The report released Wednesday by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project found nearly two-thirds of states have cut staffing and more than half have reduced funding for environmental agencies since 2010. Wisconsin was among the top 10 states in the nation for these cuts.
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George Meyer, an influential leader in Wisconsin in conservation, died Wednesday in Madison surrounded by his family. He was 78.
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The latest rule is the most significant change since it was first approved by EPA in 1991 to reduce lead exposure in drinking water.
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As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Wisconsin Public Service Commission seeking to force the release of unredacted documents showing how much electricity will be used at Meta’s planned data center in Beaver Dam.
In a news release, MEA said it had sought electrical load projections for data center projects in Beaver Dam and Port Washington in an October open records request. The PSC initially provided the firm with versions that redacted the electrical load information. MEA sent a follow-up request seeking unredacted versions of the document.
The PSC sent the unredacted version of the Port Washington project but denied the request for the Beaver Dam project, claiming it contained trade secrets.
Wisconsin’s open records law allows government agencies to deny records requests if the information within the document is a trade secret, however MEA disputes that the amount of energy Meta plans to request for its data center counts.
“It appears the PSC is unlawfully withholding this information because either Meta or a public utility is claiming the electricity demand for the data center is a trade secret,” MEA legal fellow Michael Greif said in a statement. “We call on Alliant Energy, American Transmission Company and Meta to be forthright with the public about their plans. These companies are asking a lot of the public and the public deserves, at least the very least, basic information about the data center’s massive energy needs.”
Data center projects across the country are often shrouded in secrecy. A study in Virginia found that at least 80% of local governments involved with data center proposals had signed non-disclosure agreements with the data center companies — though it’s unclear how an NDA would be enforceable against Wisconsin’s public records laws.
Earlier this year, MEA filed a separate lawsuit to force the city of Racine to release records related to the projected water use at Microsoft’s planned data center in Mount Pleasant.
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The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
A Wisconsin Senate Committee held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would allow private companies to construct small solar projects on underutilized farmland and commercial rooftops across the state.
The bill, which would encroach on the monopoly the state’s existing utility companies are allowed to maintain under state law, is being considered while people across the country worry about rising energy costs amid a boom in the construction of data centers and the increased use of electric vehicles and appliances.
Environmental groups in the state have also regularly complained that the utility companies aren’t constructing enough renewable energy projects or sunsetting existing coal and natural gas power plants quickly enough.
The bill, authored by Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) and Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa), would allow people in Wisconsin to subscribe to get some of their power from a local “community solar” installation. The subscribers would receive credits they can put toward their utility bill. Because the power developed at the local solar installation will still need to travel through the utility company’s infrastructure, the bill includes a provision that all subscribers to the program would have to pay at least $20 per month on their electric bill.
In the hearing of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Local Government, the bill’s authors said allowing community solar projects would increase people’s energy choices while allowing the expansion of solar power in the state that avoids the objections from local residents that often come with large, utility-scale solar projects.
“This change will open a new market sector in a high energy industry, attract economic investments in Wisconsin, create local jobs, drive innovation and competition, and ultimately save consumers and small businesses money on their energy bills,” Testin said.
But the authors also acknowledged there is still a lot of disagreement over the details and the bill is not yet in its final form.
“We’re not exactly there yet. We’re not all agreeing on this being the best way forward just yet, but this public hearing is a really important step to vet that out a little bit more to get us closer to that answer,” Krug said. “So yes, there are still some kinks to work out between the utilities and individuals who want a more market-based approach to solar. I hope we can work through those issues here.”
Over the hearing’s three and a half hours, the testimony split among two groups — the utility companies who are opposed to the bill and a coalition of solar companies, economists, farmers and employers who are in favor.
The utility companies accused the bill of creating a “shell game” that would lower the costs for the subscribers of a given project while raising electric bills for everyone else. Zack Hill, testifying on behalf of Alliant Energy, said the utility estimated that community solar would result in an additional $8.75 billion in costs for ratepayers over the next 25 years.
“How does [the bill] pay for subscribers 10 to 20% energy savings? The short answer: It will shift costs to your other constituents,” Hill said. “Some have said this sounds like community solar voodoo economics, but all you have to remember is this, when a company promises you a discount, someone else has to pay for it.”
People in favor of the bill argued that the generation of more energy could only help lower energy costs while disputing the utility companies’ claims. Will Flanders, the research director at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, also said the utilities’ estimates undervalue the benefits that community solar can add.
“This is a model that expands energy choice without large subsidies, without mandates, without turning more power over to monopoly utilities,” Flanders said. “In fact, it introduces competition at a time when Wisconsin needs it the most.”
“We argue that community solar can deliver net savings to the entire system,” he continued. “When we talk about a shell game, what we’re really saying is there’s no real additional resources being put into the system, but obviously there is additional resources being put in when we have these with these programs in place.”
Karl Rabago, a Denver-based energy consultant who testified with Flanders, said that the Alliant $8.75 billion estimate amounted to a threat that if the utilities don’t get to sell the energy, they’ll charge consumers for that loss.
“No one knows where this number comes from, but having seen how utilities make their case in other states, I am 99.9% confident they are basically saying, ‘If we don’t get to make the electricity and sell it, we could potentially lose $8.75 billion and and if we don’t make that money, we’re going to charge you for it anyway,’ and that’s how customer costs could go up,” Rabago said. “That’s the most likely explanation for a histrionic number. The utility position, to summarize, seems to sound a bit like ‘let us do it all and no one gets hurt.’ We’ve heard those kinds of exhortations. Monopolies do it particularly well.”
Toward the end of the hearing, a number of Wisconsin property owners testified, touting the benefits they’ll receive if they’re able to allow solar projects to be constructed on their land.
Duane Hinchley, a Cambridge dairy farmer, said community solar is an “innovative solution” that can give farmers a stable income to hedge against the risks in the agriculture business. Plus, he said, allowing farmers to participate will prevent land that has been farmed for generations from being developed into subdivisions.
“With the right policies in place, our state’s proud agricultural heritage can be a cornerstone of Wisconsin’s clean energy future,” Hinchley said.
But throughout the day, lawmakers from both parties appeared skeptical of the bill’s benefits.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said repeatedly he didn’t understand how the program would work for the utility companies.
“It sounds like a shell game to me,” he said. “I just, I’m really having a challenge with trying to figure out how that would work, because it would seem to me that the energy company, the regulated company, is the one that’s going to be footing the bill for this.”
Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) questioned how the program wouldn’t eventually raise energy costs for non-participants, but said one selling point for the bill was that it would encourage the increased development of renewable energy.
“I heard you say this is going to force more solar to be built, whether or not you need it,” Spreitzer said to a utility company representative. “And I guess that, to me, is the one selling point of the bill. Is that I look at where we’ve been in the landscape lately, where we have, unfortunately, federal incentives for solar that are going away. We have increasing demand for power from data centers. We’re seeing new natural gas plants get built. We’re seeing coal plants not being retired, when we hoped they would. To me, there’s plenty of need for solar.”
If the utility companies won’t support a community solar proposal, Spreitzer wondered, what do they need from the Legislature to encourage more solar development?
“And so if we’re not going to go down this route, what are the incentives that you all need to make sure that we can continue to drive solar development without increasing rates for customers and without saying, ‘let’s go build a natural gas plant instead?” he asked.
Also on Tuesday, the committee heard testimony on a bill from Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) that would prohibit local governments in Wisconsin from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances, which grant natural elements legal rights that can be protected in court.
Nass said in his testimony that the idea is anti-American and is contrary to the values of the U.S. Constitution.
“This is a radical departure from our current law. Rights are something that human beings have,” Nass said. “This concept of granting nature rights is something that has been done primarily in foreign countries … and many of these countries lean dramatically towards socialism and communism, and their attitude is not compatible with private property rights in our country.”
But proponents of rights of nature resolutions frequently point to the fact that corporations are granted rights under U.S. law. Communities including Green Bay and Milwaukee have passed or begun drafting rights of nature ordinances and some Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would grant Devil’s Lake State Park some rights that can be protected in court.
In a statement after the hearing, Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the co-authors of the Democratic proposal, wrote, “As we heard from advocates today, Rights of Nature is one of the strongest tools local governments have to protect clean air, clean water and healthy soil for future generations — so that our grandchildren, and their children after them, can drink our waters, eat food grown in our soils, and hunt in our forests.”
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A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing on a Republican bill that would bar local governments from passing ordinances that grant legal rights to natural resources.
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An oak savannah in southern Dane County that the Badgerland Foundation is working to conserve using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The looming shutdown of Wisconsin’s decades old Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program has put conservation projects across Wisconsin at risk as land trusts attempt to muddle on without the program that has protected more than 700,000 acres of land in the state.
Without the stewardship fund, projects to conserve 1,300 acres of Northwoods forest near the headwaters of the Wisconsin River in Vilas County, hundreds of acres of “ecologically significant” wetlands in Door County and dozens of acres of prairie and grassland in Dane County could go unfinished.
“It’s a bit bleak and it’s so disheartening to know that there’s so many beautiful, wonderful places kind of on the chopping block right now all across the state,” says Emily Wood, executive director of the Door County Land Trust. “It’s not just us. We hear from our partners that there are hundreds and thousands of acres that are just not going to be protected if [the program] goes away, and that’s going to have such an impact, domino effect, on future generations.”
The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship fund was created in 1989 to fund land conservation in Wisconsin. The program provides grants to local governments and non-profits to cover some of the costs for purchasing and conserving land that can be used for recreation, preserving animal habitats and supporting local industries such as forestry.
The program enjoys massive bipartisan support, yet in recent years, some Republicans in the state Legislature — largely from communities in the northern part of the state — have grown hostile to it, claiming that the program has too often been used to fund the purchase of land up north, depleting local tax bases.
Republican legislators have also complained that they no longer have oversight over the Department of Natural Resource’s management of the program after a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision last year found that the Legislature had given itself an unconstitutional veto authority over the DNR’s grant decisions.
Several attempts have been made to save the program from expiring next summer. In his initial state budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers asked to extend the program for ten years with $100 million in annual funding. Republicans stripped that provision from the budget immediately.
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) have authored a bill that would extend the program for four years at $28 million per year. The bill also includes a provision that would require the full Legislature to approve any land purchases that cost more than $1 million — a proposal that critics say would be far too slow for the speed at which real estate transactions need to move.
A separate proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) would re-authorize the program for six years at $72 million per year and create an independent board made up of members appointed by the Legislature to approve large land purchases through the program.
But there has been little progress made on advancing either proposal and now conservation groups are trying to plan for the next year without the support that Knowles-Nelson has traditionally provided.
Wood says that her organization is trying to protect the landscape in one of the most ecologically significant parts of the state. The challenge for her group is that Door County’s natural beauty draws tourists and increased development, yet too much development would damage the natural beauty.
The Door County Land Trust has protected more than 5,000 acres of land in the county and Knowles-Nelson has covered half the cost in nearly every transaction, according to Wood. With the program shuttering next year, three projects totaling about $1 million — all of which scored highly on the DNR criteria — are at risk.
“The county as a whole receives a ton of money from the Knowles-Nelson stewardship fund, because we are so geared towards tourism and access to natural resources,” she says. The stewardship fund is critical for Door County to continue “to be the county that you know, everyone expects us to be when they get in the car and come up here.”
Near the southern border of Dane County, Filip Sanna and the BadgerLand Foundation are working with the Driftless Area Land Conservancy and The Prairie Enthusiasts to protect and restore vital oak savannah and prairie in southern Wisconsin.
Hundreds of years of agriculture have all but destroyed the native prairies in what was once one of the most ecologically diverse regions in the world.
The foundation has already conserved and gifted to the Driftless Area Land Conservancy hundreds of acres between Belleville and New Glarus that will soon be open to the public for hiking and hunting and used for sustainable practices such as regenerative agriculture. But future plans are threatened by the looming loss of stewardship funds.
Recently, a tract of about 30 acres became available on the market within an area environmental groups have targeted as important for protecting grassland bird habitat. The Prairie Enthusiasts wanted to conserve the land but funds through the stewardship program wouldn’t be available fast enough. So the BadgerLand Foundation and the Prairie Enthusiasts reached an agreement in which the foundation would purchase the land and then sell it to the Prairie Enthusiasts once the stewardship grant comes through.
Now those funds are uncertain and Sanna says it could sidetrack future plans.
One of the arguments Republican legislators have often made against the Knowles-Nelson program is that more populated areas in the southern part of the state should bear more of the land conservation burden.
But the program dying off could jeopardize land conservation in the population centers because land is more expensive there. Dane County’s recently enacted 2026 budget doubled the size of the county’s conservation fund from $5 million to $10 million. That, Sanna says, can be a Band-aid for now. But county and local governments are facing their own budget challenges and smaller counties won’t be able to step into the DNR’s conservation shoes. In many places, the local governments are also dependent on stewardship program funds to conserve and maintain public land.
“One of the responses we have to the uncertainty about Knowles-Nelson is to try to look to the county level and then some combination of county funding and private donations,” Sanna says. “That might work in Dane County, where we have a relatively strong tax base. But if you go to the neighboring counties around, Green and Iowa and Lafayette and all of those counties, that’s probably not an option.”
“if [Knowles-Nelson] dies, the next step is going to be, now you’re going to have nice parks around all the wealthy people, but all the rest of Wisconsin that is smaller population centers that’ll just be like towns, rural housing, farmland, private land,” he continues. “There won’t be public land.”
Way up in Vilas County, in the part of the state where the fight over land conservation has been most heated, a handful of administrative delays might end up killing a 1,300 acre conservation project because stewardship funds will no longer be available.
The Northwoods Alliance and Partners in Forestry are working together to use federal and Knowles-Nelson funds to preserve two tracts of land west of the town of Land O’ Lakes. Joe Hovel, director of Partners in Forestry, says the project would include trails as part of the extensive Wilderness Lakes bike path system.
Because the real estate deal on the project got delayed, and the slow speed at which the state and federal government have moved, it’s likely that the chance to use Knowles-Nelson dollars has already passed.
Hovel says the complaints about land conservation up north discount the economic value of protecting the land for recreational uses.
“It’s really short sighted in a sense that there isn’t enough respect for the recreational value of this land conservation stuff,” Hovel says. “The value of public access conservation land dwarfs, I mean it literally dwarfs, the value that timber revenue brings in.”
A report from the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable found that recreation on federal public lands generates $128.5 billion in economic activity every year. All the logging on federal land generates $200-300 million per year.
The Legislature has just over six months to extend the program. Wood says it would be a self-inflicted wound if elected officials allow a program that other states look to as a model to expire.
“It’s so disheartening to hear that the fund that has had so much success over the years, that other states look to how to fund conservation, they look to Wisconsin’s model on how to do it, and that we as a state, that same model is going to go down just because of partisan gridlock,” she says. “We really just need to keep it alive because funding it in a later year, or coming back and making changes to make it better are way more possible if it’s an existing program.”
“But coming up with another one from scratch, it just seems like it would be an impossibility. So right now, it does feel like we are just screaming to keep it, just keep it alive. Just don’t kill it.”
Wisconsin is reviewing registration of pesticides that some Wisconsin farm groups say would help manage pests and disease, but some scientists and environmentalists argue they contain PFAS.
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A settlement is pending in the state’s case against a Marinette manufacturer of firefighting foam over alleged violations of the state’s spills law for failing to report PFAS contamination.
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For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90 million acres — about the size of Montana — and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline.
But a growing body of research reveals that America’s obsession with corn has a steep price: The fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water.
Corn is essential to the rural economy and to the world’s food supply, and researchers say the problem isn’t the corn itself. It’s how we grow it.
Corn farmers rely on heavy fertilizer use to sustain today’s high yields. And when that nitrogen breaks down in the soil, it releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Producing nitrogen fertilizer also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to its climate footprint.
Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and corn uses more than two-thirds of all nitrogen fertilizer nationwide — making it the leading driver of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, studies show.
The corn and ethanol industries insist that rapid growth in ethanol — which now consumes more than 40% of the U.S. corn crop — is a net environmental benefit, and they strongly dispute research suggesting otherwise.
Since 2000, U.S. corn production has surged almost 50%, further adding to the crop’s climate impact.
Yet the environmental costs of corn rarely make headlines or factor into political debates. Much of the dynamic traces back to federal policy — and to the powerful corn and ethanol lobby that helped shape it.
The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in the mid 2000s, required that gasoline be blended with ethanol, a biofuel that in the United States comes almost entirely from corn. That mandate drove up demand and prices for corn, spurring farmers to plant more of it.
Many plant corn year after year on the same land. The practice, called “continuous corn,” demands massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and drives especially high nitrous oxide emissions.
At the same time, federal subsidies make it more lucrative to grow corn than to diversify. Taxpayers have covered more than $50 billion in corn insurance premiums over the past 30 years, according to federal data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
Researchers say proven conservation steps — such as planting rows of trees, shrubs and grasses in corn fields — could sharply reduce these emissions. But the Trump administration has eliminated many of the incentives that helped farmers try such practices.
Experts say it all raises a larger question: If America’s most widely planted crop is worsening climate change, shouldn’t we begin growing it a different way?
Corn has been a staple of U.S. agriculture for centuries, first domesticated by Native Americans and later used by European immigrants as a versatile crop for food and animal feed. Its production really took off in the 2000s after federal mandates and incentives helped turn much of America’s corn crop into ethanol.
Corn’s dominance — and the emissions that come with it — didn’t happen by accident. It was built through a high-dollar lobbying campaign that continues today.
In the late 1990s, America’s corn farmers were in trouble. Prices had cratered amid a global grain glut and the Asian financial crisis. A 1999 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said crop prices had hit “rock bottom.”
In 2001 and 2002, the federal government gave corn farmers and ethanol producers a boost — first through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bioenergy Program, which paid ethanol producers to increase their use of farm commodities for fuel. Then the 2002 Farm Bill created programs that continue to support ethanol and other renewable energy.
Corn growers soon after mounted an all-out campaign in Washington. Their goal: persuade Congress to require gasoline to be blended with ethanol. State and national grower groups lobbied relentlessly, pitching ethanol as a way to cut greenhouse gasses, reduce oil dependence and revive rural economies.
“We got down to a couple of votes in Congress, and the corn growers were united like never before,” recalled Jon Doggett, then the industry’s chief lobbyist, in an article published by the National Corn Growers Association. “I started receiving calls from Capitol Hill saying, ‘Would you have your growers stop calling us? We are with you.’ I had not seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since.”
Their persistence paid off. In 2005, Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain amount of ethanol be blended into U.S. gasoline each year. Two years later, lawmakers expanded it further. The policy transformed the market: The amount of corn used for ethanol domestically has more than tripled in the past 20 years.
When demand for corn spiked as a result of the RFS, it pushed up prices worldwide, said Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The result, Searchinger said, is that more land around the world got cleared to grow corn. That, in turn, resulted in more emissions.
That lobbying brought clout. “King Corn” became a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Since 2010, national corn and ethanol trade groups have spent more than $55 million on lobbying and millions more on political donations, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Floodlight.
In 2024 alone, those trade groups spent twice as much on lobbying as the National Rifle Association. Major industry players — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ethanol giant POET among them — have poured even more into Washington, ensuring the sector’s voice remains one of the loudest in U.S. agriculture.
Now those same groups are pushing for the next big prize: expanding higher-ethanol gasoline blends and positioning ethanol-based jet fuel as aviation’s “low-carbon” future.
Corn and ethanol trade groups didn’t make their officials available for interviews.
But on their websites and in their literature, they have promoted corn ethanol as a climate-friendly fuel.
The Renewable Fuels Association cites government and university research that finds burning ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40-50% compared with gasoline. The ethanol industry says the climate critics have it wrong — and that most of the corn used for fuel comes from better yields and smarter farming, not from plowing up new land. The amount of fertilizer required to produce a bushel of corn has dropped sharply in recent decades, they say.
“Ethanol reduces carbon emissions, removing the carbon equivalent of 12 million cars from the road each year,” according to the Renewable Fuels Association.
Growth Energy, a major ethanol trade group, said in a written statement that U.S. farmers and biofuel producers are “constantly finding new ways to make their operations more efficient and more environmentally beneficial,” using things like cover crops to reduce their carbon footprint.
But some research tells a different story.
A recent Environmental Working Group report finds that the way corn is grown in much of the Midwest — with the same fields planted in corn year after year — carries a heavy climate cost.
Research in 2022 by agricultural land use expert Tyler Lark and colleagues links the Renewable Fuel Standard to expanded corn cultivation, heavier fertilizer use, worsening water pollution and increased emissions. Scientists typically convert greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane into their carbon dioxide equivalents — or carbon intensity — so their warming impacts can be compared on the same scale.
“The carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher,” the authors concluded.
Lark’s research has been disputed by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Illinois, who published a formal rebuttal arguing the study relied on “questionable assumptions” and faulty modeling — a charge Lark’s team has rejected.
A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the RFS was unlikely to meet its greenhouse gas goals because the U.S. relies predominantly on corn ethanol and produces relatively little of the cleaner, advanced biofuels made from waste.
The problem isn’t just emissions, researchers say. Corn ethanol requires millions of acres that could instead be used for food crops or more efficient energy sources. One recent study found that solar panels can generate as much energy as corn ethanol on roughly 3% of the land.
“It’s just a terrible use of land,” Searchinger, the Princeton researcher, said of ethanol. “And you can’t solve climate change if you’re going to make such terrible use of land.”
Most of the country’s top crop isn’t feeding people. More than 40% of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. A similar amount is used to feed livestock, and just 12% ends up as food or in other uses.
Globally, corn production doubled from 2000 to 2021.
That growth has been fueled by fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide that can linger in the atmosphere for more than a century. That eats away at the ozone layer, which blocks most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Global emissions have soared alongside corn production. Between 1980 and 2020, nitrous oxide emissions from human activity climbed 40%, the Global Carbon project found.
In the United States, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture in 2022 were equal to roughly 262 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s equivalent to putting almost 56 million passenger cars on the road.
The biggest increases are coming straight from the Corn Belt.
Ethanol’s climate footprint isn’t the only concern. The nitrogen used to grow corn and other crops is also a key source of drinking water pollution.
According to a new report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Clean Wisconsin, more than 90% of nitrate contamination in Wisconsin’s groundwater is linked to agricultural sources — mostly synthetic fertilizer and manure.
The same analysis estimates that in 2022, farmers applied more than 16 million pounds of nitrogen beyond what crops needed, sending runoff into wells, streams and other water systems.
For families like Tyler Frye’s, that hits close to home. In 2022, Frye and his wife moved into a new home in the rural village of Casco, Wisconsin, about 20 miles east of Green Bay. A free test soon afterward found their well water had nitrate levels more than twice the EPA’s safe limit. “We were pretty shocked,” he said.
Frye installed a reverse-osmosis system in the basement and still buys bottled water for his wife, who is breastfeeding their daughter, born in July.
One likely culprit, he suspects, are the cornfields less than 200 yards from his home.
“Crops like corn require a lot of nitrogen,” he said. “A lot of that stuff, I assume, is getting into the well water and surface water.”
When he watches manure or fertilizer being spread on nearby fields, he said, one question nags him: “Where does that go?”
Reducing corn’s climate footprint is possible — but the farmers trying to do it are swimming against the policy tide.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, backed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, strips out the provisions of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that had rewarded farmers for climate-friendly practices.
And in April, Trump’s USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, a grant program designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said that the program’s administrative costs meant too little money was reaching farmers, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed it as part of the “green new scam.”
University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi said the rollback of the Climate-Smart program has already given farmers “cold feet” about adopting conservation practices. “The impact of this has been devastating,” said Secchi, a natural resources economist who teaches at the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.
Research shows what’s possible if farmers had support. In its recent report, the Environmental Working Group found that four proven conservation practices — including planting trees, shrubs and hedgerows in corn fields — could make a measurable difference.
Implementing those practices on just 4% of continuous corn acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin would cut total greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 850,000 gasoline cars off the road, EWG found.
Despite setbacks at the federal level, some farmers are already showing what a more climate-friendly Corn Belt could look like.
In northern Iowa, Wendy Johnson farms 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans with her father. On 130 of those acres, she’s trying something different: She’s planting fruit and nut trees, organic grains, shrubs and other plants that need little or no nitrogen fertilizer.
“The more perennials we can have on the ground, the better it is for the climate,” she said.
Across the rest of the farm, they enrich the soil by rotating crops and planting cover crops. They’ve also converted less productive parts of the fields into “prairie strips” — bands of prairie grass that store carbon and require no fertilizer.
Under the now-canceled Climate-Smart grant program, they were supposed to receive technical assistance and about $20,000 a year to expand those practices. The grant program was terminated before they got any of the money.
“It’s hard to take risks on your own,” Johnson said. “That’s where federal support really helps. Because agriculture is a high-risk occupation.”
The economics still favor business as usual. Johnson knows that many Midwestern corn growers feel pressure to maximize yields, keeping them hooked on corn — and nitrogen fertilizer.
“I think a lot of farmers around here are very allergic to trees,” she joked.
In southeast Iowa, sixth-generation farmer Levi Lyle, who mixes organic and conventional methods across 290 acres, uses a three-year rotation, extensive cover crops and a technique called roller-crimping — flattening rye each spring to create a mulch that suppresses weeds, feeds the soil and reduces fertilizer needs.
“The roller crimping of cover crops is a huge, huge opportunity to sequester more carbon, improve soil health, save money on chemicals and still get a similar yield,” he said.
But farmers get few government incentives to take such climate-friendly steps, Lyle said. “There is a lack of seriousness about supporting farmers to implement these new practices,” he said.
And without federal programs to offset the risk, the innovations that Lyle and Johnson are trying remain exceptions — not the norm.
Many farmers still see prairie strips or patches of trees as a waste, said Luke Gran, whose company helps Iowa farmers establish perennials.
“My eyes do not lie,” Gran said. “I have not seen extensive change to cover cropping or tillage across the broad acreage of this state that I love.”
Despite mounting research about corn’s climate costs, industry groups are pushing for policies to boost ethanol demand.
One big priority: pushing a bill to require that new cars are able to run on gas with more ethanol than what’s commonly sold today.
Corn and biofuel trade groups have also been pressing Democrats and Republicans in Congress for legislation to pave the way for ethanol-based jet fuel. While use of such “sustainable” aviation fuel is still in its early stages domestically, corn and biofuel associations have made developing a market for it a top policy priority.
Secchi, the Iowa professor, says it’s easy to see why ethanol producers are trying to expand their market: The growth in electric vehicles threatens long-term gasoline sales.
Researchers warn that producing enough ethanol-based jet fuel could trigger major land use shifts. A 2024 World Resources Institute analysis found that meeting the federal goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol jet fuel would require about 114 million acres of corn — roughly 20% more corn acreage than the U.S. already plants for all purposes. That surge in demand, the authors concluded, would push up food prices and worsen hunger.
Secchi calls that scenario a climate and land use “disaster.” Large-scale use of ethanol-based aviation fuel, she said, would mean clearing even more land and pouring on even more nitrogen fertilizer, driving up greenhouse gas emissions.
“The result,” she said, “would be essentially to enshrine this dysfunctional system that we created.”
This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.
Corn’s clean energy promise is clashing with its climate footprint is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
President George W. Bush holds an ear of corn during a 2004 campaign stop at a farmer’s market in Davenport, Iowa. America’s corn industry has become a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Corn production has surged in recent decades. But the fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water, researchers have found. (Tim Sloan / AFP via Getty Images)
This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.
For decades, corn has reigned over American agriculture. It sprawls across 90 million acres — about the size of Montana — and goes into everything from livestock feed and processed foods to the ethanol blended into most of the nation’s gasoline.
But a growing body of research reveals that America’s obsession with corn has a steep price: The fertilizer used to grow it is warming the planet and contaminating water.
Corn is essential to the rural economy and to the world’s food supply, and researchers say the problem isn’t the corn itself. It’s how we grow it.
Corn farmers rely on heavy fertilizer use to sustain today’s high yields. And when that nitrogen breaks down in the soil, it releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas nearly 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Producing nitrogen fertilizer also emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, adding to its climate footprint.
Agriculture accounts for more than 10% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and corn uses more than two-thirds of all nitrogen fertilizer nationwide — making it the leading driver of agricultural nitrous oxide emissions, studies show.
The corn and ethanol industries insist that rapid growth in ethanol — which now consumes more than 40% of the U.S. corn crop — is a net environmental benefit, and they strongly dispute research suggesting otherwise.
Since 2000, U.S. corn production has surged almost 50%, further adding to the crop’s climate impact.
Yet the environmental costs of corn rarely make headlines or factor into political debates. Much of the dynamic traces back to federal policy — and to the powerful corn and ethanol lobby that helped shape it.
The Renewable Fuel Standard, passed in the mid 2000s, required that gasoline be blended with ethanol, a biofuel that in the United States comes almost entirely from corn. That mandate drove up demand and prices for corn, spurring farmers to plant more of it.
Many plant corn year after year on the same land. The practice, called “continuous corn,” demands massive amounts of nitrogen fertilizer and drives especially high nitrous oxide emissions.
At the same time, federal subsidies make it more lucrative to grow corn than to diversify. Taxpayers have covered more than $50 billion in corn insurance premiums over the past 30 years, according to federal data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.
Researchers say proven conservation steps — such as planting rows of trees, shrubs and grasses in corn fields — could sharply reduce these emissions. But the Trump administration has eliminated many of the incentives that helped farmers try such practices.
Experts say it all raises a larger question: If America’s most widely planted crop is worsening climate change, shouldn’t we begin growing it a different way?
Corn has been a staple of U.S. agriculture for centuries, first domesticated by Native Americans and later used by European immigrants as a versatile crop for food and animal feed. Its production really took off in the 2000s after federal mandates and incentives helped turn much of America’s corn crop into ethanol.
Corn’s dominance — and the emissions that come with it — didn’t happen by accident. It was built through a high-dollar lobbying campaign that continues today.
In the late 1990s, America’s corn farmers were in trouble. Prices had cratered amid a global grain glut and the Asian financial crisis. A 1999 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis said crop prices had hit “rock bottom.”
In 2001 and 2002, the federal government gave corn farmers and ethanol producers a boost — first through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bioenergy Program, which paid ethanol producers to increase their use of farm commodities for fuel. Then the 2002 Farm Bill created programs that continue to support ethanol and other renewable energy.
Corn growers soon after mounted an all-out campaign in Washington. Their goal: persuade Congress to require gasoline to be blended with ethanol. State and national grower groups lobbied relentlessly, pitching ethanol as a way to cut greenhouse gasses, reduce oil dependence and revive rural economies.
“We got down to a couple of votes in Congress, and the corn growers were united like never before,” recalled Jon Doggett, then the industry’s chief lobbyist, in an article published by the National Corn Growers Association. “I started receiving calls from Capitol Hill saying, ‘Would you have your growers stop calling us? We are with you.’ I had not seen anything like it before and haven’t seen anything like it since.”
Their persistence paid off. In 2005, Congress created the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which requires that a certain amount of ethanol be blended into U.S. gasoline each year. Two years later, lawmakers expanded it further. The policy transformed the market: The amount of corn used for ethanol domestically has more than tripled in the past 20 years.
When demand for corn spiked as a result of the RFS, it pushed up prices worldwide, said Tim Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. The result, Searchinger said, is that more land around the world got cleared to grow corn. That, in turn, resulted in more emissions.
That lobbying brought clout. “King Corn” became a political force, courted by presidential hopefuls and protected by both parties. Since 2010, national corn and ethanol trade groups have spent more than $55 million on lobbying and millions more on political donations, according to campaign finance records analyzed by Floodlight.
In 2024 alone, those trade groups spent twice as much on lobbying as the National Rifle Association. Major industry players — Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill and ethanol giant POET among them — have poured even more into Washington, ensuring the sector’s voice remains one of the loudest in U.S. agriculture.
Now those same groups are pushing for the next big prize: expanding higher-ethanol gasoline blends and positioning ethanol-based jet fuel as aviation’s “low-carbon” future.
Corn and ethanol trade groups didn’t make their officials available for interviews.
But on their websites and in their literature, they have promoted corn ethanol as a climate-friendly fuel.
The Renewable Fuels Association cites government and university research that finds burning ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 40-50% compared with gasoline. The ethanol industry says the climate critics have it wrong — and that most of the corn used for fuel comes from better yields and smarter farming, not from plowing up new land. The amount of fertilizer required to produce a bushel of corn has dropped sharply in recent decades, they say.
“Ethanol reduces carbon emissions, removing the carbon equivalent of 12 million cars from the road each year,” according to the Renewable Fuels Association.
Growth Energy, a major ethanol trade group, said in a written statement that U.S. farmers and biofuel producers are “constantly finding new ways to make their operations more efficient and more environmentally beneficial,” using things like cover crops to reduce their carbon footprint.
But some research tells a different story.
A recent Environmental Working Group report finds that the way corn is grown in much of the Midwest — with the same fields planted in corn year after year — carries a heavy climate cost.
Research in 2022 by agricultural land use expert Tyler Lark and colleagues links the Renewable Fuel Standard to expanded corn cultivation, heavier fertilizer use, worsening water pollution and increased emissions. Scientists typically convert greenhouse gasses like nitrous oxide and methane into their carbon-dioxide equivalents — or carbon intensity — so their warming impacts can be compared on the same scale.
“The carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher,” the authors concluded.
Lark’s research has been disputed by scientists at Argonne National Laboratory, Purdue University and the University of Illinois, who published a formal rebuttal arguing the study relied on “questionable assumptions” and faulty modeling — a charge Lark’s team has rejected.
A 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the RFS was unlikely to meet its greenhouse gas goals because the U.S. relies predominantly on corn ethanol and produces relatively little of the cleaner, advanced biofuels made from waste.
The problem isn’t just emissions, researchers say. Corn ethanol requires millions of acres that could instead be used for food crops or more efficient energy sources. One recent study found that solar panels can generate as much energy as corn ethanol on roughly 3% of the land.
“It’s just a terrible use of land,” Searchinger, the Princeton researcher, said of ethanol. “And you can’t solve climate change if you’re going to make such terrible use of land.”
Most of the country’s top crop isn’t feeding people. More than 40% of U.S. corn goes to ethanol. A similar amount is used to feed livestock, and just 12% ends up as food or in other uses.
Globally, corn production doubled from 2000 to 2021.
That growth has been fueled by fertilizer, which emits nitrous oxide that can linger in the atmosphere for more than a century. That eats away at the ozone layer, which blocks most of the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
Global emissions have soared alongside corn production. Between 1980 and 2020, nitrous oxide emissions from human activity climbed 40%, the Global Carbon project found.
In the United States, nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture in 2022 were equal to roughly 262 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to the EPA’s inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s equivalent to putting almost 56 million passenger cars on the road.
The biggest increases are coming straight from the Corn Belt.
Ethanol’s climate footprint isn’t the only concern. The nitrogen used to grow corn and other crops is also a key source of drinking water pollution.
According to a new report by the Alliance for the Great Lakes and Clean Wisconsin, more than 90% of nitrate contamination in Wisconsin’s groundwater is linked to agricultural sources — mostly synthetic fertilizer and manure.
The same analysis estimates that in 2022, farmers applied more than 16 million pounds of nitrogen beyond what crops needed, sending runoff into wells, streams and other water systems.
For families like Tyler Frye’s, that hits close to home. In 2022, Frye and his wife moved into a new home in the rural village of Casco, Wisconsin, about 20 miles east of Green Bay. A free test soon afterward found their well water had nitrate levels more than twice the EPA’s safe limit. “We were pretty shocked,” he said.
Frye installed a reverse-osmosis system in the basement and still buys bottled water for his wife, who is breastfeeding their daughter, born in July.
One likely culprit, he suspects, are the cornfields less than 200 yards from his home.
“Crops like corn require a lot of nitrogen,” he said. “A lot of that stuff, I assume, is getting into the well water and surface water.”
When he watches manure or fertilizer being spread on nearby fields, he said, one question nags him: “Where does that go?”
Reducing corn’s climate footprint is possible — but the farmers trying to do it are swimming against the policy tide.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, backed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, strips out the provisions of President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that had rewarded farmers for climate-friendly practices.
And in April, Trump’s USDA canceled the $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative, a grant program designed to promote farming and forestry practices to improve soil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agency said that the program’s administrative costs meant too little money was reaching farmers, while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins dismissed it as part of the “green new scam.”
University of Iowa professor Silvia Secchi said the rollback of the Climate-Smart program has already given farmers “cold feet” about adopting conservation practices. “The impact of this has been devastating,” said Secchi, a natural resources economist who teaches at the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability.
Research shows what’s possible if farmers had support. In its recent report, the Environmental Working Group found that four proven conservation practices — including planting trees, shrubs and hedgerows in corn fields — could make a measurable difference.
Implementing those practices on just 4% of continuous corn acres across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin would cut total greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of taking more than 850,000 gasoline cars off the road, EWG found.
Despite setbacks at the federal level, some farmers are already showing what a more climate-friendly Corn Belt could look like.
In northern Iowa, Wendy Johnson farms 1,200 acres of corn and soybeans with her father. On 130 of those acres, she’s trying something different: She’s planting fruit and nut trees, organic grains, shrubs and other plants that need little or no nitrogen fertilizer.
“The more perennials we can have on the ground, the better it is for the climate,” she said.
Across the rest of the farm, they enrich the soil by rotating crops and planting cover crops. They’ve also converted less productive parts of the fields into “prairie strips” — bands of prairie grass that store carbon and require no fertilizer.
Under the now-cancelled Climate-Smart grant program, they were supposed to receive technical assistance and about $20,000 a year to expand those practices. The grant program was terminated before they got any of the money.
“It’s hard to take risks on your own,” Johnson said. “That’s where federal support really helps. Because agriculture is a high-risk occupation.”
The economics still favor business as usual. Johnson knows that many Midwestern corn growers feel pressure to maximize yields, keeping them hooked on corn — and nitrogen fertilizer.
“I think a lot of farmers around here are very allergic to trees,” she joked.
In southeast Iowa, sixth-generation farmer Levi Lyle, who mixes organic and conventional methods across 290 acres, uses a three-year rotation, extensive cover crops and a technique called roller-crimping — flattening rye each spring to create a mulch that suppresses weeds, feeds the soil and reduces fertilizer needs.
“The roller crimping of cover crops is a huge, huge opportunity to sequester more carbon, improve soil health, save money on chemicals and still get a similar yield,” he said.
But farmers get few government incentives to take such climate-friendly steps, Lyle said. “There is a lack of seriousness about supporting farmers to implement these new practices,” he said.
And without federal programs to offset the risk, the innovations that Lyle and Johnson are trying remain exceptions — not the norm.
Many farmers still see prairie strips or patches of trees as a waste, said Luke Gran, whose company helps Iowa farmers establish perennials.
“My eyes do not lie,” Gran said. “I have not seen extensive change to cover cropping or tillage across the broad acreage of this state that I love.”
Despite mounting research about corn’s climate costs, industry groups are pushing for policies to boost ethanol demand.
One big priority: Pushing a bill to require that new cars are able to run on gas with more ethanol than what’s commonly sold today.
Corn and biofuel trade groups have also been pressing Democrats and Republicans in Congress for legislation to pave the way for ethanol-based jet fuel. While use of such “sustainable” aviation fuel is still in its early stages domestically, corn and biofuel associations have made developing a market for it a top policy priority.
Secchi, the Iowa professor, says it’s easy to see why ethanol producers are trying to expand their market: The growth in electric vehicles threatens long-term gasoline sales.
Researchers warn that producing enough ethanol-based jet fuel could trigger major land-use shifts. A 2024 World Resources Institute analysis found that meeting the federal goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol jet fuel would require about 114 million acres of corn — roughly 20% more corn acreage than the U.S. already plants for all purposes. That surge in demand, the authors concluded, would push up food prices and worsen hunger.
Secchi calls that scenario a climate and land-use “disaster.” Large-scale use of ethanol-based aviation fuel, she said, would mean clearing even more land and pouring on even more nitrogen fertilizer, driving up greenhouse gas emissions.
“The result,” she said, “would be essentially to enshrine this dysfunctional system that we created.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.
Rob-n-Cin farms has expanded to become a concentrated animal feeding operation. Environmental groups and local residents have filed a petition against the DNR's decision to grant the farm a wastewater discharge permit. (Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)
Two environmental groups filed a petition late last month challenging the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ decision to grant a permit allowing a West Bend dairy farm to operate as a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO).
The dairy, Rob-n-Cin Farms, has been operating as a CAFO for several years without a permit. Under state law, CAFOs are required to obtain Wisconsin Pollution Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) permits, which regulate the pollution industrial activities such as factory farms are allowed to discharge into local waterways.
CAFOs are industrial farming facilities with more than 1,000 animal units — one animal unit is equivalent to a 1,000-pound cow. Rob-n-Cin plans to expand its herd from 1,300 cows to 2,000. After expanding, the herd will produce more than 18 million gallons of manure every year which the farm plans to spread on fields in Ozaukee and Washington counties.
In 2023, the DNR investigated the farm for operating as an unpermitted CAFO and issued a notice of noncompliance against the farm.
Since then, Rob-n-Cin has been going through the process to obtain a permit, drawing complaints from local residents and community groups. Those complaints include the farm’s failure to list two satellite locations where it plans to spread manure in its permit application, the lack of sanctions on the farm for operating unpermitted and the effect on local groundwater.
Residents are worried about the farm’s effects on the Milwaukee River watershed and the Cedarburg Bog, which is protected as a state natural area and national natural landmark.
On Nov. 26, the environmental-focused law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates filed a petition for a contested case review of the DNR’s permit approval on behalf of Milwaukee Riverkeeper and area residents. The residents include a nearby organic farm and neighbors of Rob-n-Cin.
The petition alleges that the DNR has not proven the expansion will comply with the state’s groundwater quality standards, particularly the limits for phosphorus and nitrates. The permit includes statements that the farm will follow statewide best practices for manure spreading but the petition argues that’s not enough and the DNR should have done more to prove the groundwater will be protected.
“DNR’s issuance of a permit relying solely on standard practices that are not intended to ensure compliance with groundwater quality standards is unreasonable,” the petition states. “This is particularly true in an area of high susceptibility where many members of the public raised credible concerns of groundwater contamination and examples of excessive nitrate levels. Rob-n-Cin needed to demonstrate, and DNR needed to find, that issuance of a permit would not lead to continued or widespread groundwater contamination in excess of established standards. Simply relying on default nutrient management practices without performing analysis or investigation was unreasonable.”
The petition also argues the DNR should require monitoring of the local groundwater after the expansion is complete, stating that state regulators can’t know if the farm is violating its standards if it isn’t tracking how the expansion affects the groundwater.
And the petition states that the DNR did not complete a sufficient environmental review before approving the permit.
“DNR conducted no substantive evaluation of environmental or socioeconomic impacts of the WPDES permit, including effects on groundwater, Cedar Creek, Mole Creek (a Class II trout stream), the Milwaukee River watershed, which is subject to an EPA-approved [Total Maximum Daily Load] for nutrients and sediment, or the Cedarburg Bog,” the petition states.
In a news release, MEA attorney Adam Voskuil said the DNR’s authority requires it to prove that the expansion won’t violate state water standards and it has failed to do so.
“State law is clear that the DNR is required to affirmatively determine — not merely assume — that Rob-n-Cin’s manure-spreading plan will not violate groundwater quality standards. Without off-site groundwater monitoring, there’s simply no way to obtain the data necessary to make that determination,” Voskuil said.
If the petition for a contested case hearing is granted, a hearing on the permit approval will be held by an administrative law judge. That decision would be appealable to the state circuit court system.
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Early results of a new study show landfill runoff contained the highest levels of PFAS among liquid wastes sampled statewide in Wisconsin.
The post Early study results show landfill runoff in Wisconsin has high PFAS levels appeared first on WPR.
The shore of Lake Superior near Ashland. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A rule to protect Wisconsin’s cleanest waterways from being harmed was finalized last week over the objections of Republican legislators and allied lobbying groups.
The rule highlights the ongoing dispute between the Legislature and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers over the level of oversight legislators are allowed to have over the administrative rulemaking process. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling that curtailed the ability of the Legislature to kill administrative rules.
The new rule, which was published in the state’s administrative register Nov. 24 and is set to go into effect July 1, is the result of a decade of wrangling.
In 2015, the U.S. EPA updated the Clean Water Act’s antidegradation regulations — which guide how states are required to protect high quality lakes and rivers from pollution.
Dozens of creeks, rivers and lakes are classified as outstanding resource waters and exceptional resource waters under Wisconsin’s administrative code and will be protected as “high quality waters” under the new rule. Additionally, a body of water can be considered a high quality water if it has contaminant levels that are better than an established statewide standard.
“This means that a waterbody can be high quality for one or more parameters, even if it is impaired for a different parameter,” Laura Dietrich, manager of the Department of Natural Resources’ water evaluation section, said in an email. “For example, a waterbody may be impaired for phosphorus, but chloride levels are better than the chloride water quality criterion. The waterbody would be considered high quality for the purposes of considering new or increased discharges of chloride, but would not be high quality for phosphorus.”
Under the new rule, the DNR will be required to conduct a review before regulated entities are allowed to discharge new or increased levels of contaminants into the water body. Discharges may be allowed if found to be necessary through a “social or economic analysis.”
The rule’s finalization is the end of a process that began in 2023 and has included multiple public hearings and the input of several legislative committees.
Last month, the Assembly committee on the environment voted 4-2 to request modifications to the rule, but the DNR and the Evers administration moved forward with finalizing the rule anyway.
That action has angered Republicans who want more say in the process.
“Representative government has been taken away and we now have rule by king,” Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in a statement. “We don’t want a king and the current path forward is dangerous.”
Lobbying groups have also complained about the rule’s finalization.
Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business group, told Wisconsin Public Radio that the rule going into effect is “terrible from a representative government standpoint.”
Erik Kanter, government relations director with Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner that he thinks the rule represents the DNR finding a solid compromise between environmental and business concerns and that WMC was involved in the entire process through an advisory committee.
“DNR engaged the stakeholder group regularly over the 30-month process it took to put the rule together at the DNR, and so WMC, along the way, had all the opportunity, and certainly took the opportunity, to make their thoughts [known] on how to put this rule together,” Kanter said. “It almost feels like it was never going to be enough for WMC.”
Kanter also said that because the rule aligns the state with the EPA regulations, the state doesn’t have a choice if it wants to retain regulatory authority over its own water.
“Wisconsin has to do this. We have to update our own rules to comply with federal changes to the Clean Water Act,” he said. “There’s no two ways about it if we want to maintain our delegation authority and have state regulators in charge of administering the Clean Water Act. It’s something we have to do.”
The alternative would be for the federal EPA to administer the act in Wisconsin, he said.
“I think a lot of folks in the business community wouldn’t want EPA and the federal government breathing down their neck,” Kanter said. “And so this delegated authority situation is, I think, better for everybody.”
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Ice cover on the Great Lakes has often been thought to cap evaporation that can influence water levels and regional weather. But a new study finds ice doesn’t play as big a role in blocking evaporation as once thought, which could prove vital for predicting future climate conditions and lake levels.
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Wisconsin lawmakers want to provide fire departments access to grants for a new type of firefighting foam derived from soybeans that could provide an alternative to PFAS-based foams.
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On a dry, rocky patch of his family’s farm in Door County, Wisconsin, Dave Klevesahl grows wildflowers. But he has a vision for how to squeeze more value out of the plot: lease it to a company that wants to build a community solar array.
Unfortunately for Klevesahl, that is unlikely to happen under current state law. In Wisconsin, only utilities are allowed to develop such shared solar installations, which let households and businesses that can’t put panels on their own property access renewable energy via subscriptions.
Farmers, solar advocates and legislators from both parties are trying to remove these restrictions through Senate Bill 559, which would allow the limited development of community solar by entities other than utilities.
Wisconsin lawmakers considered similar proposals in the 2021-22 and 2023-24 legislative sessions, with support from trade groups representing real estate agents, farmers, grocers, and retailers. But those bipartisan efforts failed in the face of opposition from the state’s powerful utilities and labor unions.
Community solar supporters are hoping for a different outcome this legislative session, which ends in March. But while the new bill, introduced Oct. 24, includes changes meant to placate utilities, the companies still firmly oppose it.
“I don’t really understand why anybody wouldn’t want community solar,” said Klevesahl, whose wife’s family has been farming their land for generations. In addition to leasing his land for an installation, he would like to subscribe to community solar, which typically saves participants money on their energy bills.
Some Wisconsin utilities do offer their own community solar programs. But they are too small to meet the demand for community solar, advocates say.
Around 20 states and Washington, D.C., have community solar programs that allow non-utility ownership of arrays. The majority of those states, including Wisconsin’s neighbor Illinois, have deregulated energy markets, in which the utilities that distribute electricity do not generate it.
In states with “vertically integrated” energy markets, like Wisconsin, utilities serve as regulated monopolies, both generating and distributing power. That means legislation is necessary to specify that other companies are also allowed to generate and sell power from community solar. Some vertically integrated states, including Minnesota, have passed such laws.
But monopoly utilities in those jurisdictions have consistently opposed community solar developed by third parties. Minnesota utility Xcel Energy, for example, supported terminating the state’s community solar program during an unsuccessful effort by some lawmakers last summer to end it.
The Wisconsin utilities We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric, according to their spokespeople, are concerned that customers who don’t subscribe to community solar will end up subsidizing costs for those who do. The utilities argue that because community solar subscribers have lower energy bills, they contribute less money for grid maintenance and construction, meaning that other customers must pay more to make up the difference. Clean-energy advocates, for their part, say this “cost shift” argument ignores research showing that the systemwide benefits of distributed energy like community solar can outweigh the expense.
The Wisconsin bill would also require utilities to buy power from community solar arrays that don’t have enough subscribers.
“This bill is being marketed as a ‘fair’ solution to advance renewables. It’s the opposite,” said We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway. “It would force our customers to pay higher electricity costs by having them subsidize developers who want profit from a no-risk solar project. Under this bill, the developers avoid any risk. The costs of their projects will shift to and be paid for by all of our ‘non-subscribing’ customers.”
The power generated by community solar ultimately goes onto the utility’s grid, reducing the amount of electricity the utility needs to provide. But Conway said it’s not the most efficient way to meet overall demand.
“These projects would not be something we would plan for or need, so our customers would be paying for unneeded energy that benefits a very few,” he said. “Also, these credits are guaranteed by our other customers even if solar costs drop or grid needs change.”
Advocates in Wisconsin hope they can address such concerns and convince utilities to support community solar owned by third parties.
Beata Wierzba, government affairs director of the clean-power advocacy organization Renew Wisconsin, said her group and others “had an opportunity to talk with the utilities over the course of several months, trying to negotiate some language they could live with.”
“There were some exchanges where utilities gave us a dozen things that were problematic for them, and the coalition addressed them by making changes to the draft” of the bill, Wierzba said.
The spokespeople for We Energies and Madison Gas and Electric did not respond to questions about such conversations.
To assuage utilities’ concerns, the bill allows third-party companies to build community solar only for the next decade. The legislation also sets a statewide cap for community solar of 1.75 gigawatts, with limits for each of the five major investor-owned utilities’ territories proportionate to each utility’s total number of customers.
Community solar arrays would be limited to 5 megawatts, with exceptions for rooftops, brownfields and other industrial sites, where 20 megawatts can be built.
No subscriber would be allowed to buy more than 40% of the output from a single community solar array, and 60% of the subscriptions must be for 40 kilowatts of capacity or less, the bill says. This is meant to prevent one large customer — like a big-box store or factory — from buying the majority of the power and excluding others from taking advantage of the limited community solar capacity.
Customers who subscribe to community solar would still have to pay at least $20 a month to their utility for service. The bill also contains what Wierzba called an “off-ramp”: After four years, the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin would study how the program is working and submit a report to the Legislature, which could pass a new law to address any problems.
“The bill is almost like a small pilot project — it’s not like you’re opening the door and letting everyone come in,” said Wierzba. “You have a limit on how it can function, how many people can sign up.”
In Wisconsin, as in other states, developers hoping to build utility-scale solar farms on agricultural land face serious pushback. The Trump administration canceled federal incentives for solar arrays on farms this summer, with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announcing, “USDA will no longer fund taxpayer dollars for solar panels on productive farmland.”
But Wisconsin farmers have argued that community solar can actually help keep agricultural land in production by providing an extra source of revenue. The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has yet to weigh in on this year’s bill, but it supported previously proposed community solar legislation.
The bill calls for state regulators to come up with rules for community solar developers that would likely require dual use — meaning that crops or pollinator habitats are planted under and around the panels or that animals graze on the land. These increasingly common practices are known as agrivoltaics.
The bill would let local zoning bodies — rather than the state’s Public Service Commission — decide whether to permit a community solar installation.
Utility-scale solar farms, by contrast, are permitted at the state level, which can leave “locals feeling like they are not in control of their future,” said Matt Hargarten, vice president of government and public affairs for the Coalition for Community Solar Access. “This offers an alternative that is really welcome. If a town doesn’t want this to be there, it won’t be there.”
A 5-megawatt array typically covers 20 to 30 acres of land, whereas utility-scale solar farms are often hundreds of megawatts and span thousands of acres.
“You don’t need to upgrade the transmission systems with these small solar farms because a 30-acre solar farm can backfeed into a substation that’s already there,” noted Klevesahl, a retired electrical engineer. “And then you’re using the power locally, and it’s clean power. Bottom line is, I just think it’s the right thing to do.”
A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.
Wisconsin lawmakers look to break utility grip on community solar is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
A rule aimed at protecting waterways from pollution is the latest outcome of a power struggle between Gov. Tony Evers and the GOP legislation over state agencies' authority.
The post Wisconsin water quality rule finalized amid feud between Evers, GOP leaders appeared first on WPR.
As COP30 is underway in Brazil, a group of researchers, including some from the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a report showing most countries are slacking on their goals to slow climate change.
The post ‘In the air for centuries’: UW researcher calls on G20 for more carbon dioxide removal appeared first on WPR.
When Levi Lyle was just six years old, his father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
With treatment, his father survived his diagnosis. The ordeal changed how he farmed.
“It created an openness in his approach to farming to start doing things differently,” Lyle said.
His father started no-till farming when the practice was still rare in Iowa. A decade ago, when Lyle, now 47, moved back to the family farm, he and his father jumped into organic farming.
“My experiences seeing my father overcome cancer, along with the Agricultural Health Survey’s Midwest cancer statistics, which point to a rural health crisis, inspire me to farm differently,” he said.
Today, Lyle grows corn and soybeans in Keokuk County, in southeast Iowa. Lyle farms about 250 acres, with 40 acres of that organic-certified. His father farms an additional 250 acres.
Lyle said introducing cover crops into his practice was a “no-brainer.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cover crops are usually grasses or legumes that are planted between cash crop seasons to provide soil cover and improve soil health. Cover crops can reduce erosion and compaction, improve soil’s ability to hold water, reduce nutrient runoff, suppress weeds, as well as provide other services.
Despite being an advocate for cover crops, Lyle said the practice does present challenges.
“The initial challenge is that there is more labor involved,” Lyle said. Cover crops “do not pay for themselves in the short run.”
In the U.S. more than 153,000 farms had land planted in cover crops in 2022.
In Iowa specifically, the use of cover crops has expanded significantly in recent years, growing from 1.3 million acres in 2022 to 3.8 million acres in 2024.
The conservation practice is promoted by the state through cost share incentives. It’s an effort by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to reduce the nutrients that go into local waters, make their way into the Mississippi River and ultimately contribute to the Gulf Dead Zone, an annually reoccurring area of reduced oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, an initiative aimed at reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into Iowa’s waterways, to achieve 45% nutrient reduction will require about 14 million additional acres of cover crops to be planted.
But a study published in July 2025 in the Society & Natural Resources Journal found that while the number of acres being planted with cover crops has grown, many farmers abandon the practice after one year.
“This study shows that adoption is not a one-time decision — it’s a dynamic process influenced by a range of factors,” co-author Suraj Upadhaya, assistant professor of sustainable systems at Kentucky State University, said in a news release about the study.
Chris Morris, a postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University, was part of a research team that interviewed more than 3,000 Iowa farmers between 2015 and 2019.
The survey showed that nearly 20% of the farmers who reported planting cover crops on their land the first year had ceased using them the following year.
However, the survey found that most of those farmers (15%) would be open to resuming the practice in the future.
Only about 4% of the farmers who participated in the survey said they have no intention of using cover crops again.
“What we found was a whole lot more shifting back and forth than we anticipated,” J. Arbuckle, professor of rural sociology at ISU, said.
Nationwide, in 2022, nearly 18 million acres, or 4.7% of total U.S. cropland, had cover crops, up 17% from 2017.
Cover crop use is most common in the eastern U.S. In states along the Mississippi River, Iowa had the most acreage with cover crops in 2022, but Wisconsin had the highest percentage of its cropland using cover crops, at nearly 8%. All 10 states saw an increase in cover crop usage from 2012 to 2022, though some states, like Tennessee and Kentucky, saw a drop in cover crop use from 2017 to 2022.
Experts say cover crops present challenges to farmers that can act as barriers to permanent adoption.
Anna Morrow, senior program manager with the Midwest Cover Crops Council, said one hurdle is that cover crop planting overlaps with the busy harvest season.
“Cover crops are a practice where a lot of the labor is right at a peak labor time in our season, right? So obviously (farmers) have to prioritize the cash crop so that they get paid,” Morrow said.
“It’s complicated because a lot of farmers are doing the cover crops in the winter, so between getting the current crop harvested, planting the cover crop, getting that terminated before the next crop, if this cover crop is not going to work in that schedule, it’s going to be abandoned,” Morris said.
Morris said barriers beyond timing abound, too, like the cost of purchasing and planting cover crops, balancing the cover crops with other farm work, and challenges that come with farming on rented land.
“A lot of farmers are in really short-term leases, and a lot of farmers feel like landlords aren’t interested in investing in conservation practices on rented land because they may or may not be farming that land one or two or three years from now,” Arbuckle said.
In Lyle’s case, he owns the 40 acres he uses for organic farming, but he and his father lease the rest of their land. They plant cover crops on both the land they own and rent.
Lyle said for him it’s “economically justifiable” to plant cover crops on his leased land because he expects a “reduction in number of field passes, reduced herbicides and reduced fertilizer use due to the nutrient scavenging capacity of cover crops.”
To address cost barriers and encourage the use of cover crops, various federal and state programs offer cost-share incentives. Lyle said this year he has been awarded cover crop funding for 150 acres, getting paid $10 per acre. On average, it costs producers about $60 per acre to pay for cover crops.
Morris said these programs are helpful, but farmers told him they often don’t pay enough, require complicated, time-sucking paperwork and only last one to three years.
But cover crops are a long game, Morris said. While use of cover crops can reduce the need for fertilizer, increase soil health and lead to better productivity, he said those benefits can be difficult to measure and can take years to materialize.
“It’s hard for farmers to justify that high economic cost of cover crops in any given year if there’s not going to be an immediate payoff. Most of these farmers are making marginal profits in any given year, if any, and some are at a net loss. So, there’s a huge weight on farmers’ shoulders of trying to keep the farm going, especially if it’s a farm that’s been in their families for generations,” Morris said. “Anything that could potentially put them out of business is going to seem like a threat.”
Cover crops are generally not harvested; rather, their benefits come from simply being on the land. At the end of their life they’re terminated using herbicides or manual methods, like mowing, and tilled into the soil or left atop it as mulch.
But the Forever Green Initiative, which is housed at the University of Minnesota, works to increase cover crop adoption in Minnesota by developing varieties that can improve soil health and also be harvested for sale.
“Agricultural science has not focused on this until very recently, so there are very few options for farmers to do that,” said Mitch Hunter, co-director of the Forever Green Initiative. “We’re working on over 15 different species, and they’re all aimed at filling that niche of a harvestable over winter crop that is winter hardy in the Upper Midwest that can fit into existing crop rotations or become part of a more diverse rotation and as a market.”
He said some commercial and harvestable cover crops have included winter camelina and the perennial grain Kernza, a cousin to annual wheat. He said those crops are “on the cusp of being commercial.” Commercialized cover crops also include alfalfa, winter barley and winter durum.
“The whole point is to fill that gap,” Hunter said.
Pivoting to cover crops that can be harvested and sold is a “natural progression” for many farmers, Morrow said.
“If they start to try cover crops, and they say, ‘Hey, this is working, and I’m seeing benefits.’ And then they’ll say, ‘Well, why can’t I do a winter annual crop and get some cash from this?’” Morrow said. “The Midwest (is) pretty focused on corn and soybeans, but I think there’s some growing interest in winter, annual cash crops.”
Meanwhile, the overall number of acres invested in cover crop practices has been increasing in recent years, even with some disadoption.
“This study really reflects that farming is a year-to-year business,” said Sean Stokes, research director at the Rodale Institute Midwest Organic Center in Marion, Iowa. “A farmer might only plant a cover crop, like cereal rye, before soybeans, and then when they go to corn the next year, they might not plant that again. But then when they go back to soybeans, they might use cover crops again.”
“Every farmer and every farm is unique, and they’re all going to have different motivations for what’s driving their cover crop adoption,” he said.
Stokes said these motivations could include concerns over water quality or improving soil health.
“For a lot of farmers, it’s a business decision,” Stokes said. “Are they going to see more money per acre in the following years when using cover crops or are they going to lose money? That’s where there is some risk.”
For Lyle, it’s a risk work taking.
“Every acre in the Midwest would benefit from being cover cropped,” Lyle said.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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As cover crop use grows, many farmers struggle to commit to the practice is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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