The Dane County Board's public works and transportation committee held a meeting Tuesday night to hear public opinion on the proposal to dump diseased deer carcasses into the county landfill.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources initially proposed the plan, as testing found deer carcasses infected with chronic wasting disease did not pose a threat to the community.

According to the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance website, the contagious neurological disease affects deer, elk and moose. CWD causes a spongy degeneration of the brain of the infected animal — leading to emaciation, abnormal behavior, loss of bodily functions and eventually death.

Controversy surrounds the disposal of CWD-infected deer carcasses and which methods are safest for the Dane County community. Although only two residents attended the meeting to voice opposition to the proposal, they expressed serious concern about the issue.

"In terms of [infection of this disease], everyone says that CWD is not infective in humans, and as far as we know, it isn’t. The problem is that there is a species barrier, but we usually refer to that as the barrier beyond which we don’t jump yet, not a lead box in which we live," Dane County resident Fae Dremock said. "There have been cases where diseases have jumped species."

The meeting opened at the downtown City County Building with a short presentation by University of Wisconsin Professor Dr. Joel Pedersen, who works in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Pedersen spoke about experiments funded by the DNR and designed and conducted by researchers Craig Benson, Judd Aiken and himself to determine the risk of placing the infected carcasses in the landfill.

Petersen said the team’s main objective was to "evaluate the risk to humans, cattle and cervids associated with landfill disposal of CWD-infected material."

Until now, infected deer carcasses have been disposed of in different ways by the DNR, including chemically digesting and incinerating, but cost has become a large issue.

According to a handout from the Public Works and Transportation Committee, this new method of disposal "is a better and more cost-effective use of government funds, in this case, funds being redirected from our wildlife management program."

However, Dane County resident Norman Stockholm said spending a few hundred dollars more for a potentially safer method of disposing diseased deer carcasses may be a better solution.

“The savings between burial (in a landfill) and digestion is only about $500 dollars a ton, and we are not talking about that much material here on a given year,” Stockholm said. The DNR estimates the amount of CWD-infected material going to landfills each year is roughly 150 to 200 tons — less than the amount of garbage that is collected in one day.

The Public Works and Transportation Committee passed the motion on for further review until an ultimate decision is reached between Dane County, the state of Wisconsin and DNR.