Erika Balza does not drink the water out of her tap. Despite having a new well installed that came with a price tag of more than $13,000, she doesn't trust it.

"We've just written it off," says Balza, a 47-year-old former paralegal and title insurance agent. "I did say after the new well was installed that old habits die hard, that you don't drink the water. But in the back of your mind you just re-question if it's really safe, at any time."

Part of the reason: One evening in October 2016, as Balza and her husband were getting ready for bed, they turned on the faucets. Out came dark brown water that smelled like manure.

"I mean, that's just disgusting," Balza says.

Balza's house has been in her husband Rob's possession since 1993, built originally by his great-grandparents in the late 1800s and situated in Wisconsin farmland a mile east of the town of Luxemburg. Out of the municipal water system's reach, the couple relies on a private well system that's replenished by groundwater.

Balza says she knew when she moved into the home in 2012 that the water was contaminated, though for the most part – the 2016 incident a major exception – it flows relatively clear. The couple uses it to wash dishes, take showers or run loads of laundry, but not for drinking or cooking.

While brown water events like Balza's are less common than they used to be, recent work by researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Wisconsin has provided evidence of an issue some Kewaunee County residents have lived with for years and become increasingly vocal about. The findings showed that approximately 28 percent of county wells have some form of nitrate or bacterial contamination, with certain regions – especially around the towns of Red River and Lincoln in the northwest part of the county – experiencing contamination rates from 35 to 45 percent.

Water in Kewaunee County resident Erika Balza's home ran brown in October 2016. She and her husband had a new private well installed afterward, but they don't drink its water. (Darren Hauck for USN&WR)

And Kewaunee County is not alone. Maureen Muldoon, a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh and a researcher involved with various well-testing studies throughout the region, says Kewaunee County is "the poster child for water-quality problems in northeast Wisconsin."

" Door County to the north has similar problems; there's Kewaunee County in the areas where the soil is thin," Muldoon says. "To the west of Kewaunee County is Brown County , and parts of that county have problems, and to the south there's Calumet and Manitowoc , and all of those areas have the same geology, and all of those areas have the same water-quality concerns."

But after decades of finger-pointing between farmers and citizens over who's responsible for the tainted water, the Kewaunee County community is taking steps to remediate its well contamination, from calling for more consistent well testing to implementing changes in farmers' management practices. New statewide regulations aimed at the problem also took effect this year.

"We are just now starting to see some positive benefit," says Lee Luft, a Kewaunee County supervisor and secretary of the county's Land and Water Conservation Committee. "We've had fewer reports of E. coli or bacterial well contamination this year, we are starting to see the farms become more concerned with how they're viewed in the community and they're starting to do things like planting more cover crops. … It's certainly not uniform, but it's a beginning."

Still, the issue is far from resolved, Luft says.

"The bad news is that we continue to have well-contamination rates throughout the county in the 25 to 30 percent range, meaning that there's some type of contamination," he says. "It might be bacterial, it could be high nitrates … and if it seeps down into the groundwater, it can add a lot of nitrates to the groundwater and that is not safe for adults, and especially for young children."

'A Fecal Soup'

Water accounts for more than two-thirds of Kewaunee County's roughly 1,000-square-mile area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau , making it seemingly inevitable that at least some manure from the county's count of 97,000 cattle and calves – outnumbering humans nearly 5 to 1 – will end up in area waterways.

But the problem of private well-water contamination dwells deeper than that, taking root in the geology of the ground.

Portions of land in Kewaunee County feature less than a few feet of soil atop fractured bedrock. With snow melts in spring and rain throughout the year, a substance put on the ground can easily seep unfiltered through cracks in the karst limestone and into the groundwater below, especially during seasons when there are no crops to help take up the water and nutrients.

"Because it is this fractured rock, the standard advice to homeowners is to sample your wells once a year. This makes no sense (for) a fractured-rock aquifer where basically water levels and chemistry change on a daily basis," Muldoon says. "The flow is so fast – it's not like normal groundwater flow."

Most rural Wisconsin residents use private wells along with septic systems, the latter of which are designed to allow pollutants in them to leach through the soil and be diluted before they reach the water table, Muldoon says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that failed septic systems are "one of the most common sources of well water contamination."

Meanwhile, the dairy industry drives Kewaunee County agriculture, generating approximately $65 million of the sector's more than $80 million in annual revenue. Dairy farmers big and small spread manure from their cows onto their fields to fertilize cash crops. In soil-thin areas, that means untreated manure can easily wash through the ground and into water supplies if proper precautions aren't taken.

"If you have 2,000 animals, a cow puts out about 18 people's worth of poop per day," Muldoon says. "So that's 39,000 people's worth of poop, and we just spread it on the landscape with no treatment. If there was a city of 39,000 people and you didn't own a sewage treatment – like, ew."

In 2014, citizen groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for help addressing concerns about water contamination, laying blame on the more than a dozen concentrated animal feeding operations – large farms known as CAFOs – in the county as the polluting source. The EPA turned to Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources , which commissioned a two-year well-testing study in 2015 to understand the source and spread of the problem in the county.

Kewaunee County is home to about 20,500 people and nearly 100,000 head of cattle and calves. (Darren Hauck for USN&WR)

Muldoon and Mark Borchardt, a research microbiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, received funding from the state's DNR to come up with a countywide contamination rate, determine what was polluting the wells and deduce how and why the area groundwater replenishes so fast.

They performed two countywide testings of approximately 300 and 400 wells, and found traces of both human and bovine contamination.

"It was the producers pointing fingers at the septic systems and the ex-urbanites pointing at the dairy farms. Well, it turns out that they're both right: The fecal contamination is coming from both septic systems and dairy farms, and we determined that unequivocally," Borchardt says.

Don Niles, a veterinarian and co-owner of Dairy Dreams, a 2,900-milk cow operation, says the research helped define the problem as universal.

"It basically demonstrates that we live on very shallow soil over fractured rock, so it's a very fragile topography to start with, for any activity on the surface," Niles says. "It's shallow ground – whether you're putting a cow field together or a septic tank, either way it's a fragile area."

Niles started Peninsula Pride Farms – a nonprofit made up of farmers, agronomists and other agricultural stakeholders – in 2016 to take responsibility for part of the problem the county was facing and to raise awareness of better field-management practices that farmers could adopt.

"Sensitive geology has always been here," he continues. "It's simply that all human activity, including our dairy farming, has to be more protective of the groundwater than we bear."

Referencing findings from a 2014 pilot study that inspired the DNR-backed study in Kewaunee County, Borchardt says he was shocked at the variety of contaminants found among randomly selected tainted wells, from traces of rotavirus – a human pathogen that causes diarrhea – to salmonella and cryptosporidium, microscopic parasites that also cause gastrointestinal illness.

"It was just a large variety of bacteria, viruses and protozoan pathogens – it was really a fecal soup, if you will, that we just haven't seen elsewhere," Borchardt recalls.

The findings underscored the fact that well water doesn't have to come out brown to be bad.

"It doesn't need to be brown to have concentrations that are probably a health risk," Borchardt says. "On the other hand, there are concentrations that are really low and probably – and I say probably – present very little health risks, at least for people that have competent immune systems, that have good immune systems. If you talk to people that are on cancer therapy, that are immunosuppressed for some reason – are immunocompromised to HIV or something like that – then that's a very different story."

Balza was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer in 2015, though she continued to use her home's well water for purposes other than cooking and drinking. Following the brown water incident, she and her husband had to endure 16 days without any usable water, and another month and a half before a new well was installed. "You don't realize (how important clean water is) until it actually happens to you," Balza says.

That can be especially true for families with newborns. Having a high concentration of nitrate – a compound that can emanate from both fertilizer and septic systems – in water ingested by infants can lead to a potentially fatal sickness called blue baby syndrome, in which the nitrate reduces the ability of blood cells to release oxygen to tissues, causing a bluish discoloration of the skin.

While nitrate also occurs naturally in groundwater, the EPA's standard to protect against blue baby syndrome is a maximum of 10 milligrams per liter of water. Of 1,350 tested wells in Kewaunee, 11 percent exceeded this threshold as of 2016, according to data charted by the Groundwater Center at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point .

Citizens also allege a lack of policy enforcement and oversight from Wisconsin's DNR in recent years. The state agency has seen drastic budget cuts during Republican Gov. Scott Walker's tenure and significant staffing losses under both Walker and his Democratic predecessor, Gov. Jim Doyle. In the state's biennial budget for fiscal years 2017 to 2019, four more positions were created specifically to monitor concentrated animal feeding operations, bringing the total up to 14 DNR field positions to monitor 304 operations statewide, department spokesman Jim Dick says.

"The biggest problem with what is occurring out on the actual landscape is that there's very little oversight and enforcement," says Lynn Utesch, a small beef farmer outside the Kewaunee County town of Pierce. "The people out here are tired of trying to do this documentation, this self-policing, this calling of hotlines for assistance and everything."

"We're basically out here, the citizens, doing our own documentation of what's going on," says Utesch, who started the local environmental activist group Kewaunee Cares with his wife, Nancy, in 2011 to document manure mismanagement. "Our water's always been good, and we've always tested our water, but our concern is that we realized how aquifers get contaminated, and there is a real threat that contamination could occur in our water due to the activities that surround our farm."

Slurry Solutions

Gaining a better understanding of how the area's geology affected its groundwater enabled Kewaunee County officials to implement farm regulations that aimed to limit the entry of manure into well water, particularly after the winter snow melted and before crop season started.

In 2016, an ordinance took effect making Kewaunee the first county in Wisconsin to bar the spreading of manure over land with less than 20 feet of topsoil between Jan. 1 and April 15. The next year, county officials approved an ordinance regulating how liquid manure can be spread on fields – another reported first for the state.

"It took 10 years – from 2004 to 2014 – to actually have some good data and to actually start seeing the correlated hot spots, and (how) the hot spots of unsafe wells, either due from bacteria or nitrates, match up with our shallow soils very well," says Davina Bonness, director of the county's Department of Land and Water Conservation. "I believe we're making progress – how much progress and how fast, well, it's never fast enough, but we're moving in a positive direction."

Aiding that progress: While Borchardt and Muldoon collected their well-testing data, the Wisconsin DNR orchestrated a Groundwater Collaboration Workgroup , which brought together EPA representatives, state agents, county officials, environmental activists, farmers, agronomists and citizens to discuss what measures needed to be taken to curb well contamination in Kewaunee, Brown and Door counties.

"Both sides are understanding that both are responsible, and therefore talking together somewhat, working toward solutions," Borchardt says. "I can't say the finger-pointing has stopped entirely, but I think groups are working better together than they were before."

Out of the workgroup's final report came new regulations attached to the state's runoff management rule for similar geological areas. The most prominent includes a prohibition barring all farmers from mechanically spreading manure on land with less than 2 feet of topsoil. Other stringent application measures governing how much manure can be spread on fields featuring different depths of soil also were implemented in the hopes of limiting groundwater contamination.

The new regulations took effect July 1.

"I do think that it was the people like Kewaunee Cares, as well as numerous other citizens, who came forward with their stories about brown water events and well-water contamination and surface-water contamination, and some really egregious spreading practices," Luft says. "Without those citizens stepping up and advocating for better quality of water, surface and groundwater, we would definitely not be where we are."

"The pressure built to a point where our county board had to finally recognize that, yes, there is a problem, people's lives are being affected, their quality of life is being affected, and we even now have the Wisconsin Department of Revenue agreeing that if you live near one of these CAFOs you can request a reduction in your property value – and that is a first," he continues. "So, it's turned about 180 degrees from where it was, I'll say, four years ago."

Local groups like Kewaunee Cares and other concerned citizens continue to monitor for instances of manure malfeasance. The workgroup's final report also recommended citizens or area farmers "consider forming a group to create a fund to provide emergency water supplies free of charge to those households with wells impacted by offsite contamination."

Niles' Peninsula Pride group, whose members account for approximately 50 percent of the cows and 50 percent of the tillable acres in Kewaunee County and southern Door County, offers such a program – called Water Well – through which homeowners with wells contaminated by E. coli may be eligible to obtain bottled water, a well inspection and financial assistance for a water treatment system.

The group supports the new regulations, though there is concern they may harm the ability of some farmers to make a profit.

"You go to a farm that has no farm ground with more than 2 feet of soil – if you're the farmer you can pretty quickly see that that creates an untenable situation for that farmer," Niles says. "So we're also working with the DNR and the county to find what kind of practices can that farm use so they can have a dairy and be able to use their very own farmland, and that's still trying to be worked out now."

Niles says the group also is teaching farmers best practices related to irrigation and soil-managing cover crops – offseason crops like radishes or cereal rye that can be used to take up nitrogen and water that might otherwise sift through the ground – as well as how to better communicate with their neighbors in order to have all parties on the same page regarding manure-spreading days, odors and nutrient-management plans.

"It is complex, and it's been acrimonious, and now we think it's less acrimonious because everybody, or most everybody, is starting to pull in the same direction," Niles says. "I really think that the conversation in Kewaunee County has been changing in the last few years as the farmers own their share and actively work to find solutions."

In nearby Brown County, south of Kewaunee and outside its watershed, a pilot program to deploy a community anaerobic digester – a device that will burn manure from nine dairy farms, ultimately producing electricity and diverting some manure from being applied to sensitive soil – is set to start in 2019, according to the state's Public Service Commission.

If successful in Brown, similar setups could spring up in Kewaunee County.

Watching Their Steps

The solutions implemented for Kewaunee County's drinking water issues won't immediately eliminate well-contamination incidents, but they may create more understanding among community members and a higher consciousness of the issue among farmers.

An impossible step to take would be to eliminate farming in the county altogether, Muldoon says.

"Look at Kewaunee County on a map: There are three tiny towns, people either work down in Green Bay or they farm – that's what we do," Muldoon says. "Realistically, if you want to stop contamination, you would probably need 20 or more feet of soil before bacteria and pathogens weren't getting in the water. And if you take all of the areas of northeast Wisconsin without 20 feet of soil over the rock out of production, you just bankrupt that part of the state."

What's more, Niles says, doing so would only address one side of the contaminated coin.

"If all the cows left, we'd still have about half the problem. Or if all the septics left, we'd still have half the problem, so I don't think either one of those are very logical solutions," Niles says. "We have to find how to do what we're doing in a way to have minimal impact – and I think we're making strides."

While Borchardt says samples can be tested to determine the exact farm and location that's polluted a private well, Niles says that for farmers, such specific details remain relatively scarce – meaning they need to take more precautions all around.

"I don't know that I've ever caused contamination – I have to assume that I have, because I have a substantial amount of cows in the county and I'm in the shallow area, so I have to assume that something has gotten into wells, but I don't know that," Niles says. "It just ups your game all over because you don't really know what or where or if you're doing something that's impacting somebody, so you just try to up your entire view and reduce the potential to do so."

The Balzas' new well, front right, sits near their home in Kewaunee County. The couple lives in a rural community surrounded by farmland. (Darren Hauck for USN&WR)

Still, for many area citizens, their well water will likely always need to be tested due to the geologically sensitive area in which they live. And for some, like Mick Sagrillo, who's lived in the Kewaunee County town of Lincoln for 40 years, the new spreading rules that came out of the county workgroup don't go far enough: Oversight and enforcement remain key issues.

"If you spread and you contaminated something, and it can't be proven, you're OK. If you spread and you contaminate something and it can be proven that you contaminated it, then you're in trouble," Sagrillo says.

Among other outstanding issues that will need to be addressed in the coming years is who bears the brunt of the costs for remediating a contaminated well, Muldoon says. As of now, the responsibility tends to fall on homeowners to fix the issue or install a new well, though they can apply for grant funding to alleviate the cost through the state DNR, as the Balzas did, or seek help from Peninsula Pride Farms' Water Well program.

"There are environmental impacts to farming, but we're asking the homeowners to bear that cost, not the farming industry, and I think that's something that we're going to have to struggle with, because some people can't afford a treatment system," Muldoon says.

It's a complicated balance between agribusiness and public health. But in Kewaunee County, efforts to strike it are plowing ahead.