Reader takes issue with Hill’s statement

Dear Editor,

“I’m (also) just kind of sick of the Driftless Water Defenders wasting the taxpayer dollars of Winneshiek County on lawsuits.” Speaking for myself, and not for Driftless Water Defenders, I find this statement in the Thursday, March 6 Decorah Leader paper from the co-CEO of Novilla Mark Hill, a citizen of the state of Michigan, to be both surprising and insulting. If Winneshiek County taxpayers are not the majority of DWD’s membership, we are certainly a major portion of membership. And, this Novilla project can be — probably is — subsidized by Iowa and federal taxpayer dollars.

Based on manure digesters located in other states, such as the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area, this Novilla project, if ever lawfully constructed, more likely than not, will increase the water and air pollution coming from these dairies in the western part of the county because economy-of-scale financial incentives will encourage substantially-increased cow herd sizes. Increased herd sizes will mean more manure; more manure will mean more water pollution. We know the three rivers in Iowa that have the highest rate of new pollution are the Turkey, the Upper Iowa and the Yellow. This project, and the dairies that will supply the manure to it, are in the Turkey and Upper Iowa watersheds.

Novilla’s Mark Hill also stated he thought there were a lot of false statements coming out. Apparently from DWD and Winneshiek residents was his implication. Another rather strange statement from him at a county meeting — that he and his company were environmentalists and that the Novilla project was an environmental project.

I’m not sure how increasing air, water and soil pollution that harms human health could be characterized as environmentally-beneficial. Especially when the type of pollution created by manure digesters is exactly the type that has already established Iowa’s well-known reputation as the state that contributes more ag pollution to the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico than any other state.

Mark Hill also told public officials, when advocating for the construction of cow manure digesters in southwest Winneshiek County, that the Iowa DNR was happy with Novilla’s manure digester project, located at the Maassen Dairy in Sioux County in western Iowa. According to public records I have reviewed, the DNR fined that project $10,000 for starting construction without a valid permit.

Novilla also said that they would follow all digester regulations in this project. False or true statement? There are no state regulations related to the operations of ag digesters in Iowa. I know that because I was on the DNR TAC committee writing regulations for ag digesters a few years ago. When the Iowa Legislature found out what we were doing, they passed a law that said you could not regulate ag digesters in Iowa, and the committee was disbanded. Add to that, in Iowa the federal OSHA department cannot regulate agriculture.

So it seems that, since the recent death, explosion, and fire at ag digesters in Iowa are not investigated, we don’t know if regulations would have helped. But we know these digesters – are potentially dangerous – to those who work at them and to those who reside or work nearby them.

Digesters produce natural gas products that are sold to the marketplace. Those proceeds are paid to the digesters’ owners – along with substantial tax credits. That’s money in their bag.

The rest of us are left holding the environmental bag. Tons of manure that are heated every day to produce sailable gas digester product will result in concentrated nitrate residues – a core water pollutant.

Those nitrate-saturated residues, in turn, will be spread thickly across a finite number of surrounding acres of land. The nitrates that the crops — corn and soybeans principally — cannot absorb will flow across land surfaces, into our streams and rivers or will seep directly into our aquifers through sinkholes.

This is not speculation. Ask the good folks of Green Bay, Wisconsin, an area not too far away, where many manure digesters have been constructed in recent years. Nearby wells have been contaminated. A dead zone is growing in the waters of Green Bay. In Winneshiek County, North Winn school was part of a study about rural schools and rates of asthma in students based on the schools’ proximity to hog confinement air emissions. In that study, it was found that North Winn students had a rate of asthma almost four times higher than Iowa’s average state rate. Ammonia from hog confinements, and dairy confinements, can cause asthma. We know what these pollutants do.

The DNR said that not even the waste that comes out of these digesters can be tested before land application. So we have no idea what is being put on the land and into our waters.

I do not appreciate someone coming from Michigan criticizing Winneshiek County residents’ knowledge of environmental pollution and our good faith actions to protect ourselves from it.