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Pinnacle's plans to improve road hit small snag
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SYLVESTER TOWNSHIP - Green County Highway Commissioner Chris Narveson informed members of the Highway Committee during a meeting Monday that a request from incoming Pinnacle Dairy LLC for a temporary driveway along County FF was denied by the county.

But a renewed application placing the outlet 250 feet farther west toward Wisconsin 59 would be approved, Narveson said. The denial was based on the proximity of the temporary driveway to the intersection of County FF and Decatur-Sylvester Road. The need for the temporary access is to divert traffic from Decatur-Sylvester Road as Pinnacle improves roadway conditions.

Pinnacle is an in-progress concentrated animal feeding operation that will hold roughly 5,800 cows on 127 acres.

T.J. Tuls, son of Pinnacle owner Todd Tuls and operator of Tuls-owned Rock Prairie Farm near Janesville, said the repairs planned by Pinnacle engineers were part of an agreement with the Town of Sylvester. The intent is to keep truck traffic off of Decatur-Sylvester Road for an overhaul of the crumbling road while engineers continue to build structures for the CAFO.

T.J. Tuls said he was unsure of an exact timeline for repairs to the pavement but noted it was likely to happen this year after the ground thaws. Improvements were likely to be conducted in summer, he said, noting that Pinnacle engineers were working with the Town of Sylvester engineer on the project plans.

Pinnacle Dairy was granted a conditional permit by the Green County Land and Water Conservation Committee in April. Three conditions were laid out to ensure the site met specifications to prevent groundwater contamination. Pinnacle engineers have met two of the three conditions.

An attempt to fulfill the second condition was recently rejected in January and announced by Green County Conservationist Todd Jenson at the monthly conservation committee meeting.

Pinnacle engineers proposed the use of sand points, which are shallow well sources no farther than 25 feet below the ground commonly used in areas where the ground underneath the soil has a sandy composition. The proposal was to place one point on both the north and south side of the four manure pits, but it was denied by state National Resource Conservation Service Engineer John Ramsden as well as a hydrogeologist and engineers from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Experts expressed eight issues with the idea, asserting that sand points will not provide valuable information on the site because of the ground composition of silt and clay and that "this option is technically biased to show success without proving anything."