Latest salvo from the bad guys in the WI legislature (or, more precisely, their puppet masters at ALEC): a bill “reforming” the DNR permitting process for any and all activities in or near water. By reforming, of course, I mean, utterly defanging the DNR’s ability to protect the public interest and our Public Trust Doctrine.
In Wisconsin, as opposed to most of the western states, we have a law that states that the waters of Wisconsin belong collectively to the people of Wisconsin. You may own river frontage, or a lake lot, but you do not own the water. Nor can you own the land underlying the water – that’s state land.
This law is so deeply imbedded in our way of life, our way of looking at the natural resources of our state, that not even the Fitzwalkers would dare try and undo it. They are taking a sideways route – allowing for any kind of activity in riparian and littoral zones regardless of their potential or actual impact to the health of the waterbody. With this bill they would create a presumption of approval for any permit application – and the DNR would have only 30 days to respond. Oh, and public input via hearings or public information sessions is shut down.
And as if this is not bad enough, the real intent here is to make it super duper easy for a certain mining company to come in and create an open pit mine to extract taconite ore. In the Penokees. Draining into the Bad River watershed, the Kakagon Sloughs, the largest wild rice bed on the Great Lakes, Chequamegon Bay and Lake Superior.
In one of the more amusing moments in today’s 8-hour session of the Joint Committee on Natural Resources, it was pointed out to the DNR administration staff (read: Fitzwalker shills) that the only impediment allowed to be raised to the construction of a pier on a waterbody in Wisconsin is if that pier causes a neighbor’s pier to be blocked or otherwise made more difficult to access. The DEPARTMENT of NATURAL RESOURCES would only put the kibosh on the dredging for, installation and/or building of a pier if it made a neighbor unable to moor his party boat easily. Never mind the damage to the shoreline, the destruction of fish spawning habitat, the muddying of the lake in question.
I won’t go into the horrid details here (like the fact that the DNR is currently operating with about 25% of its approved positions vacant and has 2/3 the number of total staff positions it had 10 years ago, and so meeting the 30-day deadline is nigh unto impossible now that every riparian landowner has been granted permission to do whatever they hell they want in their backyards). What was even more depressing was watching the laughable caricature of the democratic process today.
It was very very evident that the Republicans on the Joint Committee had no intention of actually listening to any of the 6 hours of public testimony with an open mind. They had decided how they would vote on this bill even before it was drafted. The mocking condescension displayed by its coauthor and Joint Committee chairman to anyone, his flippant refusal to directly answer any question told us all we needed to know – this is a done deal. Never mind that the job of the Joint Committee and the DNR is to safeguard our natural resources for all citizens of the state, now and into the future. They are perfectly willing to sell out our vibrant, vital landscapes to not even the highest bidder, just the most recent bidder. The taconite mine will produce low quality iron ore, which will not be in high demand given the copious other sources of higher quality ore available. It is actually very likely that the mining company will come in and dig a big pit and then decide that it ain’t worth it and skedaddle, leaving us with a scarred and soiled northwoods to try and clean up.
We were asked to come to today’s hearing armed with an 8.5 x 11 photograph of one of our favorite water bodies. I chose one of Rowan wading off into Lake Michigan, bucket in hand. But I could just as easily have chosen this one:
The water that falls on oak leaves in Dane County might well come from a lake named Trout or Fish or Mud in Vilas County. Indeed, the rain that falls in Nebraska or Germany or the Seychelles might come from that lake. The decisions we make today about how to care for our natural resources have worldwide implications. This is not just about our backyard.
