The Madville Times made the Alexandria Herald two weeks in a row. My coverage of the state Water Management Board's approval of wells for a proposed 7000-head dairy in Hanson County was of sufficient interest to locals that the Herald ran it as a guest column.
Funny thing is, the blog post ran twice, not because it was just that good, but because on the first run, in the July 22 issue, the paper chopped off the bottom portion of the essay and attributed the article to State Rep. Stace Nelson. Attributing my reportage and commenary to the über-conservative lawmaker from Fulton is problematic on numerous levels. The Alexandria Herald was thus kind enough (or so I was told) to re-run the complete article in the July 29 issue with proper attribution (Hanson County readers, glad to have you!).
Hanson County residents are right to be concerned about the impact a mega-dairy could have on their quality of life. Those worried about immigration issues associated with the dairy may want to read this report on illegal immigration and Wisconsin dairies, highlighted by Matthew Blake of Understanding Government. About 40% of Wisconsin's dairy workers are immigrants, "many believed to be undocumented."
Nonetheless, the dairy industry doesn't want tighter immigration restrictions, like mandating that employers verify workers' immigration status through E-Verify. One Wisconsin dairyman and immigration reform advocate says E-Verify "will kill the dairy industry." Another dairy operator says she'd hire more local "traditional workers," but apparently they're all sick or want weekends off. Of course, when you work ten-hour days amidst great quantities of cow manure, is wanting the weekend off that unreasonable?
It seems it wouldn't be that hard to rearrange the work schedule to accommodate the extravagant demands of a local workforce. Run two 12-hour shifts six days a week, plus four 6-hour shifts on Sunday. One set of employees works Thursday through Sunday, the other comes Sunday through Wednesday. The dairies and the sensitive cows still get consistency through the work day, workers still get a decent wage for more than 40 hours a week of work... and dairy operators don't have to rely on exploiting a foreign and often illegal labor force.