FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Adam Warthesen, Organic Valley; Tyco to pay $10 million, cover cleanup costs in PFAS suit settlement

June 5, 2026

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Adam Warthesen, vice president of government and industry affairs and sustainability at Organic Valley.

The discussion explores a recent lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Organic Dairy Exemption — which includes the La Farge-based co-op — challenging elements of the federal milk marketing program. This system prices milk from U.S. farms, applying set regulations to milk handlers that buy and sell milk as well, such as Organic Valley.

Warthesen says the co-op in western Wisconsin is unique due to only handling organic dairy products. He argues the national pricing system first created in the 1930s “doesn’t fit the organic marketplace in any way shape or form” in its current state.

“It actually creates a problem, in that it extracts resources that should otherwise live in the organic dairy ecosystem,” he said.

The co-op has been raising concerns about the law for more than a decade, first petitioning for a change in 2015 with no success, Warthesen explained. The only way to change the federal milk system is a national hearing process with a related vote by farmers, or an act of Congress, he said.

During a national hearing held by the USDA in 2023, the co-op said “organic receives no benefit from the orders, our pricing is completely detached from how the orders function,” among other concerns. Warthesen said the federal agency didn’t accept any of the proposals aimed at addressing these concerns, instead moving forward with more narrow formula changes that came into effect in 2025.

But those changes resulted in greater costs for organic businesses in the coalition, prompting the new lawsuit announced last month.

“It increased our costs to the pooling, which is how the dollars get moved around, by 60%,” he said. “So we’re not talking a couple hundred thousand dollars here or there, we’re talking about millions upon millions of dollars annually, that a company like ours is putting into this pool that is then redistributed back to conventional dairy farmers.”

The coalition is challenging the federal system through multiple legal avenues, including one seeking $60 million to offset some of the costs of being required to participate in the program.

“The legal action is one that we didn’t want to have to take, but the [USDA] has been unresponsive,” Warthesen said. “And this isn’t organic versus conventional, this is organic saying this is government intervention into the organic marketplace that does not make sense.”

Listen to the podcast here and see the full list of WisBusiness podcasts.

— Gov. Tony Evers and AG Josh Kaul hailed a settlement in a lawsuit over PFAS contamination that will require Tyco to pay out $10 million as well as foot the bill for existing cleanup.

According to the state Department of Justice, the $10 million is on top of the approximately $100 million Tyco has already spent to address contamination in the Marinette area. The settlement is one of the largest resulting from a DNR referral in state history, according to Evers’ office.

“We’ve worked to lead the fight against PFAS from Day One of my administration, and today’s a key step toward making sure polluters are held accountable, take responsibility for their actions, and ensure Wisconsinites don’t have to foot the bill for cleaning up the messes that others made,” Evers said in a statement.

The Dem guv said “our work cannot stop,” noting communities across the state are grappling with the contamination.

The settlement is related to a lawsuit Kaul filed in 2022. The complaint alleged Johnson Controls and Tyco had violated the state’s Spills Law by failing to notify the Department of Natural Resources about and remediate PFAS contamination at the Fire Technology Center in Marinette. The contamination stemmed from PFAS-containing firefighting foam used in training and testing at the center.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or “forever chemicals” are found in industrial and everyday products such as firefighting foam and non-stick cookware. They don’t break down easily and are linked to several diseases and cancers in humans.

The $10 million will go into the state’s existing PFAS Trust Fund to help clean up contamination.

Other provisions of the settlement require Tyco to:

Provide clean water in the Marinette area, including deep drinking water wells in agreed-upon areas for the next 20 years;
Monitor and report ground and surface water quality in the agreed-upon area;
Establish specific goals to remediate soil, groundwater and surface water contamination and report on the efforts to DNR; and
Remediate PFAS and restore the environment “to the extent practicable.”

Tyco did not immediately return a request for comment on the settlement.

Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Gillett, co-authored the law that allocated $132 million to the PFAS Trust Fund while providing new protections for “innocent landowners” who have the pollution on their property.

He said municipalities like Marinette and Peshtigo “have waited far too long for this day to come.”

“I’m proud to have authored the creation of the PFAS Trust Fund in the 2023-25 State Budget, which requires the state to reinvest any funds from PFAS legal settlements into this Fund to help victims remove these pollutants from our land and water,” Wimberger said. “Now, every single dollar from the Tyco settlement will go into the PFAS Trust Fund and be used to support affected victims and communities.”

The settlement was filed yesterday with a Brown County judge and will go into effect upon approval by the Marinette County Circuit Court.

A separate lawsuit Kaul filed in 2022 over PFAS contamination against several manufacturers, including Tyco, remains ongoing. That suit alleged “wrongful, deceptive, and tortious conduct” led to PFAS contamination in the state.

“Reliable access to safe and clean water is critical for strong communities and people’s health and peace of mind,” Kaul said of yesterday’s announcement. “This resolution is a major step on the path toward a more secure future for folks in the Marinette area.”

— A new report led by UW-Madison Prof. Morgan Edwards shows “real vulnerability” in the global push to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The UW-Madison La Follette School of Public Affairs yesterday announced the third edition of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report. It notes national pledges from multiple countries are falling short of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius this century, by more than 5 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050.

Still, the report documents an “increasingly mature” CO2 reduction ecosystem, with diverse policy efforts across various countries and investment capital flowing to late-stage startups in this area. While long-term company targets being announced are “less ambitious” than what was captured in earlier reports, authors note businesses may be focusing more on building capacity than signaling their plans.

Meanwhile, workforce development in this space is moving past engineering and other technical positions to include other services. This may show more innovators in carbon removal are “focusing on meeting reasonable growth benchmarks” with tested approaches, while also improving new approaches through research, according to the report.

But authors point to major challenges standing in the way of scaling up carbon removal efforts, noting funding depends heavily on “institutional continuity” keeping up support.

“While more countries are funding (CO2 removal) demonstration projects, policy reversals, particularly in major markets like the United States, underscore that funding uncertainty remains a key barrier,” they wrote.

In a statement on the report, Edwards notes activity around CO2 removal is “highly concentrated” in just a few countries and technical approaches. Research in this space is dominated by several regions including eastern Asia, making up 33% of the work, Europe with 22% and North America with 14%.

Meanwhile, novel CO2 removal deployment is most concentrated in the U.S. with 16% and Germany with 14%, while “conventional” CO2 removal is most dominant in Mexico with 59%, followed by China with 8.8% and India with 4.1%.

“Growing investment in CDR will depend on expectations of future demand, but those expectations are fragile … local changes in policy or market signals in risk slowing progress globally,” Edwards wrote.

See the full report.

See the release.

— Alliant Energy is one of 11 companies set to receive $425 million in federal funding for coal plants that President Donald Trump announced yesterday.

The funding comes from the Defense Production Act, which grants the president certain powers over domestic industries in the interest of national defense, according to a congressional overview. The DPA funding is supporting 13 existing coal plants across 10 states, including Wisconsin.

The utility plans to update its coal-fired Columbia Energy Center in the town of Pacific, an effort meant to “maintain dependable baseload service and enhance the efficiency and environmental performance of the existing units,” per the project description.

In a separate statement, a spokesperson for Alliant Energy said the coal plant will continue producing power during the modernization project.

“Our application and the potential $19 million grant award, provides us with an opportunity to cost-effectively modernize Columbia – an existing cornerstone in the American energy infrastructure,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, adding “if our application [is] funded, it helps us sustain the work of nearly 100 high-skill union workers at the plant, represented by IBEW Local 965.”

Alliant Energy’s project includes $19 million in Department of Energy funding for its Reliable, Economical, and Local Advancement in Modernized Coal, or RECLAIM-C project, according to details from the agency. Another $29.5 million of non-DOE funding is involved for a total of $48.5 million.

Meanwhile, Trump yesterday also announced $75 million in DPA funding for a new coal export terminal in Oakland, California, along with $200 million in Department of Energy grants to build two new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia.

Trump described the funding as “historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.”

See details on all funded projects.

Trump announces federal funding to support Wisconsin coal plant

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