St. Germain town board quashes septic field rumors

Rumors of a septic field citizens feared would be established in the town of St. Germain can now be officially dismissed, according to statements made by town chairman Tom Christensen and town supervisor Ted Ritter at the Dec. 28 town board meeting.

Discussion of the rumored septic field began roughly two months ago through person-to-person and social media channels, then found its way to a governmental forum during a Nov. 13 meeting of the St. Germain town board.

The topic was agendized as “Discuss rumored septic waste disposal field.”

At that time, Ritter explained that roughly 80 acres north of St. Germain on State Highway 155 and Found Lake Road had been recently purchased by Peter Baltus.

“He lives in Three Lakes,” Ritter said at that meeting. “I believe he and/or his family own one or more of the local pumping services. He’s in the septic-pumping business. At this point, there’s been nothing to substantiate that this is actually going to happen — or when.”

He said he needed “to emphasize” that at this point, and it was his opinion, there was something that  was “just a rumor.”

“It’s probably a good rumor,” Ritter said. “It’s probably true that the owner of that land is looking to turn it into a septic field.”

When asked by The Lakeland Times to describe the land in question, Ritter said it appeared as though 80 acres “have been cleared.”  “Stumps are still there. I don’t know if anything has gone beyond the logging. I don’t know if they’ve done anything beyond that or not, but it’s basically a stump-field at this time.” 

The board — as well as a standing-room-only audience and more than a dozen Zoom participants — discussed the rumors for approximately 45 minutes, and the overall mood quickly turned antagonistic towards Baltus, who was not present.

“Quite honestly, I’d like to make his life as difficult as possible,” one unidentified meeting participant said. “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can do to contribute to that.”

As that conversation continued, the Times asked whether any officeholder from St. Germain had contacted the Baltus family’s business interests seeking either confirmation or denial about of rumored septic field.  Ritter indicated no one had done so.

Finally, a Zoom participant identified herself as Ella Baltus, the daughter of Peter, and a Three Lakes town supervisor.

“I find it a little unprofessional we weren’t contacted before this because I totally would have been there if I would have known a little more about this ahead of time,” she said. “I just think it would be best to approach this professionally and for us to come talk to you along with the DNR (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources).  And I don’t necessarily appreciate this being put on the agenda without anyone from the town board even making the slightest effort to contact us about this. And that’s really all I have to say for tonight, so thank you.”

“I have been in communication with the very people who are directly involved with the permitting of septic fields,” Ritter explained to the audience. “This all falls under NR-113, DNR administrative rule. I will start right out with what you don’t want to hear: ‘Limit on local regulations: no city, village, town, or county may prohibit or regulate through zoning or any other means the disposal of septage on land if that disposal complies with this section and rules promulgated under this section.’ Our zoning would not allow this to happen but our zoning is superseded by NR-113. So they’re basically saying that neither the town nor the county can stop this with zoning or pretty much anything else.”

Ritter further explained that the permitting process “does not seem” to involve any kind of a public hearing. 

“It does not involve really any opportunity for town input, although anybody can email how they feel about this to anybody they want to, but I don’t know that it’s going to accomplish much,” he said. 

That meeting ended with no action being taken and little more being accomplished than to enlighten the audience to the technicalities of NR-113.

Someone did take action, though, as someone sent Ella Baltus a threatening email via her official Three Lakes town Supervisor account on Dec. 4. The sender was listed as an Outlook account with the name Darrin DeYoung attached to it. The email read:

“Dear Ella, I’m writing you only as a messenger and someone who’s trying to prevent something terrible from happening,” the email’s author wrote. “YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER!!! People are coming for you, and they know where you live. I highly suggest that you do whatever you can to mitigate the damages caused by the clear-cutting in Saint Germain and abandon your plans to apply for a septic dumping permit.

Sincerely,

A concerned resident of the beautiful Northwoods.”

A few hours later, Baltus forwarded the threat to the entire St. Germain town board with an original email accompanying it. 

“A few weeks ago you ran a meeting regarding my father’s land without reaching out to us and giving us a chance to tell you our plans (of which we have no obligation to at this stage) or allow us to give you any input, she wrote. “Due to this meeting, I have now received a threat to my Three Lakes supervisor email and I am appalled. In the future, please refrain from discussing our property without contacting us first. I would say I am owed a public apology, but quite honestly, I do not want any more attention drawn to the issue because I do not want any more threats. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. That meeting was a complete free for all and was quite literally based on a ‘rumor.’ As a member of my own town’s board, this is inexcusable. Due to your negligence I am now being threatened. We have not made up our mind what we are doing with the property, something that you would have known if you would have had the decency to contact us before putting our property on your agenda.”

Baltus wrote to St. Germain town supervisor Brian Cooper twice more in the following two days.

On Dec. 5, she again admonished the St. Germain town board for discussing rumors and not seeking her family’s side of the story.

“I am quite disgusted with the practices of your board and the headaches you have caused me,” Baltus wrote in her Dec. 5 email. “We have not made up our mind what we are doing with our land. If you would have had the common sense to ask that before putting me on your agenda, I probably could have avoided the threatening email.” 

She urged the St. Germain town board to have the DNR address concerns from the town’s residents.

“It is the least your board could do after doing something so incredibly unprofessional and putting a LITERAL rumor on your agenda,” Baltus wrote. 

On Dec. 6, Baltus wrote another email, this one letting the St. Germain town board know “that our intended plan is housing.”

“This is something we were trying to keep private, but after the threats, petitions, and GoFundMe’s I felt it was better for the town and for us to just come out with it,” she wrote. “Our planning stages are primal, and obviously when we get to the point of permitting anything we will be in touch. I am sorry for the headaches this has caused you, as well as the headaches it has caused me. Hopefully by publicly stating our current intent (something we both know is not required when you buy land)  all of this drama can subside.”

The Times received the emails as part of an open records request on Dec. 8, then spoke to Three Lakes police chief Scott Lea regarding the threatening email.

He said he’s aware of the email; it falls under his department’s jurisdiction and it is an ongoing investigation so he was limited in his comments.

“It will be our agency — at least, on the front side — but we’ll be looking for some outside assistance from another agency,” Lea said. “Sometimes, with that sort of complaint, unfortunately, they’re a little bit challenging because of the internet world … nowadays, with spoofed email addresses, it’s really challenging with some of these sites and calls.”

  The St. Germain town board held another meeting on Dec.  11 and discussed the rumors again for nearly an hour — once again, without having engaged in direct conversation with any member of the Baltus family.  

Prior to that meeting, Ritter corresponded with the DNR regarding several issues. He requested the presence of a DNR official at a future meeting but was told the agency would not commit to addressing a public forum regarding something which may or may not happen. Attendance would be much more likely in the event a septic-dumping permit were actually applied for at some point in the future.

He also said the DNR confirmed “the department has not yet received a land application site request for the land application of septage to this site.”    “Conclude from that what you wish, but at this point, the landowner has not applied for a permit to dump septage on that site,” Ritter said. 

He read aloud the email in which Ella Baltus said housing is the intended use of her family’s property, as well as the email containing the threat.

Audience members let out audible signs of what could be characterized as disappointment, disapproval, and disgust as Ritter read the latter.

Town supervisor Kalisa Mortag said Baltus “was, quite frankly, upset, and rightfully so, because she felt that she had received threatening emails over this topic.”

“I can only speak for myself, but no matter what they’re doing with this property, I do not find it appropriate that she’s being threatened in emails,” she said. 

Ritter concurred. “There is no place for this,” he said. “And I don’t know who initiated it, but I hope they’re dealt with legally.”

Michael Connors, who organized a petition-drive at the website “Don’t Let St. Germain Go To Waste.com,” addressed those in attendance. “The Connors family does not believe that this is only a rumor that a septic-waste dump was planned,” he said. “There’s just too much evidence and public reporting to suggest the contrary ... with this in mind, the Connors family will continue to be involved with the campaign ‘Don’t Let St. Germain Go To Waste’ until a legal resolution is signed by the new owners, agreeing to never again (sic) seek a septage permit for this property. We do not trust the new owner’s words and fear that this new rumor might be another smokescreen.”

Even after the email from Baltus stating her family’s intention to use the land for housing and her desire for that information to be made public was read aloud, Connors continued to question the intentions — and trustworthiness — of the Baltus family.

“We can’t believe what they’re saying,” Connors stated, “So we’re going to continue with our campaign.”

The Times conducted two conversations with Ella Baltus in November and December and the majority of those interviews were published.

“When I read the threat, it was a little bit unsettling, as it would be to just about anyone,” she said. “But more than anything, it was just frustrating because that was never our plan for this property. I tried to be honest with people and all that resulted in was me being attacked and having every word I said being picked apart and scrutinized, and being accused of being a liar.”

“This is honestly much ado about nothing,” she said.

At the conclusion of the Dec. 11 meeting, the town board voted unanimously to have Christensen and Ritter reach out to Baltus and request a sit-down discussion. 

The three met just prior to Christmas and Christensen reported the results during the town board’s Dec. 28 meeting.

Christensen also shared a letter written to him by Peter Baltus dated Dec. 20. In it, Baltus reiterates his family’s intentions — for a second time in writing — to use his land for a residential development.

He also chided the St. Germain town board for its handling of the situation.

“The Board was totally aware of my intentions for the property at their December 11th meeting,” Peter Baltus wrote. “I find it disconcerting that instead of assuaging the concerns of their attendant constituency, the Board instead opted to defer the subject to an infinitely uninformed adjacent property owner and his plaintive ministrations; an irrational and thoughtless construct.....that only succeeded in perpetuating the frenzied, overwrought, concerns regarding my property. The Town Board could have avoided finding themselves in the crosshairs of a rancorous, misinformed, populace had the Board simply exercised a modicum of due diligence prior to placing the discussion of a rumor on their meeting agenda. Not once, mind you, but twice.”

He wrote that “the assertion” he purchased the property for use as an 80 acre waste dump “is delusional, economically illiterate and venturing deeply into the absurd.” “Furthermore, the harvest of forest products is a pursuit that our family has been engaged in throughout Northern Wisconsin for 6 generations,” Baltus wrote. “Apparently, that activity on a property zoned forestry is in direct conflict with the ever-expanding cohort of people who abhor anything that they deem an affront to their views and opinions concerning the environment. That subject is a contretemps for another day. Anyone who is of the volition that the property should have been left undisturbed or managed differently, had every opportunity to purchase the property themselves to do with what they pleased.”

An unidentified audience member wondered if the town would be able to take the Baltus comments “at face value but maybe not.”

“What we have is his statement, what he is planning on the property,” Christensen said. “And as of right now, we don’t have anything that says he’s not going to do that. So, from this point on, I would trust that everyone would now back off. I believe it was President Reagan who said about Mikhail Gorbachev ‘Trust but verify.’ And we need to trust that this is honestly what he’s going to do with the property, but keep a watchful eye out, I think is a prudent thing to do. I truly hope that — and would ask — that the website would come down now, that the functions and things that were going on would cease, that we again don’t invade their privacy, that we would leave the family alone, and no contact with them whatsoever about this situation.”

Christensen said he believes the matter is “over for the present time.” 

“So, I don’t know what more there is to discuss tonight,” he said. “We got what we asked him to do. He’s stated that it’s not his intention, for it to become a septic-dumping waste facility, or whatever you call it.”

“I don’t agree with most of the things that Mr. Baltus put in his letter,” the unidentified audience member said. “I think he was a little overly-harsh, particularly towards members of our town board. But I do appreciate the fact that it’s not going to be a septic waste dump. In fact, that was the primary issue, as far as the development of that property. It’s not going to stay undeveloped forever, but so as long as it’s within the town guidelines and ordinances and so forth, it is what it is.”

At the conclusion of discussion on the subject, Michael Connors characterized the outcome as a “success.”