County zoning hearing overcrowded, postponed

WAUPACA – Waupaca County Planning and Zoning public hearing on the 2026 Proposed Chapter 34 Zoning Ordinances/Amendments was held at 9 a.m. on Aug. 6 at the Waupaca County Highway Department.
And then it was adjourned. Too many people showed up and they exceeded the fire code capacity like too many people packed into a movie theater. A motion was made to find a bigger venue.
The last time this happened was at the Lind Town Hall in December of 2023. It was shoulder-to-shoulder and standing room only. The town board also adjourned the meeting and sought out a bigger venue. That ended up as the Waupaca High School Performing Arts Center.
It’s similar circumstance for a similar story. The public interest in 2023 was about a co-digester proposed to be installed on a dairy farm in the Town of Lind. There were citizens both for and against this.
The Aug. 6 public hearing was about similar situation: proposed zoning ordinances/amendments that could potentially open the gateway for data centers, battery energy storage facilities, solar farms, wind turbines and manure co-digesters.

The 2026 Zoning Ordinance Summary document has multiple highlighted passages that include additional language to be included. It also has passages that are proposed to be stricken and these are demarked with a red strikethrough. If those changes are made, the document would be mostly rewritten and not very close to the orginal.
Once the rescheduled meeting goes forward (no date yet at press time) and citizens express their opinions on the matter with a three-minute time limit, the 2026 proposed zoning ordinances/amendments will be voted upon, will be approved or not as written, or amended by the Planning and Zoning Committee.
Those decisions are then forwarded to the County Board of Supervisors to vote on at their Aug. 18 meeting.
Currently there is a petition on change.org that is titled, “Oppose Waupaca County’s manure codigester ordinance.” It has 583 digital signatures.