SYLVESTER TOWNSHIP — The owner of an incoming concentrated animal feeding operation to house 5,800 cows said the facility plans to begin milking by the end of the month.

Pinnacle Dairy LLC has been in progress since August 2015, when owner Todd Tuls submitted plans to Sylvester township. They outlined a facility meant to milk 5,000 dairy cows on 127 acres of land along County FF and Decatur-Sylvester Road.

“I think I’m going to change how I name a new farm next time,” Tuls said. “It’s truly been a mountain to climb to reach this point.”

That steep trajectory included opposition from neighbors concerned over the environmental impact a large-scale dairy like Pinnacle would have on the area and their quality of life. The township board created a science committee to re-evaluate livestock siting laws and the county Land and Water Conservation Department worked alongside officials from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the state Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Department of Trade, Agriculture and Consumer Protection to assess the incoming facility. 

Because of its size, Pinnacle meets the definition of a concentrated animal feeding operation. A CAFO is determined by the DNR as a farming facility with more than 1,000 animal units. AUs are determined by the weight of an animal. For dairy farmers in Wisconsin, any large-scale operation with more than 714 cows falls under the restrictions of a CAFO. 

The county permit was approved April 2017, but due to recommendations by engineers with DATCP and NRCS, it was conditional. Planners had to meet three requirements before Pinnacle could operate. One was to dig a trench and raise the site; another required workers to dig a hole to determine area water saturation. 

“Frankly, it’s one of the safest sites you can be on,” Tuls said. 

He said perched conditions at the site were proven by Pinnacle engineers, who observed the impermeable clay layer only had moisture within the first 6 inches, and Tuls said he saw himself that the clay was “essentially sealed against moisture.” 

Green County Conservationist Todd Jenson has said in previous meetings of the conservation committee and in response to questions from Green County board supervisors that he believes the vast site has some perched conditions which would keep groundwater free of contamination by manure, but its elevation varies throughout the acreage.

Tuls said he found the local governmental hurdles to be “disappointing” and that if his operation were an incoming commercial or manufacturing business, it would not have been judged the same way but rather welcomed “with open arms.”

Pinnacle met its final permit condition May 18, after monitoring wells put in to measure the water elevation found the separation between groundwater and the bottom of the manure pits will be 4 feet or greater. 

“They just have to keep monitoring their groundwater monitoring wells,” Jenson said.

Jenson said engineers first raised the wells by 1 foot, then by another 0.5 feet. They were finally raised again by another 3 feet, allowing engineers to meet the water elevation requirements outlined in the permit. Tuls said engineers plan to complete construction of the operation by mid-July.

“It’s too bad we’ve had to fight so much local opposition to it and (people who) don’t trust the processes put in place,” Tuls said. “It’s silly to think we, as a family business, would come in and not follow the rules … It’s kind of nuts to think we would do it all and deplete the environment doing it.”

One of the neighbors concerned for the purity of her family’s drinking water was local farmer Jen Riemer, who formed the organization Green County Defending our Farmland after discovering nearly 130 acres of nearby land then owned by Friedly-Bader Farm LLC was going to be leased to Tuls for the dairy. According to Green County land records, Pinnacle Land Holdings LLC of Rising City, Nebraska, now owns the property. 

“The bottom line is that it is such a massive amount of waste that even if a small thing goes wrong, it creates a problem for a widespread area,” Riemer said.

Tuls’ operations have not been without accidents. A 17-year-old farm purchased by the family business had a manure spill at Emerald Sky Dairy in St. Croix County that was leaking waste from December 2016 until an anonymous report was made to the state DNR at the end of March 2017. 

T.J. Tuls, Todd Tuls’ son and manager of Rock Prairie Farms near Janesville, said in April 2017 that the spill wasn’t addressed because the manager of the facility at the time neglected to report it and that the individual had been fired for not following protocol. Reports by specialists from the DNR indicated an underground manure line had shattered, resulting in the spill onto an unused field at the farm. 

Because DNR officials do not frequently monitor CAFOs, manure spills are expected to be self-reported. At Green County board and committee meetings, critics of the large-scale facilities have referred to this practice using the metaphor of a fox guarding the henhouse.

Riemer said Decatur-Sylvester Road, which connects County FF to Riemer Road and her family farm, being paved by Pinnacle through an agreement with the township felt like “sort of a consolation prize.” However, she noted she and family members don’t drive in that direction since work on the facility began because of the ongoing construction. 

“All the concerns are still the same,” Riemer said. “They haven’t changed just because they’ve jumped through all the hoops.”

Tuls said the facility plans to hire roughly 50 employees, and while local workers would be ideal, he said hiring has been a slow process, following a national trend. And though he can’t divulge where the milk Pinnacle produces will be sold due to non-disclosure agreements, he said the bigger farm provides positives smaller farms cannot.

“We, as a bigger farm, have the ability to create opportunities,” Tuls said. “You’ve got a lifestyle that’s seven days a week and kids who don’t want that … and don’t come home to milk cows twice a day. I don’t think we’re putting small farms out of business. I think our farm will replace farms that have already gone out of business.”

Riemer said Pinnacle is not an example of what Green County agriculture was built on and she has learned through its creation that laws need to be changed at the state level, which starts when voters “continue to get the right people in office.”