Star Tribune
Farm seeking to expand its dairy operation loses legal fight to Winona County
Owners of the largest dairy operation in Winona County have lost a key legal battle in their years-long fight to triple the size of their feedlot.
District Judge Douglas Bayley this week threw out a lawsuit by Daley Farm of Lewiston, Minn., that claimed Winona County commissioners had stacked a zoning board vote to ensure the farm’s proposed expansion would fail.
The ruling is a major victory for several environmental groups and water quality advocates that have organized against Daley’s expansion and the dairy industry’s shift, as a whole, to consolidation and fewer, bigger operations.
And it’s a relief for officials with Winona County, which has been sued by the Daley family several times since first denying their request to expand far beyond the county’s feedlot size limits in 2019, said Paul Reuvers, a lawyer representing the county.
“This is the nail in the coffin,” Reuvers said. “It was a well-written order that we fully expect to stand even if [the Daleys] decide to spend more money to appeal it.”
In a statement provided by Matthew Berger, a lawyer representing Daley Farm, the family said it will appeal.
“The evidence in this case overwhelmingly demonstrates that Winona County officials actively conspired with Land Stewardship Project,” a group opposed to expansion, to reject the farm’s plan before it could get a fair hearing, according to the family’s statement. “We hope that the higher courts will correct this grave injustice and restore the fundamental right of all citizens to a fair hearing.”
The Daley family has been running the dairy in Lewiston, about 30 miles east of Rochester, for more than 160 years. It grew over the generations and now has capacity to house 1,608 cows and 120 calves — the equivalent of 2,275 animal units as calculated by state law.
Twenty-five years ago, when Winona County set a limit on feedlots at 1,500 animal units, Daley Farm was grandfathered in and allowed to maintain its size. But the family wanted to roughly triple the operation and started applying for state and local permits in 2017 to expand to about 4,000 cows and 525 heifers, for a total of roughly 6,000 animal units.
Environmental groups and neighbors who were worried about water pollution opposed the plan, reflecting strong concern over large feedlots in southeastern Minnesota because of the area’s geography.
The unusually porous rock in the area allows manure used as fertilizer to easily contaminate wells and groundwater with nitrate, which can be toxic and even deadly for infants. The region suffers from generally higher nitrate levels. The EPA estimated this month that the water supplies for more than 9,200 people in the area are likely contaminated with hazardous amounts of nitrate and demanded state agencies do more to reduce it.
A Winona County zoning board first denied the Daley family’s request for a needed variance to expand in 2019. That decision was thrown out after the family appealed and a judge found that three members of the zoning board were too biased to fairly consider the proposal.
A new zoning board was appointed. It again denied the Daley family’s request to expand in 2021. The board split on a 2-2 vote on the question whether the Daleys had any reason for the expansion that wasn’t financial, and the tie vote constituted a denial.
The Daleys sued once more, saying the county again failed to give them a fair hearing and that the two zoning board members who voted against them were biased from the start. One of the two had been involved with Land Stewardship Project, the family argued.
The Daleys, however, could not “point to any actual evidence of bias,” Bayley wrote in his decision. Pointing out one member’s “tangential involvement” with Land Stewardship Project falls well short of proof, the judge wrote.
Bayley added that the zoning board’s decision to deny the variance was reasonable.
Sean Carroll, a spokesman for Land Stewardship Project, said the core issue is the competing visions for what rural Minnesota should look like. One vision holds with continued consolidation of dairy farms into larger operations, he said, and the other wants to keep smaller farms viable. The Winona County animal unit cap was created to try to keep more farmers on the land, Carroll said.
“This is a clear final decision form the courts,” he said. “It’s time to move on. The county and the community has a lot more to be doing.”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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