People are sick. Pets have died. Residents blame the water.
Half of Nelsonville’s private wells have dangerously high levels of nitrates
NELSONVILLE – When Katy Bailey saw her house in 2012, it was love at first sight.
The house is in Nelsonville, a community of around 155 people in Portage County, about 14 miles east of Stevens Point. The town’s cluster of historic homes and a main street sit along the poetically named Tomorrow River.
For Bailey and her husband, Bobby, both 32, it seemed like a dream to raise a family in a place where neighbors know one another well and children race their bikes safely through the middle of the village center.
But the water that runs beneath the village would come to interfere with that dream. All over Nelsonville, tests of private wells are turning up dangerously high levels of a chemical that studies have linked to serious health problems.
The Environmental Protection Agency set the limit in drinking water
at 10 parts per million, or 10 milligrams per liter. It’s a tiny amount, but the nitrates can react with molecules in the body over time to form compounds that are known to cause cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
It can also cause infant methemoglobinemia — a potentially deadly condition where a baby’s skin turns blue because there isn’t enough oxygen in the blood.
The Baileys’ water initially tested at 7 ppm and they weren’t worried.
“We were very naive,” Bailey said.
A Wisconsin-wide problem that could be worse than it looks
Forty percent of Wisconsinites get their water from private wells, many in rural areas, according the state Department of Health Services. Unlike water derived from community water systems, these wells are not subject to regulation by the EPA.
In effect, the EPA can tell people drinking from private wells that their water is unsafe, but the agency can’t order that anything be done about it.
Private wells are more vulnerable to contamination by nitrates, which are water-soluble molecules formed when a nitrogen-rich source encounters oxygen. Nitrogen fertilizers, such as those commonly used in agriculture, are one source, as are home septic systems and lawn fertilizers.
Passing through the soil, the nitrates often end up in groundwater, from which rural wells are primarily filled.
According to a report from the Wisconsin Groundwater Coordinating Council to the state legislature, 10% of Wisconsin’s private wells exceed nitrate levels of 10 ppm.
In Nelsonville, more than half of the wells that have been tested are considered undrinkable because their nitrates are above that level, said Lisa Anderson, a village resident who has until recently headed up the community’s Groundwater Protection Committee.
The village began conducting widespread testing in 2018, when Portage County offered an opportunity to evaluate samples from the community, Anderson said. When a significant number of the samples returned high nitrate levels, residents persuaded the county to test further.
Nelsonville has around 77 wells, Anderson says, and 52 residents agreed to have their wells tested and to share the results. From that group, 28 wells tested above safe levels.
Further, that doesn’t guarantee those 24 wells testing below 10 ppm are safe.
New research has increasingly shown a correlation between ill health effects and concentrations of nitrates much less than 10 ppm, said Kara Nell, a professor of chemistry and environmental health at the University of Minnesota-Morris.
Nell, whose research focuses on the dangers of nitrate pollution, says those effects can include birth defects and low birth weight in infants, miscarriages in pregnant women, and thyroid problems and colorectal cancer in adults.
Despite the emergence of such new research, the Trump administration in 2018 suspended a re-evaluation of the 10 ppm standard and blocked the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule that, among other things, would have limited the use of chemical fertilizers by farmers.
Anderson says the water at her home has tested at 9.69 ppm, and she and her husband have neighbors whose water has tested at much higher levels.
For some families, the high nitrate level in their personal wells has meant traveling to other towns for a clean water source. Tarion O’Carroll’s well has recently returned nitrate levels of up to 19 ppm. O’Carroll and his wife, Stacy, and children Sam and Maggie drink from jugs of water drawn from a spring in the nearby town of Lind.
“I’d love to be able to drink out of my own tap,” O’Carroll says. “It’s not like I enjoy the drive.”
It started with the cats
In February 2019, the Baileys suddenly lost Franklin, one of their two young cats, to a tumor. In November 2019, the Baileys lost their second cat, Beans, to gastrointestinal cancer.
When they tested their water again in January 2020, the Baileys’ nitrates had spiked to 22 ppm. Bailey, her husband and the two cats had all been drinking highly contaminated water.
Seeing the dramatic increase in their nitrate numbers pushed the Baileys to install two filtration systems. Each time, nitrate levels dropped, then climbed back up.
The Baileys developed thyroid problems, and Katy said she suffered a miscarriage.
While neither can be definitively connected to the nitrate contamination, the health problems are consistent with problems seen by other people who have been exposed to nitrates, said Nell, the Minnesota researcher.
Bailey and her husband are no longer drinking water from her house’s well. Instead they are traveling, like the O’Carrolls, to Lind for their water.
Proud farmer becomes a target of concern
The Baileys, the Andersons and other
Nelsonville families with high nitrate levels think the problem stems from one of their neighbors.
Gordondale Farms is a dairy operation about a mile from Nelsonville. Kyle Gordon, who took over the farm from his father, Gil, says it’s been in the area since 1901. One day, he hopes to pass the farm on to his own son, Austin, who is 26.
“When I came home from college in 1989, I decided that in order to be a dairyman and to stay in business, we needed to expand,” Gordon said.
Less than a decade ago, Wisconsin boasted over 10,000 dairy farms — mostly smaller operations. But as dairy prices have plummeted, larger dairy businesses have taken up a greater share of the industry — particularly concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, with 700 or more dairy cattle each. Gordondale Farms has 2,160 animals, with plans to expand, according to its most recent Department of Natural Resources permit. Some operations in central Wisconsin have up to 6,000 animals.
Those mega farms are increasingly the target of nitrate concerns because of the sheer volume of waste they discharge. According to research by Cornell University, a farm of 500 cows can produce as much daily waste as South Milwaukee, a city of about 20,000.
Gordon says he has taken steps already to mitigate the flow of nitrates from his farm to nearby groundwater. But, he says, he needs more time to see the results of his efforts. He believes the village’s septic systems are responsible for some of the high nitrate levels, and smaller farms could also be contributing.
Anderson said the village has tried various mechanisms to address the contamination. One was campaigning to stop the DNR from renewing Gordondale’s animal waste discharge permit, which certifies that the farm is following state regulations.
But in August, the DNR approved the permit renewal. Gordondale Farms had met every legal requirement to obtain the permit and was doing nothing against regulations in its waste disposal, says Tyler Dix, a representative from the DNR.
Baby’s death leads to testing, and a lawsuit
In the state Legislature, there has been a growing recognition that nitrates in Wisconsin’s well water are a problem that needs to be addressed.
State Rep. Katrina Shankland, a Stevens Point Democrat who represents Nelsonville, has taken a particular interest.
“We know that nitrate has significant public health issues and there’s been research recently that shows that it’s a pressing issue for all the public, not just children and babies and women who are pregnant,” Shankland said.
Shankland headed up a task force with state Rep. Todd Novak, a Dodgeville Republican, to investigate the issue further, holding 14 public forums throughout the state.
“I think it was like 2,500 miles,” Shankland said of the trips. “From Racine, to Menominee, to Tomahawk and Superior, Madison, Green Bay, Stevens Point, La Crosse ... everywhere.”
She and Novak followed that trip with a package of 10 bills aimed at dealing with the crisis — legislation that Shankland calls “building blocks,” not a complete solution. The bills passed the state Assembly but await Senate action.
Anderson said she and others in Nelsonville don’t want money from Gordondale and have no plans to sue them.
In the northeast corner of Juneau County, however, 81 plaintiffs who own property near Central Sands Dairy allege the CAFO knowingly contaminated groundwater and private well systems and endangered neighbors for at least a decade without warning them.
The path to that lawsuit began in 2017 when Celina Stewart, a young mother in the city of Nekoosa, lost an infant daughter to blue baby syndrome — an event that led nearby communities to begin well-water testing. They found widespread contamination.
The suit was filed in January 2019 in Juneau County court, but a trial date has not yet been set.
Deep roots not so easily removed
People like the Andersons still see a bright future for the Nelsonville area. In recent years, a coffee roastery, Ruby Coffee, opened in town, as have an art and gift shop, a concrete provider and other small businesses. Residents are optimistic about the modest growth the area has seen and its potential to attract young families like the Baileys.
But Katy Bailey wonders how long her family can keep making the onehour round trip to fetch safe water from Lind.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she said, she and Bobby were seriously considering moving and had a few potential buyers come to look at their home. One couple was scared off by the nitrate situation, Bailey says.
“I thought this is where I would be forever,” Bailey said. “And now I question if that would be a smart move.”
“I’d love to be able to drink out of my own tap. It’s not like I enjoy the drive.”
Tarion O’Carroll Drives an hour round trip each week to get safe water