Athens tables proposal for manure station
The Village of Athens Board on Monday tabled a recommendation from the village’s planning commission to allow Miltrim Farms to place a manure transfer station on land owned by Black Creek Estates at 1212 Park View Lane in village’s industrial park. The village board sent the request back to the commission to put some restrictions on the conditional use permit for the land.
Village clerk Lisa Czech said, as written, the conditional use permit would allow anyone to use the land for a manure transfer station. She said the planning commission would need to restrict the conditional use per- mit so it can only be used by Miltrim Farms.
Czech said the plan commission, which has not scheduled a meeting yet, will need to meet and make a new recommendation to the village board for it to approve at its next regular monthly board meeting at 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 27, in the municipal hall board room.
Members of the planning commission are Randy Decker, Taran Brodziski, Christopher Perkins, Dwight Lenhard, William Balz, Frank Redmann and Jackie Thurs.
David Trimner, co-owner of Miltrim Farms, said the farm would only use the manure transfer station about three to eight days a year.
“It’s called a frac tank, which is kind of like a big dumpster, and it’s portable so we’ll set it up in an ideal location for our trucks to dump manure into it, and then we’ll transfer the manure through a hose to the field that we are applying it to,” he said. “We would set it up, apply our manure and then remove it, and if there is any cleanup necessary, then we would do that as well.”
Miltrim Farms will have two routes for laying hose, one going north of Utility Road and the other going east along the ditch line, he said.
Trimner also addressed some concerns that were brought up at the previous planning commission meeting.
“The hoses are run under pressure and sometimes they will blow out,” he said. “Generally, the blowouts happen in the field on what is called the drag hose, which is the hose that we drag around the field, and then on rare occasions they will blow out on the feed hose. Generally, the hoses that we use are rated for 300 psi working pressure. We generally use them at about 180 psi with a burst pressure of 600, so generally they are very reliable.”
“From that standpoint, we have extensive monitoring while we are doing this process,” he explained. “The tractor that we use has Starlink on top of it, which allows us to connect to all the pumps and pressure gauges that shows us in real time the monitoring of the manure to make sure things are flowing properly and that the pressures have not suddenly dropped, which can indicate a blowout. The other thing is, we will have a man on site that is watching the hose as well. Then alongside that, we also have our truck drivers regularly coming by to dump manure into the frac tank, so they are there as well to turn something off if it is needed.”
Trimner said it’s not common for a manure hose to blow out.
“If there is a blowout and it’s not in the field, we have our own vacuum truck to suck up anything that was spilled and then also utilize that same thing to rinse down anything that is necessary,” he said. “We take the whole process very seriously, but a blowout in general is not a very serious thing and the reason I say that is because each section of hose is about 600 feet long before the coupling and each hose has the volume of up to about 500 gallons of manure, so in general, at most when you have a blowout, once you pinch off the hose, you would have lost potentially up to only 500 gallons of manure compared to a semi load of manure that is 12 times that amount.”
Village president Randy Decker questioned how the village would benefit from allowing Miltrim Farms to place a manure transfer station in the industrial park.
Andy Miller, another co-owner of Miltrim Farms, said there would be less wear and tear from Miltrim’s manure trucks on village streets, because they would only be traveling to the transfer pump in the industrial park instead of on various streets to reach different farm fields surrounding the village.
Decker asked the owners how it went when Miltrim Farms used the temporary manure transfer station on the land in the industrial park for two days last spring.
Trimner said village employee Al Belter granted Miltrim Farms access to the land because he didn’t realize that a conditional use permit was needed.
“We had 240ish loads of manure on those two days,” Miller said.
Other business
■ The board approved a recommendation from the planning commission to rezone village- owned property at 208 Allen Street, located next to the snow tubing hill, from C-1 Conservancy District to R-2 Single Family Residential for the purpose of creating a residential lot.
■ Board members approved the first two pay requests from August Winter & Sons for a total of $66,359 for work on the wastewater treatment plant chemical addition project.
■ The board approved a recommendation from the fire and police committee to begin charging $1,000 for each fire call on Jan. 1, 2026. Board member Christopher Perkins voted against it.
■ Board members approved an $11,100 contract with Marathon Technical Services (MTS) for engineering work on 2026 road projects slated for Damon Street, from Pine to Washington, and Love Lane, from Hope Street to the east.
■ The board approved a $1,000 donation to the Athens Old Timers Band.
■ Board members approved a picnic license for the Athens Sno-Pak Snowmobile Club on Saturday, Oct. 11, at Athens Community Hall and the Wausau Noon Optimists on Oct. 11 at Erbach Park.
