduce annual injections of waterborne nutrients into the Gulf of Mexico largely have failed. This summer’s hypoxic zone is forecast to span 5,827 square miles, 5% larger than average. 

Scientists expect climate change to worsen conditions by warming the Gulf’s waters, which would cause it to retain even less dissolved oxygen, and increasing rain, causing more runoff.

“The way that we operate right now is very much a state-by-state, choose-your-own-adventure model,” said Maisah Khan, former policy director at the Mississippi River Network.

Several groups say the federal government needs to lead and coordinate state restoration efforts, as it does in the Chesapeake Bay.

A Mississippi River-wide nutrient quota could streamline and prioritize runoff control projects and allocate federal dollars where they are needed most. Numerous academics and the National Research Council Water Science and Technology Board of the National Academies also embrace the concept.

“Without that,” said Alicia Vasto, water program director with the Iowa Environmental Council, “I think we’re kind of rudderless.”

So why doesn’t a Mississippi River quota already exist?

For one, the scale of the problem, said professor emeritus David Dzombak of Carnegie Mellon University, who chaired the National Academies committee that recommended policies to improve the river’s water quality.

Given the challenges that come with coordinating nutrient quotas in the 64,000-square-mile Bay watershed, doing so across 1.2 million square miles in the Mississippi River basin — which comprises 41% of the continental United States — seems unimaginable.

Another factor: political will.

Basin states must cooperate with their neighbors to enforce a quota, but their interests vary significantly. Far upstream, a Louisiana shrimp trawler’s livelihood is all but haze in the distance. Meanwhile, few states are hungry for more federal oversight, and the EPA is likewise reluctant to brandish a stick.

The agency said it prefers helping states develop their own lists of impaired waters and clean-up plans, rather than doing so itself for an entire region all at once.

That’s exactly what environmental groups say isn’t working.

A better quota

Yet Bay scientists admit their regional nutrient quota isn’t a panacea.

“It’s a two-edged sword,” Wardrop said. “While it had some wonderful benefits in initiating action, of building an accountability system, it had some consequences where you got painted into a corner.”

Regulators fixated on tabulating the total pounds of sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus that drain into the Bay’s deep channel (where the hypoxic zone forms each year), she said, instead of considering other ways to improve conditions for its plants and animals.

For instance, restoring wetlands and protecting shorelines could enhance shallow-water habitat for fish and mollusks, even if the Bay program hasn’t completely reduced nutrient runoff.

“Yes, phosphorus and nitrogen are important, but it’s not a fix-all,” said Zach Taylor, freshwater mussel hatchery manager at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. “There are still other considerations for improving the water quality, but I do think that it’s a good place to start.”

Because the Bay’s shallows respond more quickly to falling nutrient levels, scientists say, the program should prioritize those regions for habitat improvement, which could help rally public enthusiasm. 

The same holds true for the Mississippi River basin. Improving water quality in upper basin states helps that region and the Gulf, said Doug Myers, Maryland senior scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

“You certainly don’t want your whole Mississippi River project tied to meeting dissolved oxygen criteria in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “It’s the people who live in those inland states that are gonna have to see the benefits for themselves and get excited about it for the benefit of their communities.”

The elephant in the room

As industry and sewage facilities cut their discharge, agricultural runoff now ranks as the largest remaining contributor to the Bay’s water pollution — about half of all nitrogen and a quarter of phosphorus.

The situation is more pronounced in the Mississippi River basin, where an estimated 60% to 80% of the nitrogen entering the Gulf originates at farms and livestock operations.

Bay scientists say a nutrient imbalance impedes improvement more than anything else. 

As farms multiply and expand, agricultural producers import more nutrient-rich fertilizer and animal feed. Hungry livestock convert feed into manure, which farmers apply to fields along with synthetic fertilizer. But crops don’t absorb all the nutrients. Excess nitrogen and phosphorus build up in soil, resulting in harmful runoff.

The source of the Bay program’s authority, the Clean Water Act, can’t place pollution limits on field runoff. Instead, state and federal agencies offer grants and incentives to encourage producers to adopt better practices like planting cover crops or ceasing to till fields before planting.

But Bay researchers say agencies promote these practices without considering their effectiveness or placement. 

The cheapest interventions, such as cover crops, offer farmers private benefits like improved soil health. But they are the least efficient at removing nutrients from the ground compared to other remedies like denitrifying bioreactors, a structure that reduces nitrogen in field runoff. 

That leaves taxpayers with the fewest pounds of nutrients removed per public dollar spent.

The scientists say the program could stop tallying the number of nutrient-cutting practices installed on farms and instead incentivize success. For example, regulators could measure the nitrogen coming off fields and pay farmers when they fall under a set limit.

“We’ve maybe got to change our incentivizing systems for how we ask farmers to do things,” Wardrop said.

This story is part of the series Farm to Trouble from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative.

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The art of maple syrup production flows through generations of Dan Potter’s family history.

His great-grandfather bought the family farm in rural Iowa in the late 1880s and cleared the land for strawberries, clay and whiskey production. Eventually, he transitioned to making maple syrup to add to his whiskey. That started a 140-year-old tradition that has persisted through the Civil War, the Great Depression and both World Wars.

Potter opened his own maple syrup company with his wife and three daughters in 2009. Great River Maple, in Garnavillo, Iowa, is now among the state’s most prolific syrup producers.

This year’s record-warm winter caused sap to flow early, bringing challenges for the family-run company. They tapped their first trees on Jan. 22 — more than three weeks earlier than ever before.

“When you take into account that the average season is somewhere around six-and-a-half weeks long,” Potter said, “you’re talking an incredible amount earlier.”

This year’s maple sap season began early for many producers in Upper Midwestern states, who experienced shorter seasons. Some credit those shifts to the year’s record-warm winter. Thanks to the El Niño effect, the season ranked among the top 10 warmest.

But Indigenous and non-Native experts say human-caused climate change also is having varied and unpredictable effects on the maple harvest. Farmers and Indigenous communities whose ancestors have tapped trees since time immemorial are altering their practices and planning for an erratic future.

“It seems like from year to year, the season gets a little bit earlier,” said Theresa Baroun, executive director of the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association. “But nothing, nothing, nothing like this year. If you talk to many older producers, they’ve never seen anything like this as well. This is just a different, weird year here in Wisconsin.”

Climate effects

Even amid increasingly earlier seasons, this year stood out, said Justin Cain, operations manager of Maple Valley Cooperative, of Cashton, Wisconsin, whose members include more than 40 farmers from Wisconsin, Michigan, New York and Vermont.

“Most of my farmers were kind of scrambling to get all their taps in and get their vacuums set up,” he said. “Typically, you don’t even think about that stuff till the end of February.”

As of mid-March, cooperative president and maple farmer Cecil Wright and his two business partners had collected about 90% of a normal crop — about 100,000 gallons of maple sap. Wright boiled his first barrel of syrup in early February, about three weeks sooner than normal.

“The weather patterns that we’re seeing are typical for the maple-producing areas in more southern areas like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana,” Wright said.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Indian Creek Nature Center tapped its first maple the second week of February, when temperatures already surpassed 40 degrees. The sap flowed. By March 1, though, their taps trickled to a stop. The season was already over — a month earlier than 2023.

Last year, the center collected nearly 2,000 gallons of sap and produced 46 gallons of syrup, one of its best years on record. This year, it collected 500 gallons, just enough to produce 12.

Sap production depends on temperature and microclimates, where just a few degrees difference can make or break a harvest. Flow depends upon freeze-thaw cycles, which generate the pressure to push the liquid up and down the trunk of the maple. As daylight increases and if the weather warms too quickly, tree buds open, ending the season.

“We’re all limited to what nature gives us,” Cain said. “The trees kind of do their own thing.”

New England and the Midwest dominate maple syrup production in the United States. Wisconsin — the fourth-largest producer in the country — netted about 400,000 gallons of syrup valued at $13.5 million in 2022.

Because temperature swings drive sap production, the increased variability might actually increase the harvest in the Upper Midwest.

Wright said the growing sophistication of weather forecasting makes it easier to plan ahead. But tapping too soon presents its own risks. Vacuum equipment and tubing, which can be used instead of buckets on maple farms, can freeze during an unexpected cold snap, and early-drilled tap holes will close over time. 

“We have to acknowledge that humans are affecting our environment, and we don’t totally understand everything that’s happening,” Wright said.

In Wisconsin, sugar maples populate the northern and western portions of the state. Experts expect the trees to persist as climate warms, but the sap is likely to contain less sugar. Experts also expect an earlier harvest, but the timing, which has always varied, is becoming increasingly unpredictable.

Additionally, a lack of snowpack, the spread of non-local species and long periods of drought intermixed with heavy rainfall events, could stress or damage maple trees to the detriment of future harvests.

Indigenous communities already are preparing.

Preserving lifeways into the future

The production of maple syrup began thousands of years ago when Indigenous peoples began transforming sap into syrup and sugar.

Ojibwe bands did so in the Upper Midwest, but in the mid-1800s, the federal government forcibly acquired their lands and waters through a succession of treaties. The bands retained hunting, gathering and fishing rights across what’s now called the Ceded Territory: millions of acres stretching across northwestern Michigan and its Upper Peninsula, northern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota.

For Wisconsin tribes, tapping maple trees is a traditional lifeway, or bimaadiziwin in the Ojibwe language. In addition to exercising treaty rights, promoting food sovereignty and strengthening community ties, Ojibwe people harvest from nature as an act of stewardship. If they do not, the Creator will cease to provide those beings.

Climate change threatens those lifeways and in turn, identity.

Some tribes have developed climate adaptation plans to manage natural resources in a way that protects cultural practices and treaty rights, including the harvesting of maple sap.

Some options include tapping sugar maples in several locations rather than a concentrated gathering. Tree-planting efforts could utilize non-local seedlings from sources that are better adapted to future climate conditions or even related species like red maple.

A generous harvest

In Garnavillo, Potter of Great River Maple expected to collect less sap this year, but in some northern Wisconsin sugar bushes, it flowed comparatively freely.

The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa youth sugar bush, in northern Wisconsin, commenced about two weeks earlier this year, and although the season felt condensed, the trees gave generously. The youth collected 900 gallons of sap during the first two weeks of March, from which they produced almost 20 gallons of maple syrup, or Anishinaabe-zhiiwaagamizigan.

Maria Nevala, of Odana, Wisconsin, and her partner, JD Lemieux, assisted the program.

The two also have their own sugar bush, which they named Ozaawaa Goon, or “yellow snow.”

“We have a lot of little kids running around and every time they say, “I gotta go to the bathroom!’ and I’m like, ‘Go ahead,’” Nevala said.

At Ozaawaa Goon, which she has tapped for about 13 years, they began collecting sap in March, about 10 days earlier. The weather was so warm, Nevala didn’t have to wear snowshoes.

The two use their syrup in community demonstrations, turning it into sugar and candies, and gift much of the rest.

“It’s a real expensive hobby for us,” Lemieux said, jokingly.

As of mid-March, the maple buds hadn’t opened, and they had collected the same amount of sap as previous years, if not a little more.

“What is next year gonna be like?” Nevala said. “It’s unknown. And that could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing. Hopefully, it’s a good thing.”

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Sign up to republish stories like this one for free. 

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