Controversial Pierce Co. factory farm appeals groundwater decision

A factory farm in Pierce County filed a lawsuit late last month appealing an administrative law judge’s decision that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources didn’t include enough groundwater protections when approving a permit allowing the farm to expand from 1,700 to 6,500 cows. 

The Ridge Breeze Dairy in Maiden Rock has long been the subject of local activism against the expansion, which is expected to generate 78 million gallons of manure every year. The initial DNR permit process drew significant public participation. 

The dairy is owned by the Appleton-based Breeze Dairy Group, which operates a number of farms in the state — some with a history of manure spills. 

Communities across Wisconsin are facing the effects of massive factory farms on their local water, particularly rural areas where residents get their drinking water from private wells. The groundwater around the Ridge Breeze site already has elevated nitrate levels, which have been linked to blue-baby syndrome, thyroid disease and colon cancer.

The DNR approved the expansion permit in February 2025. During the application process, the agency had to send the permit back to the farm operators once because it named nearby properties as sites for planned manure spreading although those property owners were never contacted.

After the approval, a group of local residents and the advocacy group Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin filed a lawsuit alleging that the permit did not do enough to ensure that the area groundwater was protected. 

Two days of hearings were held in Eau Claire in March and in August Administrative Law Judge Angela Chaput Foy ruled in favor of the residents, sending the permit back to the DNR to include a process through which the agency can verify that the farm isn’t harming the groundwater. 

“By omitting a mechanism to verify actual compliance, the Department has issued a mandate while simultaneously denying itself the tools or data necessary to know whether that mandate is broken,” Chaput Foy wrote.

In the lawsuit, filed Sept. 23 in Outagamie County Circuit Court, the farm argues that it’s “aggrieved” by being forced to verify it is following the law, mostly because it would have to pay the cost of digging groundwater monitoring wells. 

In recent years, Wisconsin factory farms and their allied advocacy groups have also filed lawsuits that argue the DNR lacks the authority to regulate their pollutants at all. 

Ridge Breeze argues that state law doesn’t include a mechanism through which the DNR can verify compliance with groundwater standards in a factory farm’s permit. 

“The ALJ concludes that the lack of mechanisms in the Permit to verify that Ridge Breeze’s practices comply with the standards is inherently contradictory to the mandate to assure compliance with those standards,” the lawsuit states. “The Decision thus improperly conflates the statutory requirement to assure compliance with a (non-existent) obligation to prescribe conditions that verify compliance. Nothing in [state statute] requires the DNR to require groundwater monitoring or some other mechanism to ‘verify’ compliance or detect non-compliance.”

The dairy points to parts of Chaput Foy’s decision in which she finds that the provisions included in the initial permit should be strong enough to protect the groundwater. 

“By disregarding substantial record evidence that showed the terms prescribed in the Permit were reasonable and sufficient to assure compliance with groundwater standards — including the ALJ’s own conclusion that the permit ‘sets Ridge Breeze up for anticipated compliance’ — the Decision is outside the range of discretion conferred upon DNR and is unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious, and should be reversed and/or remanded to the agency,” the lawsuit states. 

Danny Akenson, an organizer with GROWW, said in a statement that Ridge Breeze appealing the decision shows the farm cares more about its bottom line than being a good neighbor. 

“We fought for three years to make sure the state has a way to determine whether Ridge Breeze is contaminating our groundwater, and the judge agreed with us,” Akenson said. “Factory farm special interests care more about protecting corporate profits than protecting the groundwater Wisconsin families rely on. Ridge Breeze may have deep pockets for legal fees, but we’re organized, and we’re not going to let them off the hook.”