Manure Waste Produced by Dairy Cow Animal Unit is
18 Times the Amount of Human Waste

A Cornell study which compared the bodily waste between dairy cows and people from 2017 (https://blogs.cornell.edu/whatscroppingup/2017/06/21/series-phosphorus-and-the-environment-2-setting-the-record-straight-comparing-bodily-waste-between-dairy-cows-and-people/) calculated that the waste produced by an “average” cow to a human was approximately 40-fold larger compared on a volume, nitrogen and phosphorus basis. DCEC uses a far more conservative 18 times calculation to determine the human equivalent of any herd of cows. A relevant calculation is the currently proposed Gilbert Farms CAFO expansion. It is the equivalent in waste to that produced by a city of 43,000 people (18 X 2400 animal units). 

Kewaunee County residents can relate to the dangers of CAFOs as many of their wells have been polluted by nearby CAFOs and made unsafe to drink. Kewaunee County has far deeper soil than that of Door County, especially north of the canal, according to the Final Report of the Northeast Wisconsin Karst Task Force written by a team of experts including Bill Schuster, former head of Door County Soil & Water. The map from that report highlights soil depth. Red and orange are predominantly five feet and under depth to bedrock, green is over 50 feet to bedrock. This is a 10-fold difference in soil depth.  Door is colored mostly red; Kewaunee is mostly green. 

Additionally, Kewaunee has significantly more land devoted to agriculture than Door. It also has 105,000 cows to our current 13,000 cows, or 1.89 million to 234,000 people waste equivalent using the same 18 X multiplier. Unlike tourists and our human residents, these cows are here 24/7 365 days a year, so a comparison to our visitor population for Door County needs to take that into consideration. Both counties have ridiculous human equivalents in cow manure waste, and it is little surprise that Kewaunee County has significant problems with many private wells. With our much shallower soil, it will not take as many cows for Door County to have the major water quality problems that Kewaunee has. It is also becoming increasingly obvious that Kewaunee is running out of spreadable acreage as many acres of southern Door County are being used for increasing amounts of manure spreading from the CAFOs in Kewaunee County, despite the fact that our soil depth to karst is even shallower and more fragile than their acreage. We should all be alarmed. 

By Annette Vincent