An aerial view of the Emerald Sky Dairy shows Wetland 1 outlined in red. (Wisconsin DNR)
Just months after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources renewed the permit and allowed the expansion of a St. Croix County dairy with a history of massive manure spills, the farm was bought by a company that operates other large-scale dairies across the state.
The Emerald Sky Dairy in the town of Emerald has been fined more than $100,000 in the last decade because of manure spills that have gone unreported to state regulators and caused massive die-offs of fish in local waterways.
The sale raised concerns among local residents who are already dealing with increased levels of nitrates in the local groundwater. Residents and interest groups also say the farm’s expansion and subsequent sale reflect a Wisconsin dairy industry that is pushed by economics to embrace factory farming and grow without regard for the health of rural communities, economies or environments.
“I don’t think it helps our rural quality of life, I don’t think it helps our rural economies, I don’t think it helps our rural environment,” Kim Dupre, a water quality advocate who used to live near the dairy, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “Allowing the less than stellar managers to get bigger, as opposed to people who are really good managers of waste, nutrients, is very discouraging. Where is the incentive to really take care of the land, water, air, environment and your neighbors?”
After a cracked pipe in late 2016 went unreported, Emerald Sky spilled about 300,000 gallons of manure into nearby wetlands. By the time DNR officials got onto the site more than three months later, there were portions of the facility in which the solid manure was more than three feet deep. Locals have long alleged that the 2016 spill continues to negatively affect local waterways, yet DNR and county officials have repeatedly found differently, saying the spill has been effectively cleaned up.
In 2019, manure that was improperly spread on a field ran off into a local creek and killed local fish.
The facility sits close to the Emerald town hall, which has a well on the property where nitrates have been measured at four times the level considered safe by public health officials.
For years, the dairy had operated with about 1,600 cows. When the facility’s permit to operate as a factory farm — also known as a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) — through the Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) program was up for renewal, the dairy’s previous owners, a Nebraska-based agricultural company, requested that they be allowed to expand up to 3,300 cows.
In March, despite significant public opposition, the DNR granted the permit renewal and allowed the expansion. The terms of the permit also remained largely the same, despite requests from residents that the DNR increase groundwater monitoring near the site.
“While reports have confirmed an egregious manure spill occurred in 2017, mostly due to human error, I have not seen evidence that the spill has caused extensive groundwater quality problems,” DNR hydrogeologist program coordinator Ian Anderson wrote in a 2023 memo. “I do not recommend groundwater monitoring at Emerald Sky Dairy at this time.”
Shortly after the permit’s renewal, the dairy was sold to Breeze Dairy Group, which manages more than 10,000 cows on CAFOs in Fond du Lac, Langlade, Pierce and Waushara counties.
In an email, a DNR spokesperson confirmed the sale and said that Breeze Dairy Group is now legally responsible for the permit requirements. The spokesperson, Garret Dietz, declined to comment on the local concerns regarding the expansion and sale.
“The DNR determined Emerald Sky Dairy to be in substantial compliance with state water quality regulations prior to reissuing the 5-year CAFO permit,” Dietz said. “The permit was modified to reflect that Croix Breeze Dairy LLC is now legally responsible for ensuring that the manure and process wastewater generated by the operation are land-applied or disposed of in a manner that complies with the terms of the WPDES permit, including the approved nutrient management plan.”
Dupre says the renewal and sale were dispiriting for the surrounding community.
“It’s a gut punch, after so many people got involved and gave their thoughts as to whether or not to even allow the entity to expand and then they go and sell as soon as they get the expansion permit to somebody who’s even farther removed, it’s not a local family growing their herd,” she says.
Residents have also raised concerns about the group’s own history of manure management, pointing to the Pine Breeze Dairy in Pine River, which has seen nine manure spills in the last 11 years, totalling 150,000 gallons of spilled manure, DNR records show.
Already in the first weeks of operating at Emerald Sky, the group has had a small spill while transporting manure — though county officials say it was reported and cleaned up quickly without getting anywhere near a waterway.
Tim Steiber, St. Croix County’s land and water conservation administrator, says he understands how the sale would “raise some eyebrows,” but from his position, the change in ownership is an opportunity to establish a better working relationship with the farm and install some of the measures he’s been seeking to improve the local water quality.
“I’ve had some of the hardest cases in land use get solved when somebody else decides to get in,” he says. “This is the history of your site, let’s see if we can make a different history. Change can be good.”
He adds that in the case of this farm, with the local attention and controversy it’s gained over the years, it would be hard for the new ownership to get away with being a bad actor.
“I think they know there’s a lot of eyes and ears out there,” he says.
The group’s CEO, Gregg Wolf, says the dairy wants to be a good neighbor and believes that after some time seeing the company operate, locals will get on board. He says he understands there was an antagonistic relationship with the farm’s previous owners, but that now there will be an “open door policy” and points to investments in cleaning up the property and plans to rotate cover crops as signs that the company is dedicated to the community and wants to look out for water quality and the environment.
“We’re a group of Wisconsin dairymen born and bred here. We’re committed to doing better, we feel like we can do better,” he says. “We want to put the right foot forward and show that a good operator can be good for the community and a dairy doesn’t have to be bad.”
Wolf says that he grew up on a 50-cow farm in La Crosse County, but that method isn’t as viable anymore.
“I’d love to be able to make a living that way but in a world with tractors costing $300,000, the economics of things, the small scale doesn’t work unless you’re a niche,” he says.
For Dupre, the expansion and sale of the Emerald Sky Dairy represent how those economic forces leave rural residents behind.
“If you don’t live there you probably don’t pay as close attention to things. On one hand that might be understandable but on the other hand you have neighbors you have to be accountable for,” she says. “If it hurts somebody, oh well. The neighbors don’t feel like somebody’s watching out for them in any fashion. Who’s speaking up for public health and safety here?”
Darin Von Ruden, the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says that even with well-intentioned operators, spills are a symptom of the push to get bigger.
“It certainly is the way agriculture in general has been going for many decades now,” he says. “Fewer and fewer owners and larger and larger farms. We believe in diversity and smaller, mid-sized family farms rather than big corporate farms.”
“Some of that with manure spills is a symptom of the problem,” he adds. “These farms get bigger and bigger, you’re looking at more pipe, people don’t have that connection to the land. Their first priority is making dollars for their owners.”
In the Emerald Sky sale, the new owners are based in Wisconsin, but live across the state from the property.
Von Ruden says other factory farms are operated by investors on the coasts or in another country.
“Direct connection to local communities is certainly leaving,” he says.
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