Kress Pavilion
7845 Church St

Egg Harbor, WI 54209

Good Neighbors Pay Their Own Way:

Bigger Operations, Bigger Risks, Local Solutions

with Mary Dougherty

Director of Strategic Policy Partnerships at the
Socially Responsible Agriculture Project

Industrial livestock operations keep getting bigger, and Door County's thin soils and fractured karst bedrock leave little margin for error. On July 22 at 7 pm, the Door County Environmental Council will host Mary Dougherty at the Kress Pavilion, 7845 Church St, in Egg Harbor. In “Good Neighbors Pay Their Own Way: Bigger Operations, Bigger Risks, Local Solutions,” Dougherty will walk through a practical, local tool that puts communities back in control: the Operations Ordinance, also called a Good Neighbor Ordinance.

The idea is simple. Before a large operation builds or expands, it shows its homework on roads, mass mortality, biosecurity, fire and emergency readiness, and cleanup if something goes wrong. Independent experts chosen by local officials review those plans, the operator pays for that review, and a bond keeps the costs on the operation's side of the fence instead of landing on neighbors and taxpayers. Every piece is customizable. The town decides what it wants to protect, which plans it requires, and the size at which the ordinance kicks in.

Mary Dougherty knows what it looks like when a 26,000-head hog operation shows up in a town of 400. It happened in Bayfield, Wisconsin in 2014. Her community organized, and they won. Now Director of Strategic Policy Partnerships at the Socially Responsible Agriculture Project, she's spent the years since helping communities facing impacts from industrial livestock operations across Wisconsin do the same, using locally defined tools like the Operations Ordinance. She believes the people who live with the consequences should be the ones making the decisions. Dougherty is a former Bayfield County Board Supervisor and lives in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Please join the Door County Environmental Council for this free and informative program, in person and with the Zoom link here. A Q&A session will follow the program.