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Crawford Stewardship Project is grateful for the generous support of the Wisconsin Community Fund.
"CAFOs are only profitable because so much of the cost and damage is externalized onto the environment, neighbors and wildlife. The monitoring, supervision, clean-up, restitution, fines are not happening, thus the true cost of CAFOs never find the way onto the balance books." Talking point from the CAFO Conference.
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About Crawford Stewardship Project
Mission Statement
It is the mission of the Crawford Stewardship Project to protect the environment of Crawford County from threats such as those posed by concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and to promote sustainable land use, local control of natural resources, and environmental justice.
Crawford Stewardship Project is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization registered in the state of Wisconsin. All contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law.
You can view or download our letter of determination
Board of Directors and Committees
Chair - Gloria Derksen (Freeman Township)
Vice Chair - Edie Ehlert (Freeman Township)
Secretary - Ellen Brooks (Haney Township)
Treasurer - Lamar Janes (Clayton Township)
At Large - Rob Horwich (Haney Township)
Administrative/Financial, Lamar Janes
Legal/Legislative Affairs, Edie Ehlert
Public Relations
Local Government, Ellen Brooks
Research, Maggie Jones & Rob Horwich
Staff - Edie Ehlert, Coordinator (Freeman Township)
Contact us at: csp.county@gmail.com
 January 8, 2011 CSP Planning Meeting brought forward plans and strategies
for the year. The group included board, staff, water quality monitors,
committee chairs, and volunteers
Crawford Stewardship Project
2010 Highlights
- Citizens rally around CAFO hearing--Last March the DNR public hearing for the Wauzeka area CAFO water discharge permit was attended by over 100 concerned citizens, with well-spoken comments from over 30 people in opposition and about 4 in support of the CAFO. Written comments to the DNR included about 70 in opposition and 4 in support of the CAFO. And the comments included most of the major environmental and community concerns. Our strong voices at this event are part of the public record and remain our base of support to warrant careful scrutiny of this CAFO facility.
- Water Quality Monitoring—We continue to work with neighbors, monitors, and Sarah Grainger, water quality program manager of Valley Stewardship Network (VSN), on increased creek monitoring around the Wauzeka area CAFO. There are 5 new volunteer water quality monitors who have joined the effort to monitor sites monthly. They have learned further testing techniques including taking samples for laboratory analysis on water quality.
We sponsored a meeting in Wauzeka in July that included representatives of CSP, SRWN, Wisconsin Sierra Club, DNR, VSN, Water Action Volunteers (WAV) program, and local water monitors for the purpose to begin formulating a statewide
water quality and CAFO monitoring program throughout the state. The water quality monitoring webinar sponsored by the Michigan Sierra Club in November offered specific scientific information to add to our Wisconsin monitoring project. Next steps include attending the statewide water quality monitoring conference sponsored by WAV March 24 and 25 to gain technical knowledge and to coordinate efforts with others doing monitoring within the state.
- Nutrient Management Monitoring—We hired an agricultural consultant to help us understand the Wauzeka CAFO water discharge permit and nutrient management plan. We are requesting further documents and explanation from the DNR on the permit requirements. Our CSP goal is to learn as much as we can on monitoring nutrient management locally and to participate in a statewide monitoring effort.
- Education—The goal of our education program is to offer information to further our mission, encourage community conversations, and support our local economy. We offered a series of 4 Karst geological presentations and field trips led by Dr. Kelvin Rodolfo, with 52 folks attending. We had 2 film nights; “King Corn” with “Big River” and “Food, Inc.” attended by 34, and our farmer’s panel brought in 30 folks, including beginning farmers, producers, and hobby farmers. We had booths at 4 local community events, including the Crawford County Fair that offers the opportunity to reach out to our countywide community. These events added another 150 petition signatures to the request for Livestock Siting Law review.
We gained 277 new supporters in 2010 from our various efforts. The supporter email list continues to be our main informational source to keep our supporters informed of local and state issues and calls to action. Our September Newsletter launched our bi-annual newsletters. And our updated website came online this year with our new Webmaster, Linda Lieb.
- Public Eye—Statewide attention included an interview with Edie Ehlert and Matt Urch of Alliance Concerned for Environmental Safety (ACES) of Vernon County by Ron Seely of the Wisconsin State Journal. His series of articles helped to bring the issue to more of the public. News releases and letters to the editor locally and statewide offer information to a wider audience than our supporters list.
- Legislative—We met with state officials, Rep. Nerison and Senator Kapanke and federal Representative Kind and Senator Feingold at most of their listening throughout the year to support specific legislation to promote groundwater protection. We request that farm subsidies and loan programs be changed to benefit small and medium size family farms. Our supporters took part in the League of Conservation Voters Conservation Lobby Days to support their conservation priorities and meet with state representatives, www.conservationvoters.org. Those included groundwater protection, particularly in the areas of the state with Karst geology.
- Collaborations—Connections in a small rural community are crucial to success and community acceptance and legitimacy. We increased our co-sponsorship of events with other local groups and libraries in order to reach a wider audience and to share the work. We attended various agency and inter-agency meetings in the region, resulting in greater publicity of events, making individual connections with conservation professionals, and taking part in projects of other organizations
- Sustain Rural Wisconsin Network (SRWN), www.sustainruralwisconsin.net. CSP Leadership and participation in the statewide coalition in 2010 continued to increase our public awareness and to affect policies and laws on CAFOs and sustainable agriculture to protect environmental and health in Wisconsin. SRWN website creation gives neighbors of CAFOs and proposed CAFOs a site to help with community organizing. Our collective voice was instrumental in bringing about 4 citizen listening sessions sponsored by the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) on review of the Livestock Siting Law Rule review. Approximately 450 people brought serious objections and concerns forward on the Law. Nearly all those who spoke in support of the law were directly tied to the industry.
In addition, we brought the local voice to DATCP on the issue through co-sponsoring our own listening session with Vernon County Alliance Concerned for Environmental Safety (ACES). This strong support allows us to continue to call for policy review of the Rule of the Law. DATCP formed a Technical Committee for that review and we offered 9 nominees for that committee and DATCP rejected all of our nominees.
Presently, we are supporting some of the Technical Committee review proposals. See the CSP and SRWN websites for our presentations to the DATCP board. SRWN offered a Citizen’s Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the DNR. This document is available on both of our websites and remains a goal of SRWN to engage in an agreement between the DNR and the citizens of the state on protection our citizen owned resources. To gain state media attention, we spoke with other SRWN coalition members at the Department of Justice public hearing on anti-trust issues in the farm industry, had a media event at the International Dairy Expo and volunteers the Farm Aid Concert educational area to promote family farms over factory farms.
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