Hot potatoes piling up on WI DNR's partisan, polluted plate

I thought I'd post what's soon to immerse the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - - the once-proud science and public health state agency now run with the pollution-protecting "chamber of commerce mentality" Scott Walker installed there to serve developers, campaign donors, corporate feedlot operators and other special interests - - while taxpayers who still expect the DNR to follow, and not disregard, law and common sense.

*  Federally-ordered statewide compliance with the US Clean Water Act. This is a big deal, as the US Environmental Protection Agency told the Walker administration in writing five years ago that it was failing to enforce clean water standards in 75 issue areas.

After years of foot-dragging - - I called it "Delay and Conquer" - - more than four years ago - -  especially when it comes to keeping toxins out of residential wells near the big feedlots which Walker, the DNR, the GOP-run Legislature and the Attorney General have all intentionally de-regulated, the EPA's hammer coming down is "imminent' because of the great work by public interest attorneys at Midwest Environmental Advocates.

That's the non-profit law firm hired by aggrieved Wisconsin citizens paying to have the public safety job which Walker, the GOP-led legislature and Attorney General Brad Schimel have together disregarded for partisan, political reasons.

*  Decision-making on the high-end golf course which Kohler Company wants to build in a Lake Michigan shoreline nature preserve filled with rare wetlands and dunes, Native American artifacts, wildlife and thousands of trees. 

As with some of the high-profile, groundwater-depleting and runoff polluting feedlot expansions and other high-profile land transactions, a major Walker donor is involved, with fair environmental procedures have waived as the DNR has proceeded with golf course project reviews in a taxpayer-paid smoothing process without a formal permit application in hand which the company would have to formally defend.

At some point, the DNR is going to have to decide whether to ask for that permit application: with DNR officials also on record saying they may allow some project permits to be written by the applicant and not by the agency - - the ultimate regulatory capitulation to donors and polluters - -  I could imagine Kohler eventually being allowed to write the final permit itself, since the DNR has already goosed the preliminaries along in the company's favor.

*  Decision-making on the precedent-setting 26,000-hog Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operation, (CAFO), complete with nine football field-size manure storage containers and spreading operations set on several nearby farm fields, which an Iowa pork producer wants to locate close to scenic Lake Superior Chequamegon Bay.

In this case, the company has filed a permit application, but time has gone by and the DNR has yet to complete and release an Environmental Impact Statement. Word is that the company has not sent the agency enough information to date; in any case, delay keeps the issue away from the November elections in a state where water rights and Walker administration favoritism to big business is finally breaking through.

*  Ditto for the stalled, so-called realignment of the DNR - - the latest iteration in redefining and downsizing the staff-and-budget-starved agency away from its historical mission.

The realignment - - and what a great, bureaucratic word: I wonder why AG Schimel didn't use it when it would have been so apropos - - was supposed to be announced in early August: employees were waiting to find out if their jobs or sections were to be eliminated, watered-down, or transferred to Walker administration Gulag outposts miles away to the edge of Madison in the similarly corporatized Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, or to a partisan redoubt in the Department of Administration, or to a far-flung DNR office up North (sorry if you need to sell your house, take the kids out of their school, but you're free to commute round-trip 400 miles...).


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