In Winona County, the tension between agriculture and water quality gets personal

Doug Nopar feeds sheep on his Winona County farm on March 19, 2024. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.

LEWISTON — Richard and Karen Ahrens never meant to become activists.

For seven decades, the Ahrens have lived on the farm that first belonged to Richard’s grandparents. Here, they raised beef cattle and cultivated crops until they decided to retire and rent the land out to another farmer.

Although their property is partially on city water, they knew that agricultural practices — coupled with the porous geology of southeast Minnesota — could contaminate their well water, so every few years, they’d send off a sample for testing.

In 1992, the water had 1.4 parts per million of nitrate, well within the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for drinking water of 10 parts per million. 

In 2019, nitrate levels reached 13 parts per million — unsafe for drinking. By spring of 2022, the nitrate level reached 19, almost double the safe drinking limit.

The Ahrens suspected a culprit — a dairy less than two miles away, owned by the local Daley family, where more than 1,700 cattle produce enough manure to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools per year. That manure is pumped out of a lagoon and onto the surrounding crop fields, where the high nitrogen content fuels crop growth — and seeps into the groundwater by way of the region’s leaky bedrock.

Richard went to grade school with some of the Daley brothers, and Karen sings in the church choir with a member of the prominent local family.

“People are hesitant to speak out against the Daleys,” Karen said.

In 2018, when they caught wind that the Daleys wanted to massively expand their operation, they joined dozens of neighbors in writing letters of opposition to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the Winona County board.

What started as a disagreement among neighbors five years ago has since grown into a full-fledged legal battle involving some of the country’s biggest agriculture and environmental groups.

Ben Daley, 47, is part of the fifth generation of dairy farmers on this land. Always the most talkative of his siblings, he took on the role of spokesperson for the family. Like everyone else involved in the potential expansion, once he gets to talking about the conflict, he has a hard time stopping.

In a spacious office connected to the milking parlor, Daley described the many neighbors who have supported the proposed expansion.

“There isn’t too many days that go by where I get asked — and this from people that I don’t even know — how’s the lawsuit going?” Daley said. “Everybody knows we got screwed.”

Ben Daley shows off one of the farm’s barns, where the cattle are fed and watered. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.

An ordinance passed in the late ’90s capped farms at 1,500 “animal units,” the equivalent of 1,071 mature dairy cattle. The Daley’s proposed expansion would grow their herd to nearly 6,000 animal units — four times the size allowed by law. 

The Daleys fear if they don’t abide by the inexorable rules of modern agribusiness — “get big or get out,” as President Richard Nixon’s agriculture secretary put it in 1973 — they won’t be able to pass on a legacy of dairy farming to the next generations.

To expand, the Daleys need an exemption — or what’s known as a variance — from the county Board of Adjustment. 

By the time the Winona County Board of Adjustment first met to approve or deny the Daley farm expansion in February 2019, the decision was already fraught with small town political intrigue and the raw nerves that inevitably result.

Three members of the Winona County Board of Adjustment had been members of a local environmental organization that opposed the dairy expansion. A fourth had a grandchild who married into the Daley family. The fifth knew all about the expansion plans.

The board, their attorney instructed them, needed to address the swirling rumors of bias and conflict-of-interest. 

“Each of you may have some concerning areas regarding potential conflicts or bias,” the county attorney explained to the five board members, who sat in a row on a platform facing dozens of attendees, many wearing yellow stickers emblazoned with the slogan “RESPECT THE CAP!”

The attorney outlined the role of each of the meeting’s participants: the Planning Commission and attorney’s office had prepared informational reports; the Daleys would present their case for expansion; the public would weigh in on whether the expansion was legal; and the Board of Adjustment members would ultimately vote on whether to allow the expansion.

“Your job in all of this is to set aside any personal opinions and make your decision based upon the record,” the attorney said, then began to question the members one-by-one.

This meeting — which until now has blocked the 1,700-head dairy from tripling in size — is at the heart of a yearslong legal battle between the Daley family; Winona County; and local environmental activists who worry about the risk the farm poses to the area’s drinking water.

The Daleys say members of the environmental group, Land Stewardship Project, stacked the county government to block the proposed expansion, violating the family’s right to due process.

Environmental advocates and their allies say the Daleys took the fight too far when they sued individual members of the county commission and local environmentalists, including some who did not even hold any government positions. They say the lawsuit was an attempt to bully local officials into allowing the Daleys to expand well beyond the limits set by local rules.

The lawsuit did succeed in shutting up many of the named defendants, who now refuse to talk about the case publicly for fear of retaliation, or because they are still tied up in the ongoing litigation.

The fight has drawn involvement from state and national organizations that view the conflict as a proxy fight in the battle to control the narrative and future of American agriculture, all while the industry continues to rapidly consolidate.

And it has exacerbated a divide in the community, between those who view large-scale animal agriculture as a threat to local resources, and those committed to an American farm system that rewards growth above all else.

For years now, the Ahrens have been symbols of resistance to the Daley Farm expansion — and it’s taken a toll. 

For them, the fight was never meant to be personal. 

“We’re not singling out anybody when we say we don’t want expansion,” Richard said. 

But at times, it has felt personal, Karen added.

Richard and Karen Ahrens look over newspaper clippings, water quality studies and their own nitrate test results at their home in Lewiston on March 20, 2024. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.

A uniquely vulnerable landscape

In this rural corner of Minnesota, the land swallows streams whole, and springs well up through deep cracks in the limestone bedrock. The line between groundwater and surface water is blurry due to the scattered sinkholes and springs, features of Karst terrain.

Rainwater collects nitrogen from the commercial fertilizer and manure spread on Winona County farms and carries it through these natural channels until it reaches the aquifers drawn upon by residents’ wells. 

Along the way, microscopic organisms convert the nitrogen to nitrate, a toxic substance that is especially dangerous to pregnant women and babies. Sometimes the contaminated water takes centuries to reach aquifers and sometimes it takes days.

The nitrate contamination in drinking water is reaching crisis levels.

Winona County has some of the highest rates of nitrate pollution in the state, and the EPA warned state agencies in November that they need to take stronger action to protect drinking water in southeast Minnesota after prodding by environmental groups including Land Stewardship Project. 

It could be the farm next door, or the one several miles away, that is responsible for polluting an aquifer.  The pollution could have been caused by the people who farmed the land 100 years ago, or those who are farming it today. That makes it difficult, and expensive, to determine the exact farmer or field responsible for the damage.

The situation makes some people suspicious of their neighbors — and others defensive of their farming practices.

Since the 1980s, Land Stewardship Project has attempted to unify local farmers and environmentalists around the shared goal of cleaning up the drinking water. The organization opened an office — one of its three — in Lewiston in 1985.

The office is one of a handful of active storefronts on Lewiston’s Main Street. It faces the sprawling complex belonging to Lewiston Feed and Produce, where trucks transport feed, seeds and fertilizer to area farms.

Land Stewardship Project hosts seminars on soil health practices that improve both water quality and a farmer’s bottom line. The group emphasizes peer-to-peer training, hosting events where farmers share their experiences with various environmentally friendly farming practices.

Land Stewardship Project leaders traditionally chose their fights carefully, only opposing the construction or expansion of livestock operations when they had specific concerns about the farm’s impact on water quality, said Doug Nopar, who led Land Stewardship Project’s organizing efforts in the area until 2021.

The fight over the Daley Farm expansion had been brewing for months before it came to the Winona County Board of Adjustment.

“It is all anybody is talking about,” said Rachel Stoll, one of the board members, when asked at the meeting if she’d had conversations about the proposed expansion. “But I’m trying to keep my mouth shut.”

The county attorney pointed out that three of the board’s five members, including Stoll, were members of Land Stewardship Project, which had already begun campaigning against the expansion. At the time of the meeting, the nonprofit was involved in a lawsuit against the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency over the dairy’s environmental review. 

Before their appointment to the Board of Adjustment, Stoll and another member, Wendy Larson, submitted public comments to the MPCA in October 2018 criticizing the proposed expansion and encouraging the agency to perform a more thorough review of the project’s potential impact. Land Stewardship Project organized the campaign.

“Are you able to set aside your involvement with Land Stewardship Project, as well as any personal opinions that you may have, and base your decision in this matter solely on the record before you?” the county attorney asked.

“Yes,” the board members answered.

The three Land Stewardship Project members on the board ultimately voted together against the expansion request, blocking it.

A consolidating livestock system

When Doug Nopar purchased a small farm with his wife in Winona County in the early 1990s, industrialized agriculture was ramping up. Nopar’s family raised a small herd of sheep and some cattle, and Nopar worked with Land Stewardship Project on soil health programs. 

Other members — and outside observers — credit Nopar for using his organizing prowess to build the Land Stewardship Project into a respected force in the community.

“I hate seeing the little guy being stomped on by people of power, and I hate seeing the land and water being compromised,” Nopar said.

When he first arrived in Winona County, farms were somewhat more diverse than they are today; in Minnesota, it wasn’t uncommon for crop farmers to have a couple hundred head of dairy cattle, or a single hog barn, to generate more income. 

Dairy cattle at the Daley farm. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.

Throughout the ‘90s and 2000s, however, farmers became increasingly specialized, and livestock farmers adopted a new type of livestock confinement system, trading open pastures for enclosed barns, packing in as many animals as possible.

This kind of operation — called a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, and referred to as “factory farms” by some environmental groups — is profitable because it minimizes labor, land and infrastructure expenses while maximizing the number of animals.

While CAFOs are financial boons for their owners, they inspired a wave of environmental and animal welfare activism. 

CAFOs threaten both air and water quality, largely due to the massive quantities of waste — urine, manure, burps and farts — the animals generate.

That waste has to go somewhere. It’s usually applied to crop fields as fertilizer because it’s cheap, and the high nitrogen content encourages crop growth. But manure storage lagoons can leak, and in some cases, overflow and spill sewage into waterways. 

In areas where livestock operations have proliferated in recent decades, nitrate pollution has gotten worse.

In 2013, a manure lagoon at a 350-cow dairy in neighboring Fillmore County ruptured, spilling up to 1 million gallons of waste. Some of the manure reached a nearby trout stream that feeds into the Root River. 

And in 2022, more than 2,500 fish died in a creek outside of Lewiston. Investigators determined that recent manure and pesticide application on surrounding crop fields contributed to the fish kill.

Nopar and his colleagues at Land Stewardship Project attempted to block proposed livestock operations they viewed as a threat to the area’s water quality. But fighting individual facilities one-by-one is time intensive and garnered mixed results, so they aimed even higher: a county level ordinance that would limit the size of livestock operations.

They pushed for a 1998 ordinance limiting farms to 1,500 “animal units,” the equivalent of around 150,000 full-grown chickens, 3,750 hogs or 1,071 mature dairy cattle.

“That was just a huge, couple-years long negotiation process — a political negotiation process,” Nopar said. The ordinance also ensures neighbors will be notified of any proposed or expanding large livestock operations, and requires a public hearing where neighbors can weigh in on the facility’s size and location.

The Daleys, having farmed in the county for a century prior to the cap’s implementation, were grandfathered in at their existing size, around 2,000 animal units. They did not fight the ordinance, Daley said, but he believes the cap is arbitrary.

“There was zero science behind it,” Daley said.

The dairy’s cows produce more than 33 million gallons of manure per year. Most of it is stored in an open-air lagoon behind the farm’s milking parlor.

For the Land Stewardship Project members, the proposed expansion goes hand-in-hand with a consolidating farm system that has devastated local communities, as well as water quality.

“What we’re seeing — you can see it reflected in the landscape — is monocultures of corn, soybeans and confinement operations. And that’s been a system that has worked for a lot of people, but today’s generation of farmers have been pushed into farming in this way,” said Martin Moore, policy organizer for Land Stewardship Project in southeast Minnesota.

The group envisions an agricultural system with more variety; one that isn’t geared towards expansion and further consolidation.

Land Stewardship Project’s office in Lewiston, which opened in 1985. Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer.

“Our vision for agriculture is one where we’re keeping as many farmers on the land as possible,” Moore said. “Our agricultural system is dominated by a lot of corporate large interests that drive expansion and drive consolidation to the detriment of our rural communities, to the detriment of our small and mid-sized farmers, to the detriment of our soil and water.”

But the Daley Farm isn’t corporate-owned, and that makes the politics of the expansion fight more complicated. 

“It’s much easier to fight a factory farm when it’s an outside entity proposing it,” Nopar said.

Daley argues that his family’s farm is doing everything Land Stewardship Project wants in a farming operation. They plant alfalfa and rye as cover crops, and feed their alfalfa and corn to the cows. One building on the property houses sand-separating machinery, which uses recycled water to wash the cows’ bedding for reuse, and keeps sand out of the manure pit and crop fields.

The economic pressure driving the Daleys to expand is very real. The dairy industry is consolidating faster than other agricultural sectors, driven by simple economies of scale: The larger a herd, the lower the cost of production per gallon of milk.

The Daleys argue that an expansion is necessary to support the next generation — the sixth — as they take on active roles in the family business.

Daley said he doesn’t see the connection between water quality and his farm tripling in size. 

“Regardless of whether we got cows here or not, there’s farmland, and that farmland gets fertilized with nitrogen,” Daley said.

‘This is democracy’

After the county attorney finished questioning the board members about their potential allegiances at the February 2019 Board of Adjustment meeting, an attorney for the Daley family stepped up to the podium. 

The Daleys had hired Matthew Berger, who represents some of the most powerful agriculture organizations in the state, to fight the coordinated campaign against the proposed expansion.

The scene more closely resembled a courtroom witness examination than a county board meeting as Berger grilled the board members. 

“As a member of Land Stewardship Project, do each of you generally agree with the viewpoints expressed by Land Stewardship Project?” Berger asked Stoll, Larson and Hales. 

The three agreed.

“I would say, in general, a lot of them. Like I said, I really appreciate their Farm Beginnings Program that helps teach new farmers how to stay on the land and be on the land, and I really appreciate their soil health work,” Stoll said. 

“Ms. Stoll, were you aware about the lawsuit that Land Stewardship Project started related to this project?” the Daley’s attorney asked in the hearing. 

“I think I read about it in the paper, yeah. I don’t know deeply about it,” Stoll responded.

Allowing an outside attorney to question board members’ affiliations is unusual in county meetings, said Paul Reuvers, the attorney representing Winona County in court. But officials wanted to do everything in their power to provide due process.

“The county was gonna get sued either way,” Reuvers said — implying that had the Daleys prevailed, local environmentalists would have sued.

Land Stewardship Project and its members caught wind of the Daleys’ proposed expansion when the family submitted its plans to the MPCA for an environmental review — without a go-ahead from the county government — and decided to run a full-court press against the expansion, starting with the MPCA.

Winona County residents gathered on Nov. 28, 2021, to call for the Board of Adjustment to deny Daley Farm’s request for a variance to the animal unit cap. Photo courtesy Land Stewardship Project.

Land Stewardship Project members — including two who sat on the Board of Adjustments for the expansion’s initial hearing — wrote to the MPCA asking the agency to perform an “environmental impact statement,” which is a more intensive environmental review used most often for proposed landfills. 

In 2014, the MPCA’s Citizen’s Board forced the agency to perform an environmental impact statement for a proposed dairy in Baker Township — a likely first for a livestock operation. The dairy owners, Riverview LLP, yanked their proposal and decided to set up shop elsewhere. 

In 2015, the divided Minnesota Legislature eliminated the Citizens’ Board due to the fallout, despite fierce objections from major environmental groups. 

As industrialized livestock operations proliferated across the Midwest, Republican-controlled state and local governments, at the urging of influential agribusiness groups, pared down neighbors’ opportunities to weigh in on new or expanding livestock operations — largely because citizen engagement is a path to blocking potential new livestock operations.

Missouri, for instance, strictly limits local authority over the issue, curtailing activists’ ability to block specific CAFO developments or pass county ordinances prohibiting new large livestock operations.

Minnesota, unlike some of its neighbors, still allows for local control.

“What we’ve always been advocating for is upholding local democracy, and the decisions made by local democracy that have been around for decades at this point,” said Moore of Land Stewardship Project.

MPCA declined to pursue an environmental impact statement, so Land Stewardship Project sued in early February 2019, two weeks before the first hearing on the proposed expansion. That lawsuit did not achieve LSP’s goals: a judge ruled that MPCA was correct not to require an environmental impact statement.

The Daleys sued in Winona County District Court a month after the Board of Adjustment hearing, arguing that the board members’ affiliation with Land Stewardship Project violated the Daleys’ due process rights.

The board members were biased, the Daleys argued, and Land Stewardship Project members, including Nopar, had conspired to stack the Board of Variance against the dairy expansion. 

In the discovery process, Land Stewardship Project was forced to hand over emails regarding the Daley Farm expansion.

The emails revealed that on the evening of Oct. 29, 2018 Nopar wrote to Cherie Hales, a Board of Adjustment member, and suggested who should be appointed. At the first meeting of 2019, the elected county board would appoint members of the Board of Adjustment and the Planning and Zoning Commission, and Nopar wanted to make sure that those seats were filled with people who would protect the livestock cap he helped pass years ago. 

“These two bodies will have an important say on the Daley Dairy expansion plans,” Nopar wrote. 

Then he suggested a five-step plan to get friendly members reappointed and to encourage other Land Stewardship members to apply for vacant seats. 

Nopar said he frequently advocated for specific candidates who shared his values — in his personal capacity, rather than in his role as a staff member at Land Stewardship Project, which is a nonprofit organization barred from endorsing political candidates.

From Nopar’s perspective, there’s nothing nefarious afoot: If you win elections, you get to appoint board members, and residents have a right to weigh in. “This is democracy,” he said.

Kevin Mark, a judge from neighboring Goodhue County who was appointed to hear the case between the Daleys and Winona County, disagreed. 

“It is clear that the county process here was corrupted for the specific purpose of opposing Daley Farm’s project,” said Mark in a 2020 ruling from the bench.

With two of the three Land Stewardship Project-affiliated Board of Adjustment members vacating their posts at the start of 2021, Mark ultimately decided to send the variance request back to the Board of Adjustment for a re-do.

With a 2-2 vote — one member abstained — the new Winona County Board of Adjustment again denied the Daley’s proposed expansion in December 2021.

The variance failed because the Daleys could not prove that they needed the variance for reasons other than financial gain. 

The Daleys returned to Winona County District Court, again alleging bias. But the judge that ruled in their favor the first time was no longer on the case. 

Judge Douglas Bayley ruled in favor of the county and dismissed the Daleys’ claims.

Since then, the Daleys have filed a series of unsuccessful appeals. The case is still active.

“It was set up,” Daley said. “That’s not democracy.”

Some of the state’s major agriculture groups — Minnesota Milk Producers Association, Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation, Minnesota Pork Producers Association, Minnesota State Cattleman’s Association — rallied in support of the Daley farm.

“Land Stewardship Project in particular, has, for decades, promoted the idea that only certain kinds of farming operations should be allowed by society to operate,” the groups wrote in a court filing supporting the Daleys.

Daley Farm of Lewiston. Courtesy photo.

Daleys come after local environmental activists with lawsuit

After two unsuccessful variance hearings, the Daleys took a more aggressive legal strategy. 

They sued the individual members of the Winona County Commission, the Board of Adjustment and the staff and members of the Land Stewardship Project who were copied on Nopar’s 2018 email with suggestions for the next round of board appointees.

The lawsuit accused the individuals of conspiracy to deny rights and interference with prospective economic advantage. The Daleys sought $50,000 in damages, plus attorney fees. 

That lawsuit coincided with leadership turnover at Land Stewardship Project. Between 2020 and 2023, the organization cycled through three executive directors. Nopar retired in 2021.

“We weren’t seeing any accountability by them at all,” Daley said. “They weren’t talking. They were refusing to talk about anything remotely close to feedlots, animal unit cap, us…So we’re like, well, you have to explain yourself. They weren’t even doing that.”

The conflict and ensuing litigation have tested the limits of Minnesota neighborliness. Some of the individuals named in the suit — and members of the Board of Adjustment that initially denied the request — now refrain from speaking publicly about the Daley Farm issue for fear of further retaliation.

“(The Daleys) must know that there’s a thin argument — that just because they want an ordinance overturned, it should be overturned…So when you don’t have much to say about that, then you have to start trying to hurt the reputation and character of the people that stand between you and your ordinance,” said Tim Ahrens, the son of Richard and Karen and one of the opponents of the dairy expansion.

Reuvers, the attorney for Winona County, said he worries the litigation will discourage public involvement in local government.

“When you get attacked, as they are by the Daleys, it gets harder and harder to find good people to serve,” Reuvers said.

The Daleys ultimately withdrew the lawsuit against the individuals. 

It’s about the water

No matter what happens with the Daley Farm, officials agree: Something must be done about the water in Winona County.

Lawmakers this session are weighing options to address nitrate pollution. A bill approved by the Senate Agriculture, Broadband, and Rural Development Committee would dedicate $3.25 million in one-time funding to address nitrate pollution, dividing the money between the Minnesota Department of Health and the Department of Agriculture for nitrate mitigation in drinking water and adoption of soil health practices.

A map of Winona County illustrating the area’s Karst features. Courtesy of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

The House agriculture finance bill would repurpose a fertilizer tax currently dedicated to the Agricultural Fertilizer Research and Education Council, and instead use the money to address nitrate pollution. 

Sen. Aric Putnam, DFL-Saint Cloud, leads the Senate agriculture committee and expects the two chambers will reach a compromise in the coming weeks.

In southeastern Minnesota, officials are swimming upstream as they try to locate and treat contaminated wells. Many landowners are reluctant to test their well water for fear of revealing expensive issues.

But there are positive signs for the area’s water: County offices have received far more requests for soil health financial assistance grants than they are able to fulfill. The funds help farmers purchase the technology needed to improve soil quality, like no-till equipment, which reduces erosion. Increasing funding for the grant program — a carrot, rather than a stick — is a priority for Putnam and other lawmakers in both parties. 

For the Ahrens family, however, the issue of the proposed Daley Farm expansion is about more than water — it’s about the town’s health and vibrancy. Over their seven decades in Lewiston, they’ve seen countless shops close up, and the town become a hollowed-out version of itself. 

They attribute the town’s former vitality to the success of the many surrounding small farms. As the industry consolidated, many families sold their land and moved away. 

“I’m not saying that they’re not making jobs for people — they truly are,” Karen said of the Daleys. “But, it’s definitely a fact that they’re hurting our midsize and small farms…The milk trucks can come to Daley’s and be full up, you know, so they don’t have to go to 100 farms to get the milk.”

In the Ahrens home, all of the documents related to water quality and the region’s geography are organized in transparent sleeves and binder clips, ready to show anyone who will listen.

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