EPA testimony 5.24.12 

Hello, 

I want to thank you for this opportunity to speak today about setting limits for carbon pollution. 

My name is Judy Skog and I am from Madison, Wisconsin. I drove down this morning with my friend, 

Don, because limiting carbon pollution is such an important topic. 

I would like to address two reasons for limiting carbon emissions: extreme weather events and their 

effects on farmers, and pollution effects on health. 

I have been a member of the Harmony Valley Farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for 15 or 20 

years. Harmony Valley Farm is a large organic farm in western Wisconsin which delivers hundreds of 

boxes to the Twin Cities and to Madison every week. In August of 2010 there was a 3 inch downpour in 

2 hours. This caused severe flooding, washing away crops, fences and other equipment, and most 

horrifying of all, top-soil. I believe that Richard de Wilde (my farmer) was as devastated by the loss of 

top soil as he was by the loss of crop. He has been carefully building up this top soil for 20 or 30 years. 

It is part of what makes his vegetables and fruit taste so amazing. Besides the crops that actually 

washed away, there were many more that Richard was unable to sell because of possible contamination 

from whatever was in the water from upstream. 

All in all, the farm suffered somewhere around a million dollar loss. Crop insurance, such as it is, 

covered only a tiny fraction of this, and that required many hours of Richard's time doing the 

paperwork. 

A more minor thing happened this spring. Ramps are spring ephemera Is and do not store well. We 

usually get them in the first box or 2 of the season. Because of having temperatures in the 80s in March 

this year, the ramp season came very early. What that meant for the CSA was that the ramp season was 

done 2 weeks before the first veggie box was delivered on May 5. 

Sadly, the 80 degree temperatures were followed by a freeze. Richard says the strawberry harvest will 

be down maybe 30%. The strawberries flowered during the warm days in March and then were 

especially vulnerable to the freeze that followed. 

Our irresponsible dumping of carbon into the atmosphere has made it much harder for farmers to 

conduct their business. This is especially true for vegetable farmers who plant a diversity of crops. How 

can they possibly know when to plant what, when the weather has such wild and unpredictable swings 

from hot to cold, including severe rain events or hail? 

On a personal note, I have mild asthma. Every day I check the air quality on the Weather Underground. 

I can tell you when we have yellow air quality days because my chest hurts. A few years ago we had 4 

days of orange air quality and one red day in the middle-right before Christmas. I could barely move, I 

had such low energy from the effects of the bad air quality. 

Coal fired power plants are a big part of my problems because of the particulates they release and their 

contribution to ozone. 

Oh, yes, we have fish advisories on all the lakes in the Madison area because of mercury pollution. 
Limiting carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants will help me breathe better. And carbon 

pollution limits will have a beneficial effect on the climate, which will help our farmers. 

Please adopt the carbon pollution limits. 

Thank you 

Judy Skog 

626 Orchard Dr. 

Madison, WI 



Sorry to leave you hanging for so long! The waters did recede- do a compare and contrast to the last post's raging waters 

to the pictures I took today. It didn't take a whole month to go down - the waters went down almost as quickly as they 

rose, I just didn't get around to showing you the proof. That's the good news. It's not all bad news, but we did have quite a 

bit of crop & plantings damage. Read all about it in the post-rain event newsletter here. 

Sad but true, no leeks this year: 

Sad but true, no leeks this year: 

Too much rain has continued to fall, but recent plantings have not washed out, so that too is good news.