Power play

displaced residents gear up for landfill fight
by Joe Hart

For the past 27 years, Craig and Myrna Peterson have lived on a small homestead in Vernon County’s Harmony Township, the same farm that Craig’s grandfather once
worked. Today, Craig works off farm, so most of their 70 acres are leased as pasture to neighbors, among them Craig’s brother. Myrna grows organic raspberries,
and the Petersons’ oldest son, a high school senior, is raising a herd of goats in preparation to take up farming in earnest when he graduates.

But on September 19, their dreams for the future came to
a screeching halt. On that morning, a representative of the Dairyland Power Cooperative knocked on their door and informed them that their farm is destined to become a landfill.

The La Crosse–based electric utility plans to turn the Petersons’ farm, as well as those belonging to several of their neighbors, into a landfill to hold waste from a coal-fired power plant in the nearby town of Genoa.

“It came from out of the blue,” says Paul
Fuenger, another farmer who stands to lose
his land to the project. “I’m still in shock. It
didn’t seem real. It’s like a bad dream.”
Fuenger, an organic farmer who owns
250 acres, says a Dairyland Power representative
offered him $14,000 to allow the
power utility to drill test holes and a well
on his property to determine if the land is
appropriate for a landfill.

“I told him that if I don’t want to sell
out, there’s no point in letting you test. He
told me, ‘I’m not threatening you, but you
will have to sell to us eventually anyway.’
That’s the way he put it. I didn’t plan on
moving until I died, and now they tell me
that I have to.”

The landfill would sit near Highway
56 on one of two proposed sites, each of
which is made up of 11 properties. Most
of them are certified organic farms, according
to Fuenger, who supplies eggs to
Organic Valley Cooperative; in fact, the
co-op got its start on a nearby farm, he
says, and Harmony Valley, a major supplier
of organic vegetables to Minneapolis
and Madison, is also nearby.

The project is part of Dairyland’s efforts
to reduce air pollution from the Genoa facility,
says Deb Mirasola, the company’s corporate communications manager. “We’re making large investments in our environment and the landfill is part of
that project,” Mirasola says. “It will make
a significant impact on air quality in the area.”

Dairyland is a wholesaler of electricity,
and supplies power to a few dozen electric
coops and municipalities which together
serve more than half a million customers.
The cooperative generates its power at a
number of facilities, including the coalfired
Genoa plant and a coal plant upriver
at Alma.

Both the Genoa and Alma facilities
ranked in the top 10 percent of the nation’s
polluters as recently as 2002, according to
the website Scorecard.org, which analyzes
data from the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) to identify sources
of pollution.

When coal is burned to generate power,
it releases sulfur dioxide and mercury,
as well as arsenic and a variety of toxic
heavy metals. Until recently, these pollutants
went up the smoke stack and became
airborne, causing health problems, acid
rain, and environmental contamination.
In response to pollution control mandates
from the EPA, utilities like Dairyland
are increasingly installing technology
that prevents air releases of sulfur
dioxide and mercury. Instead, says Genoa
landfill project manager Wendy Berndt,
they will end up in the landfill.
That has neighbors of the proposed
site worried. “Who wants to live next to
a landfill?” asks Scott Leum, whose land
would be surrounded on three sides by
the project.

Dairyland estimates that between 8
and 20 dump trucks would haul the toxic
waste from Genoa to the landfill every
day. Leum says neighbors around the site
are worried about pollution leaking into
the surrounding soil and water.
There are grounds for worry. Even without
the scrubbers that remove toxic materials
from the smokestacks, ash contains
high levels of the same contaminants. Yet
the EPA does not consider the ash a hazardous
material.

Instead, the ash is frequently dumped
in abandoned coal mines, where it contaminates
the ground water, according
to a recent Pennsylvania study by several
nonprofit environmental groups.
Berndt counters that the new landfill in
Vernon County will include safety measures
not in place at many ash dumps. A
three-part liner of clay and plastic would
sit underneath the waste, water from the
landfill would be collected and treated,
and a groundwater monitoring system
would guard against accidental contamination.

The Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources, which regulates the
states power plants, requires the facility
to be monitored for 40 years after it’s shut
down, according to Berndt.
That’s little comfort for Leum and his
neighbors, who have already begun meeting
to strategize how to stop the project.
None of the landowners have yet given
consent for Dairyland to begin testing,
and Leum hopes that community opposition
will prevent the landfill, the same
way it prevented the plan to dam the
Kickapoo River.

“This is beautiful, prime farmland in a
tight-knit community,” he says. “It’s just
beyond comprehension to turn it into a
waste dump.”

Dairyland Power is hosting an “open
house” at the Viroqua High School on the landfill
project on October 17, from 4:30 to 7:30
p.m. Learn more about landfill opposition at
www.kissmyash.org.