State DOJ: Reason to close Whitehall meet inadequate

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has determined that the city of Whitehall did not provide sufficient reasoning for closing a meeting June 8 on problems with its wastewater treatment system.

Trempealeau County District Attorney John Sacia said he would convey to the city’s attorney, Christopher Gierhart, the DOJ’s opinion that the reasons for the closed session were inadequate. Sacia reviewed Whitehall’s justification for holding a closed session at the request of the Times.

“Although there might be a basis to close the meeting for some limited purpose,” Sacia said, “it’s the burden of the party closing the meeting to set forth a specific basis for the closure.”

The beleaguered wastewater plant is producing unpleasant smells that periodically float into Whitehall. The city of Blair uses the Whitehall facility under the terms of a 1983 agreement. Blair’s Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI) is reportedly responsible for sending too much biological material to the Whitehall facility since December.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources found that in addition to the smell, the overloaded plant has discharged into the Trempealeau River over the past several months biological material, copper, phosphorus and “suspended solids” that in some instances were three times the allowable limit.

In closing the meeting during which Whitehall officials discussed the effects of the AMPI overload, Gierhardt said only that city officials would be discussing negotiation strategies and possible penalties against Blair and AMPI.

In a 2019 opinion, the Wisconsin attorney general, said government entities must describe how an open meeting would jeopardize a strategy.

The Blair city council also met in closed session June 7 to discuss the AMPI discharges, though that closed meeting may have been justified as the city was to discuss legal strategies.

In related action, AMPI is expected to pay this week the $208,870 surcharge Whitehall levied against Blair for the excess discharges that have crippled the Whitehall plant. Susan Frederixon, Blair clerk treasurer, and Ashley Slaby, Whitehall administrator, said Blair and Whitehall are focused on working with the Department of Natural Resources to restore the plant and perhaps updating the agreement between the two cities.

AMPI also made excessive discharges into the Whitehall plant in 2018 and paid a $50,000 surcharge.

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