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A void was discovered while drilling the Supreme Beef LLC well. The void was 8 feet tall. Could it look like this?
Scientific Reports and Studies
The studies and reports below are not exhaustive, but should answer many of your questions about aquifer vulnerability in areas of karst, and associated public health concerns. Quote from these studies in your public comments. We will try to pose a “nuggets” document. Many of the studies refer to SW Wisconsin counties in the Driftless region that are very similar in topography and land use to Clayton County.
Published in 2005, this includes 14 short essays prepared as part of an “Iowa Field Conference for Public Policy Makers” by more than a dozen Iowa experts including scientists, DNR professionals, and NRCS staff. During the 2-day event the participants made 14 stops in Winneshiek and Allamakee County to meet with real people and assess the challenges and rewards of “Living in Karst”. A truly astounding document that led to more protective legislation that many of us believed would prevent the expansion of large AFO’s in the Driftless Region of Iowa. But the devil is always in the details, and here we are… fighting the siting and operation of the 5th largest beef production site in Iowa.
In 2017 Friends of Bloody Run commissioned the retired State Geologist of Iowa to evaluate the Walz Energy (aka Supreme Beef) site during the public review period for the NPDES stormwater construction permit. Although we did not know it then, the fix was already in on the stormwater permit. The report discusses the vulnerability of the site to pollution, sinkhole formation, and other factors that should have disqualified the site.
This report is both a review article and opinion piece discussing the water quality and public health effects of the explosive growth of concentrated animal feeding operations like Supreme Beef. Pages 13-16 explicitly deal with water quality.
This continuation of the Wisconsin study using Kewaunee County data presents the quantifiable risks to public health posed from land-applied cattle manure and private septic systems. Results suggest that well contamination could cause as many as 301 cases in the county per year of acute gastrointestinal illness, with 76% attributable to bovine feces, 4% to humans, and 20% unknown.
This is ground-breaking research directly correlating nitrate and bacterial well contamination with depth to bedrock, groundwater recharge (karst and sinkholes) and agricultural land use (manure spreading). The summary end with the tongue-in-cheek comment: These findings may inform policies to minimize contamination of the Silurian dolomite aquifer, a major water supply for the US.
This six-page summary of the interconnectedness of ground waters, sinkholes, and surface waters Clayton County was one of the earliest studies of its kind. It clearly maps groundwater movement to Big Spring and Spook Cave among others. After heavy rains the Big Spring flow more than doubles, showing the direct and almost immediate connection between surface and groundwater in areas of karst. The die studies also proved that water entering sinkholes does contaminate wells.
This report by Wisconsin Watch presents the Borchardt data, along with data from the companion study done by a USDA research agriculture engineer. It’s presented in a more readable (somewhat sensationalistic) format. It does offer concise nuggets of information and the bold statement that nitrate and coliform in Kewaunee’s drinking wells mostly comes from agriculture — not human waste from septic systems. And it’s making people sick.
This report evaluates public well vulnerability classifications. They focus on “contaminants of emerging concern”, including pesticides and pharmaceuticals, but also present data for nitrate and bacteria. The report references but does not link to many other Iowa studies. The real takeaway is the vulnerability to ALL these contaminants in karst areas. The study states: “Groundwater very vulnerable to infiltration and direct recharge through sinkholes.” Let’s not forget, there are five sinkholes just 350 feet north of the cattle barns, and now more susceptible than ever to floodwaters due to the earthen basin obstruction of the floodway.
This study presents scathing data for well contamination in three SW Wisconsin “Driftless Area” counties. This paper is a plea to county residents to participate in the study, but it also contains links to SWIG study results, discussions, handouts, and other tools the residents of these counties can use to take corrective action and measures to protect themselves from… nitrate and bacteria contamination of their wells. Click on the link to “Private Wells Groundwater Quality”. Select “bacteria” as the parameter, and then click on each of the three red counties in the SW corner of Wisconsin, counties just across the river form Clayton County, and see the extremely high bacteria levels. Just like we see in our study of the 94 wells within a 5-mile radius of Supreme Beef LLC.
From the abstract of this research paper: “Nitrate-nitrogen is a common contaminant of drinking water in many agricultural areas of the United States of America (USA). Ingested nitrate from contaminated drinking water has been linked to an increased risk of several cancers, specific birth defects, and other diseases. In this research, we assessed the relationship between animal feeding operations (AFOs) and groundwater nitrate in private wells in Iowa”. The first paragraph of the introduction gives a bone-chilling list of known and possible health risks for nitrate, at levels well below the 30-year out outdated drinking water standard of 10ppm. The study states that 4.4% of all private wells in the US exceed that standard. In our study using DNR’s PWTS data, we found 23% of the wells had tested above the 10ppm standard; 39% had tested above a 5ppm threshold.