The Town of Mukwonago will decide through a referendum on Tuesday if it wants to retain its rural character, or join the subdivision/strip mall/traffic congestion crowd.
Like the countywide farmland preservation question on the Washington County ballot, the Town of Mukwonago is on the right path, letting its residents, not a clutch of developers and other insiders decide their fate.
Best of luck to them.
From now on, I'm only voting for candidates who don't annoy me with robocalls.
Attorney and City of Monona alderman Peter McKeever has written eloquently about how Wisconsin's open lands are disappearing when powerful building and consulting interests overwhelm less well-armed town boards and decision-making commissions.
You might want to download and save McKeever's commentary from that WisOpinion link highlighted above, because WisOpinion postings vanish after a few days and are not archived on the site.
Here's a portion of the argument that McKeever, a long-time organizer in statewide land conservation efforts, presents in his Friday, March 30th essay:
"The local review and approval process is typically ripe with procedural and substantive errors and problems, often involving the failure of local government to follow public notice, open meetings and open records laws and the failure to properly apply local zoning laws and follow land use plans. The board members, the “deciders” have little experience dealing with big sprawl subdivisions complete with new lakes and mega-McMansions, office complexes, malls, and tree-lined boulevards in place of town roads and scattered farms. They much prefer to have the proposal go away, and the quickest way to accomplish that is to approve it.
Their town engineers are hired consultants, from the same firms that often do work for the developers. Local board members and plan commissioners do not have, or are unwilling to spend, funds for independent engineering reviews, environmental assessments, property tax analyses, and feasibility studies. They really have no idea what the real long-term impact will be on the place they claim to care about."
There are eye-popping numbers included in a March 20th draft report by the Southeastern Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) about growth in the region.
For example, the projected increase from 2000-to-2035 in Waukesha County's population will exceed the entire 2000 population count in all of Ozaukee County.
The SEWRPC numbers make clear that there will be increased demands for water, roads, housing and other public spending and services for the next three decades in Waukesha County and across a multi-county region to which capital and employment will migrate from Milwaukee.
Will there be a corresponding regional response on water conservation, transit improvements, low-to-moderate income housing and workforce development so that more sprawl - - now predicted - - does not add to the economic and geographic segregation that continues to separate Milwaukee from its suburban and rural neighbors?
The data also illuminate the reasons why Wisconsin needs to adopt new rules governing use of Great Lakes water - - a process being held up in the Wisconsin legislature.
Without the new rules, growth could become more haphazard, while uncoordinated and unjustifiable diversions of water away from Lake Michigan - - already at a dangerously low level - - could accelerate, too.
The bold-facing in the admittedly lengthy and documented discussion about the SEWRPC report, below, is mine:
The number of square miles in Waukesha County served by municipal water utilities will grow from 82.3 in 2000 to an estimated 168.3 square miles in 2035 - - an increase of 104%.
Additionally, the number of people in the county served by municipal water systems will rise in Waukesha County from the 2000 figure of 218,400 to an estimated total by 2035 of 382,000, an increase of 75%.
Private well use will drop from 142,400 people to 64,800, a decline of 77,600 people, or -54%.
From 2000 to 2035, Waukesha County is expected to grow from 360,800 people in 2000 to 446,800 people in 2035, an addition of 86,000 people, the largest projected raw number increase among SEWRPC's seven counties: Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth.
In fact, that increase for Waukesha of 86,000 people - - 24% of its 2000 total - - exceeds the 2000 population of Ozaukee County (82,300), according to the report.
(Other than for Milwaukee County, with a projected increase in population by 2035 of 66,900, or 7%), the other counties in the region will also have substantial growth and water issues to deal with if their population increases and percentages materialize: Kenosha County, +60,500, or 40%; Ozaukee County, +18,800, 23%; Racine County, 24,800, +13%; Walworth County, +48,000, +52%; Washington County, 39,800, +34%)
And how much water will these counties, especially Waukesha County need by 2035 when Waukesha essentially adds an Ozaukee County-full of people within its boundaries?
“The total water use demand on an average daily basis for the 24 municipal water utilities in Waukesha County is estimated to increase from 23.1 mgd [million gallons daily] in 2000, to 41.4 mgd in 2035," says the report. (p. 55).
That’s an increase of 79%.
Bottom line: more people, more people on municipal water systems, more net water use county-wide even with conservation measures planned or in place.
Among the interesting nuggets in the report relate to projected usages of land for housing:
For the entire region, most of the land taken for housing development to the year 2035 from 2000 will be dedicated to units of lower densities, on relatively larger lots.
An estimated 3.8 square miles of land will be converted to so-called "high-density" residential development - - that is...seven housing units or more per acre.
On the other hand, 52.8 square miles - - sixteen times as much projected for high-density housing - - is predicted to be built as "medium-density" housing - - that is...2.3 to 6.9 units per acre.
And another 12 square miles is projected for new "low-density" housing that is...0.7 to 2.2 units per acre.
Throw out the fractions, and you can see that most of the growth in the housing market in the region through 2035 is ticketed for relatively larger, suburban, exurban lots - - the sort of housing that requires more lawn watering than city lots, and usually what is needed by urban multi-unit buildings, like apartments, even condos.
A related number: 103.9 square miles of agricultural land in the seven-county region, or 8.2% of the total, is slated to disappear from ag use, according to the report (county-by-county numbers for these land-use categories do not appear in the document.
The report sums it up this way:
"...in the year 2000, about 390 square miles, or 14% of the total area of the Region, and about 1.56 million persons, or 82% of the regional population, were served by municipal water supply facilities. In 2035, under the regional land use plan, about 628 square miles, or 23% of the total area of the Region, and about 2.09 million persons, or 92% of the regional population, would be served by municipal water systems." (p. 14)
Again, more people, dispersed across far larger municipal water system service territories - - 390 square miles in 2000 compared to 628 square miles in 2035 - - all looking for and expecting connections to potable water.
The 58-page water advisory committee report will undergo another month’s review by members of the commission staff, the 33-member water supply technical advisory committee, and the commission's consultants.
It will then be incorporated at the conclusion of an 18-month planning effort - - about half-completed - - into a set of commission policy recommendations to address water supply issues in the seven-county region.
Basics about the study can be found here, on the SEWRPC website.
Fair warning: The site does not have a simple search function.
And there is a lag of a month or two for the online posting of final, approved minutes, and other documents, that have not moved out of draft or preliminary form.
Case in point: The document - - "SEWRPC Planning Report No. 52: Chapter IV, Anticipated Growth and Change Affecting Water Supply in the Region" - - that is cited through this posting is not yet available on the SEWRPC website.
Also note: Most of the meetings of the water advisory committee have not been covered in the traditional news media. The meetings are, however, open to the public at the commission's City of Pewaukee headquarters basement conference room.
SEWRPC's understated release of these coordinated, significant data - - albeit at a public but under-promoted technical committee meeting - - continues a pattern of regional research and decision-making carried out on major policy issues by technical experts, public officials and favored consultants (read one Madison attorney's insightful commentary about that, here) with very little media coverage, or publicity by SEWRPC itself.
And this this planning is carried out by experts and advisors, many of them local and state officials, on SEWRPC committees from which minorities are nearly completely excluded even though the seven-county planning region group is 100% funded with property taxes and other with public dollars.
(The SEWRPC territory holds 36% of the state's population, including most of the state's minority residents; SEWRPC describes itself on its website as representing "the highly urbanized southeastern region of the State.")
The million-dollar water supply study was funded at the request of Waukesha County, and began over the objections of the City of Milwaukee, documented here.
Another report for the commission on water supply issues has been prepared by Attorney Lawrie Kobza, a water law specialist from the Boardman Law Firm, in Madison.
Kobza has submitted to SEWRPC a 24-page report on state and federal water law, and listed five possible regional water authority models that could address one or more of the region’s water supply issues.
With most of the region's growth in population and water demand projected to occur outside of Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee - - but with Milwaukee communities having more direct access to Lake Michigan - - the creation of a new regional water authority could increase the pressure on City of Milwaukee leaders or in other lakefront communities, like the City of Oak Creek, to supply water to the outlying counties.
A regional water authority, if drawn on the county-by-county model that created SEWRPC, could minimize the participation and interests of City of Milwaukee government and residents: The City of Milwaukee, with nearly 600,000 residents and a population exceeding that of several SEWRPC counties, has no seats on the SEWRPC board of commissioners.
Each county has three representatives.
SEWRPC’s lead consultant to the water supply advisory committee is Ruekert/Mielke, Inc., a Waukesha County engineering and consulting firm which also prepared the City of New Berlin’s still-pending, 2006 Lake Michigan diversion application.
That application, which sources report has been revised and resubmitted to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, was roundly criticized as inadequate by several Great Lakes state and Canadian provincial officials after being sent around regionally for comment last year.
The existence of the 2006 New Berlin application was disclosed first by the State of Michigan, which had declined to approve it, though its preparation, and review by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources at New Berlin's request, had gone on for months.
In addition, confidential efforts by the City of Waukesha to obtain a diversion from Lake Michigan were made twice in 2006 proposals by contract lawyers working for the city's water utility to Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle; those efforts (ultimately unsuccessful at the time) were not acknowledged until their disclosure by a free-lance writer using the Open Records statute.
Efforts to implement new rules coordinating community conservation, diversions and return flow from the Great Lakes to communities like New Berlin and Waukesha are stalled in a state legislative study committee.
The logjam there is due in part to objections from Waukesha County business and political leaders who feel the rules give too much authority over water use in Wisconsin to the other seven Great Lakes states.
Unless the rules are adopted by all the states (the eight states and two Canadian provinces are already members of a joint, cooperative Great Lakes management Compact), diversions can be denied under a separate federal law, the US Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), by a single state's veto without any explanation, or the application of standards.
A simple summary of WRDA and matters related to the adoption of the news rules was provided to the state legislative study committee, here.
So where do we stand?
Clearly, intense development is headed for substantial portions or remaining open space and farmland in the region, even in areas with water supply problems, and away from urban centers where unemployed people are cut off from suburban job growth.
SEWRPC could genuinely take the regional lead with comprehensive recommendations, beginning with support for the Great Lakes Compact proposed rules and standards - - but its nearly all-white makeup, strong suburban biases and controversial advocacy for the $6.5 billion regional freeway expansion have eroded much of its leadership possibilities.
It's a profound lesson: All regional efforts, to be fair, and substantive, and effective, must reform themselves to reflect the world and region in which they operate.
That means assertively and intentionally reaching out to groups that have been and remain discounted and excluded.
The more that planning is exclusive and passive, the less effective will be the planners' recommendations.
And their results will be suspect, weak, and even counter-productive.
Given SEWRPC's data, rising fuel prices, probable climate change with warmer temperatures, and job losses to globalization, the stakes are too high to let business-as-usual rule the region
Good environmental policy stuff and data coming Friday.
So San Francisco has prohibited the larger grocery stores from providing petroleum-derived plastic bags to customers, saving taxpayer dollars on landfill costs and making a small but symbolic step towards energy savings.
Predictably, some Milwaukee AM right-wing radio chatterboxes were yammering on the air immediately, bemoaning the loss of some made-up property right to be offered a plastic bag at the supermarket.
But don't municipalities' elected officials regulate or influence behavior all the time...in the name of the common good, the savings of public money, or both?
Take speed limits, for instance. Or fire codes.
Heck, you need a license from the city to open a grocery store in the first place.
And health inspectors can check how the store is displaying products that are allowed for sale only after having passed earlier approvals for manufacture and distribution by The US Food and Drug Administration, federal agricultural inspectors, and by various state regulators.
Ireland went on a different path in 2002, heavily taxing most plastic shopping bags out of existence; Paris is going to install a ban this year, and countries from Canada to Israel to India to Singapore to South Africa are moving towards some version of a plastic bag ban.
Die-hard plasticophiles can still provide their own, and probably will come around to carrying durable, reusable bags made from paper or other materials (the free market and human inventiveness will surely find wonderful and better bags).
And doing without plastic bags made from $65-dollar-a-barrel oil won't be the end of anyone's world.
Remember: we all got along just fine without plastic grocery bags, and having them go away will not cause the sky to fall on talk radio's Chicken Littles.
Today, March 28, is the anniversary of the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.
Twenty-eight years later, the nuclear industry is no closer to solving the problem of what to do with deadly nuclear waste than it was in 1979 - - but that hasn't stopped Dick Cheney's Energy 'Policy' group and others from pushing nukes back into the debate.
Some of the best reporting about sprawl development in southeastern Wisconsin is found in the region's small newspapers.
While they don't have the reach of the major dailies, they often cover a local building project or subdivision plan with attention and passion that convey the significance of the proposal far beyond one small community's borders.
A good example is the recent story in the Kettle Moraine Index, a Waukesha County weekly, about the impact of a development in the rural Town of Ottawa.
That town of less than 4,000 residents - - and the adjoining Village of Dousman, (population 1,600) - - is due to get a single project of 500 homes and condos, plus an artificial lake that critics say could trash a quiet spot and even ruin Larkin Lake, the natural lake that's already there.
The project is slated for 300 acres of disappeared farmland close to these important ecological features, says the Index story:
"Marlin Johnson, a Town of Ottawa resident and associate biology professor at University of Wisconsin-Waukesha, said any possible draining of Larkin Lake would mean the end of a unique and valuable wetland for vegetation and wildlife in the area. He said the sparsely populated Larkin Lake - having only three homes on it - has remained preserved in a natural condition, making it included in the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission's report for natural areas and habitat protection plan for critical species.
"There are natural areas in Wisconsin designated for statewide and regional significance," said Johnson, a member of the Waukesha County Land Conservancy - which preserves environmentally significant land in Waukesha County. "Larkin Lake is designated to have local significance to the area."
Note that the regional planning commission says the property was worth preserving - - but no surprise there: Developments are chopping Waukesha County farms and the priceless Kettle Moraine to bits, including land the regional planning commission recommended as environmental corridors.
You wonder where this all will end?
Will Pabst Farm be enough for developers hoping to build major, multi-use projects on Waukesha County's dwindling open space?
Probably not: The possible Lang project creating a second downtown for Delafield south of I-94 and to the boundary of Lapham Peak State Park, is still on the drawing board.
And plans by local and state government to widen the interstate, and pipe Lake Michigan water over the subcontinental divide will make sprawl into Jefferson County inevitable.
Dane County is sprawling in all directions from Madison, too, suggesting that one heavily-paved region, stripped of farms and wetlands, will settle in with public handouts (TIF's, zoning do-overs, sewer extensions and more) from Milwaukee, to the East Towne Mall and north, following I-94 towards the Wisconsin Dells.
Grassroots groups and small newspapers in threatened communities along this concrete corridor are doing their part to raise the alarm.
But at the regional planning commission, on the county and town boards, and in the legislature, where the highway and builders' interests prevail, is anyone listening?
Some St. Patrick's Day reporting cleanup:
Did you hear about the Waukesha County driver who blew a blood alcohol level of 0.34 at 10 a.m. - - after he killed two people in a head-on crash.
And fatal accidents jumped far ahead of recent St. Patrick's Day totals, perhaps because this year's celebratory binge drinking started on a Saturday.
We pay milions and billions for highways, and then we make it more permissable, more culturally acceptable, to get plastered and drive on certain days, all in the name of fun.
Makes you wonder.
Some of you may have read about the creation of the country's first "forever" stamp, good at face value for first-class postage after purchase even if, and when, rates go up.
The idea was originated and pushed to fruition by one of the country's most stalwart consumer advocates - - Ruth Goldway - - who is also the former Mayor of Santa Monica, CA, and a friend and ally going back to the early 70's.
Ruth is a perfect example of what it means to be a life-long political activist with a set of core values and goals - - in this case, making the huge and impersonal US Postal Service become a more customer-friendly operation.
Congratulations to Ruth Goldway.
For years, (examples from 2002 here and here, too) I've written and argued that policy-making at SEWRPC is unrepresentative of the racial composition of its seven-county region, and especially for City of Milwaukee residents, where minorities make up a majority of the city's population of roughly 600,000.
It's well-known that much of SEWRPC's policy-making for the region originates, percolates and is fine-tuned in its committees.
They meet with experts and consultants on transportation, water management and other basic planning matters of real importance to all taxpayers who provide 100% of SEWRPC's annual budget, with Milwaukee County taxpayers supplying the largest recurring annual donation.
It's a public agency - - but in name only when it comes to the racial makeup of its all-important committees.
Karyn Rotker, an attorney with the ACLU-Wisconsin, asked Philip Evenson, SEWRPC's executive director, to supply the racial makeup of some current SEWRPC committees.
Below is what Evenson provided about five SEWRPC committees and a sixth not appointed by SEWRPC, though let me provide you with the mathematical plot-spoiler:
Three of 126 (or two percent) SEWRPC committee members are minorities.
And this is 2007, more than 40 years after you'd have thought landmark federal statutes adopted in the wake of the civil rights movement would have made segregated governance at publicly-funded governmental agencies illegal.
Here is Evenson's reply, in his own words (the bold-faced highlights are mine:
1. Milw Co Transit Program Committee; 11 members, 9 white, 2 African-American, 1 Hispanic; all appointed by the Milw Co Executive (not a SEWRPC committee).
2. Population and Economic Forecasts Committee; 12 members, all white; appointed by SEWRPC with membership targeted to include individuals
from thepublic, private, and academic sectors with professional responsibilities and expertise in the subject matter.
3. Regional Land Use Planning Committee; 25 members, 24 white, 1
African-American; appointed by SEWRPC with membership targeted to
include county and local planning professionals on a population proportional
basis plus relevant state and federal agencies.
4. Regional Telecommunications Planning Committee; 22 members, 21
white, 1 African-American; appointed by SEWRPC with membership targeted to
include individuals from the public and private sectors with expertise and
knowledge in or related to the telecommunications industry.
5. Regional Water Supply Planning Committee; 33 members, 32 white, 1
Hispanic; appointed by SEWRPC with membership targeted to individuals
with professional responsibilities and expertise in or related to water
supply matters, drawing from public and private water utilities, industry,
agriculture, development and environment groups, county planners, state
and federal agencies, and academia.
6. Regional Water Quality Management Plan Update Committee; 34 members, all
white; appointed by SEWRPC with membership targeted to individuals with
professional responsibilities and expertise in or related to water quality
management matters, drawing from public works agencies, state and federal
agencies, land trusts, county planners and conservationists, development and
environment groups, and academia.
We collect no information on income, disability, residence location, or
employment for members on these committees other than what can be
inferred from job titles.
For years, UW-Milwaukee has been scratching its collective bureaucratic head and wondering: "How can we position ourselves as a science and research center?"
It has looked westward to UW-Madison with envy, as that university campus assumed leadership and won decades of grants in biotech and other sciences.
But through inertia, or some other human tendency to overlook institutions or people already on the scene that consistently perform at a high level, UW-Milwaukee has failed to capitalize on its Great Lakes WATER Institute - - even though its staff and expertise are key ingredients in the push for conservation, water-based public health, and Great Lakes sustainability.
Around here, those are pretty hot topics.
Case in point: WATER Institute professor Sandra McLellan, an expert in water and beach quality, has found that dangerous E. coli bacteria is on Bradford Beach where stormwater pipes owned by Milwaukee County routinely deposit polluted water.
McLellan also has noted - - and it's a point consistently worth repeating - - that while polluted stormwater presents the most serious dangers to public health, the general public misperception, shaped by media, is that sewage overflows, not stormwater pollution, presents the major public risk.
So the WATER Institute affects the public understanding of issues and risk factors, and can have an impact on policies that fix problems, too.
For a university looking for greater research credibility, that sounds like a mission statement.
Similarly, McLellan helped Miller Park discover that it was inadvertantly sending human waste into the Menomonee River.
It is known among scientists and regulators that the wrong plumbing connection at Miller Park is not the only mistaken or accidental source of fecal pollution ending up in the area's rivers, streams and lakes.
Elsewhere, WATER Institute professors are bringing years of experience with the region's groundwater into the debate over water resource management, and specifically into whether possible diversions from Lake Michigan are the wisest and most sustainable activities.
These UW-M scientists have created fact sheets and power point presentations about the region's water supply, all of which helps inject top-flight data, computer models and informed opinion into the water debate.
Along with colleagues in related agencies, WATER Institute personnel are getting solid information into studies and eventual recommendations by the regional planning commission (SEWRPC) and a state legislative study committee on the Great Lake Compact.
Materials posted by The US Geological Survey, and another scientific team that works closely with the WATER Institute here are helping policy-makers interpret differently Waukesha's suggestion that it was already part of the Lake Michigan basin through what it called "tributary groundwater."
So UW-Milwaukee doesn't have to look much farther than its Great Lakes WATER Institute for a research identity and anchor.
What the school needs is a media and grant-writing strategy to better promote and utilize the experts it already has on board, and who are well-connected with a larger scientific community, but are sometimes unappreciated.
The Great Lakes WATER Institute can become the authoritative site for information and policy recommendations about Great Lakes water conservation and resource management.
Former Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament's fall from grace, and office, in the wake of the pension scandal, began with stories on web sites run by Gretchen Schuldt (www.storyhill.net) and Bruce Murphy (www.milwaukeeworld.com).
But not until the so-called mainstream media picked up and pushed the story across the front pages, especially in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did Ament and several county board supervisors lose their positions.
The Ziegler conflict-of-interest story that dominates the current State Supreme Court race could be playing itself out along the same lines.
The news about the dozens of cases that Ziegler managed in Washington County Circuit in which she should have removed herself because of family connections or stock ownership began on a website, www.onewisconsinnow.org, spread to the blogger Jay Bullock, and landed in repetitive stories in the mainstream media.
The Wisconsin State Journal's Dee Hall has been the story's leading, traditional news reporter, and recounts the chronology in yet another Sunday story.
We'll know on election day - - April 3rd - - if the disclosures were consequential enough to knock out Ziegler, the primary winner.
Either way, the alternative electronic media continues to grow in stature when it does serious investigative reporting, though its punch is amplified when traditional media checks out the information, finds it credible and decides to advance it.
The Milwaukee County Zoo was mobbed today. It was an annual Free Day. Families galore. White and Black. Young and Older. Just a wonderful warm early spring day.
But Free Day was a bit of a misnomer - - you still had to pay the $9 parking fee - - and I had a minor epiphany when I forked over my $10 bill:
Of course Scott Walker doesn't want a light rail train servicing the Zoo: The County would lose all that parking revenue.
Sorta like why and how Miller Park had to be built in the Menomonee Valley, away from the downtown and easy transit connections, because Bud Selig wanted the parking revenue, too.
So parking revenues trump rational transit planning in Miwaukee.
Again.
Scott Walker: Son of Bud.
Transit ridership is peaking across the US - - some of the best numbers in more than half a century, driven by the popularity of light rail, are being recorded and reported.
Huge gains are being made in cities like Salt Lake City, where even in the reddest of red states, modern trains are moving happy, conservative, well-adjusted people around town.
But Milwaukee's railophobics, ranging from Scott Walker, our County Exec, to regional rightist radio talkers, to Waukesha political leaders who derailed a two-county plan in the 90's, have decided that Milwaukee must remain a light rail-free zone.
Now, mind you, AMTRAK is OK with that crowd because it serves upscale daily commuters to Chicago.
The Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter line is moving towards a long-delayed startup with Walker's blessing - - because it will deliver services to his suburban constituents.
But Milwaukee's central city transit users: Let 'em ride the bus, Walker says, until they save enough money to buy a car.
And to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's modest plan for a trolley loop in the city's downtown?
Walker just says "no." Because that's the talk radio mantra.
If that attitude is allowed to prevail, and if public policy is made by elected officials who toe the talk radio line, Milwaukee will remain less competitive with a growing number of US cities that can offer its residents, businesses and tourists modern, bright and appealing transit alternatives to buses.
It has been two years since word first broke in the media that University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers had found E. coli bacteria on Bradford Beach near five sewer pipe outlets (called "outfalls") owned by Milwaukee County.
Right: it's a county-owned beach, on the shore of Lake Michigan, at the foot of Lake Park - - and bacteria frequently originating in the intestines of human beings and other mammals, and therefore their fecal matter, was pouring in polluted water right across the sand and into the shallow wading water.
The outfalls are in concrete structures visible from Lincoln Memorial Dr. When it rains, channels through the sand are visible across the beach. One of the premier public beaches in Wisconsin.
Milwaukee County has budgeted money to fix the problem, but there's no evidence that the money is going to be spent.
Question for Scott Walker: Miller Park fixed its recently discovered sewage line problem fast.
It's been two years - - actually more than 26 months - - and what's happening in County government to end the E. coli pollution of Bradford beach?
E. coli can cause intestinal and extra-intestinal infections, including urinary tract infections, meningitis, peritonitis, mastitis, and other serious ailments.
Spring is here. April is a known month of heavy rain that has been associated with water-borne illness in and around Milwaukee.
Then it will be summer: beach and wading season.
We don't want it to be another beach closing season because the County is still polluting its beach.
Our beach.
Not long ago, I blogged about Rocky Anderson, the Mayor of Salt Lake City - - a progressive Democrat running the biggest city in the reddest state of all.
Anderson has made Salt Lake City into one of the greenest, most conservation-conscious municipalites in the nation.
He even got light rail built!
And as he says in the first linked story above - - an interview with the excellent online publication Grist - - he overcame the biggest political firestorm in his tenure only to find now that neighborhoods that fought and feared light rail the most are now clamboring loudly to be connected.
Now The New York Times has discovered him, and its piece is worth a read.
Imagine if, in this town, the biggest opponent to light rail - - County Executive Scott Walker - - had a fraction of Anderson's political spine.
We'd have rail in the ground, boosting the local economy, linking workers to jobs, shoppers to restaurants and stores, and tourists to county-run destinations like the Zoo, the Airport and the failing Public Museum, too.
Leadership is what it's all about - - and that begins with turning off the rabid right-wing radio talkers that demagogue on rail to ramp up their ratings.
Salt Lake's got it.
Milwaukee County doesn't.
Wisconsin environmental groups and others with a progressive message about important issues can use existing free internet options to publicize their work.
Here's one free, easy way to reach a large, national audience - - a Daily Kos "diary" posting.
It wasn't long ago that turning corn into ethanol looked like the magic elixir that could help to wean us off foreign oil dependency, and do even more good by boosting the agricultural sector, especially in places like rural Wisconsin.
But corn-based ethanol is looking and sounding and now smelling like anything but the basis of a perfect alternative fuel.
Denny Caneff, executive director of the River Alliance of Wisconsin Inc., in Madison, had an informative piece in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in January highlighting the demands that corn-based ethanol places on groundwater.
Four gallons of water is needed to produce a gallon of ethanol. In Wisconsin, where groundwater availability is a big deal and a hot topic, that's not an attractive ratio.
Then there was a major report in The New York Times touting ethanol from other sources, including grasses and even wood chips, that don't require so much water and fertilizer (another energy-intensive product)to produce.
Now there's a more down-to-earth objection from a major dairy products factory in Sparta.
It's complaining that a newly-approved nearby ethanol plant will churn out four-smelling air emissions that will taint the taste of the dairy company's products.
Said the report in The Waukesha Freeman:
"Ethanol plants...emit pollution-causing chemicals and compounds and a smell that supporters liken to popcorn but critics compare to manure."
Sounds (smells, too) like another reason that Wisconsin and other agricultural states should slow down the bandwagon that's running on corn-based ethanol, and look to a wider range of sources to make better alternative fuels.
You don't have to be a genius to grasp that the Bush administration threw away the world's goodwill after the 9/11 terrorist attacks by launching the Iraqi invasion - - now morphed into an occupation amidst a civil war with no end in sight.
But there is also evidence that Bush's refusal to act on climate change has diminished our stature and credibility - - as has the Iraqi debacle - - across the globe.
Ironically, and tragically, the Chinese government, now sitting atop an economy belching out greenhouse pollutants like a runaway freight train, is citing American unwillingness to cut emissions as justification for its own failure to make anti-pollution efforts, too.
This is how a recent Reuters story (March 17th) explains the consequences that emerged after the US refused to adopt anti-pollution targets laid out in the Kyoto accords:
"The United States has been criticised for pulling out of the [Kyoto] Protocol in 2001 and [a spokesman] said any post-Kyoto agreement with specific targets would "have to involve the U.S., China, India and other developing countries."
"Canadian Environment Minister John Baird echoed this view in a conference call with reporters after the meeting.
"But developing states like China cite the U.S. position as a reason for their refusal to accept reduction targets."
Sure, there's an element of politics to all this: it's easier for China to blame someone else - - the US - - for its inaction, especially if it would cost the
Chinese government some money.
But we're not on the high moral or environmental ground condemning the coal-hungry, oil-draining, air-fouling Chinese industrial and automotive sectors because our government has caviled and obstructed on the issues, and at negotiating tables, too.
The Bush administration has pretty much said it doesn't care if the rest of world loves or hates us. The self-defeating arrogance of that position aside, we all have to breathe the same air.
OK, radio talk show squawkers and rail phobics, you haven't read that headline...but trust me, you will.
Two trips by car in the last ten days from Milwaukee to Madison, and I've made hundreds of these in the years I've lived in both cities, convinces me again that Waukesha County motorists will demand commuter rail connections, and sooner rather than later.
It's not just the housing that is filling in the farmland along the corridor, or the traffic (note to the State Patrol and county mounties: you could fill your budget holes with aggressive speed enforcement between Sunny Slope Rd. and the east side of Madison, as the left lane is a non-stop mini-Autobahn ribbon of 80+ mph violators, including the big rigs).
Waukesha legislators pressured Gov. Jim Doyle to move forward the the freeway expansion schedule for Zoo Interchange widening - - a project that will make the Marquette Interchange reconstruction look like a simple street repaving by comparison.
Western Waukesha County's stretch of I-94 is scheduled for a separate dose of widening, which means fast-growing Waukesha County will have a good chunk of a generation of orange barrels, lane and ramp closings and all the additional inconveniences that comes with their share of a $6.5 billion project.
Folks out west will look to their suburban neighbors to the south and begin demanding commuter rail similar to the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) line that appears to moving towards construction.
The ironies are that Waukesha County all the way to Oconomowoc used tbe served by the high-speed Interurban rail line which hit 110 mph on its run to Chicago, and that Waukesha killed a light rail plan back in the 90's that would have, in its earliest plans, entered Waukesha County, offering what would have been a respite for some commuters in the eastern part of the county.
And would have reintroduced many people to the rail option, paving the way, so to speak, for a genuinely balanced transportation system regionally that would have melded light rail, commuter trains and highways.
I'm still predicting a push for commuter rail from the west, and if it were to be part of a plan that included rail transit in the urban Milwaukee core, it'd be worth supporting.
Tommy Thompson's dabbling in presidential politics gets more, what, serious? Even that's overstating it.
Mentioned at the top of one cable news program? Gawd! Stop the hyping.
Build them and buyers will come.
Now if only we didn't have such risk-averse public officials who make public transportation policy (Milwaukee County Executive Scott "No Trains" Walker, and basically the entire state Department of Transportation - - that means you), we'd add modern urban and commuter rail to a genuinely balanced and less-polluting transportation mix.
Had we been in Washington yesterday, we could have watched the Bush administration's inexorable unraveling take on a decidedly green, spring-like tone:
Public testimony was finally taken on the administration's censorial tinkering of climate change reports by a former oil industry lobbyist, Philip Cooney.
"Before joining the White House," reports the New York Times," Mr. Cooney was the “climate team leader” for the American Petroleum Institute, the main industry lobby in Washington.
That would be a little like putting Joseph Hazelwood, the drunken ship captain who ran the Exxon Valdez aground in Alaska, in charge of the National Transportation Safety Board.
But hey: why bother to expect a straight story on climate science when other administration officials were off spinning tall tales about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, uranium sales to Iraq by Niger, sufficient troop levels in Iraq, adequate armoring of combat vehicles there, the true cost of Medicare reforms, eavesdropping and snooping programs here and abroad, etc. etc?
And don't weep too many tears for the Mr. Cooney, who was forced out of his job in 2005 by The New York Times and other media disclosing his heavy-handed, pro-industry editing.
Exxon Mobil - - the successor firm to plain old Exxon that once entrusted a supertanker to Joseph Hazelwood - - hired Cooney when his handiwork was done at the White House.
Another person sent over to NASA in 2996 by the Bushies to carry out more anti-climate change media spinning - - a 22-year-old campaign aide - - also had to resign after it was disclosed that he had not completed the college degree claimed on his resume.
And these sorts of folks are bashing Al Gore & Co. over climate change accuracy?
No joke: Former Major League pitcher Gene Garber will speak on March 28th on behalf of the Washington County Land Preservation April 3rd referendum.
Details are here on how, where and when to help the cause, get better educated and score an autograph, too.
More information about the referendum here, too.
J.J. Blonien, whose antics even got stale on the Sunday Mark Belling TV show, raises his extreme, rightwing voice against Wisconsin's stewardship fund.
That's the bi-partisan property aquisition fund that buys land for public uses by hikers, anglers, and hunters.
J.J. says the government shouldn't own all this land for the public to use, and it'd be okey-dokey by him to let the fund sunset in 2010.
J.J. thinks we don't need to put more land into conservancy, and why not, when there are strip malls, big box parking lots and subdivisions just crying out for more space?
Seems after his recent stint with failed State Sen. Tom Reynolds, (R-Wauwatosa), J.J. is up to a tired schtick nicely summed up in 2001 when he left Belling's show:
"You just never knew what was going to come out of his mouth," wrote Tim Cuprisin, Inside TV & Radio Writer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Public officials in this region have not fully embraced water recycling as a means of supplying meaningful quantities of water.
We still like sending all that expensive, purified, chemically-treated, potable water onto our lawns, dirty cars, golf courses and into many other locations, situations and processes.
Other highly-industrialized regions are moving faster in this area, including Singapore.
As we learned after Katrina flooded New Orleans, better systems protect the Netherlands: there are best practices and technological opportunities, along with the political will to make changes elsewhere in the world, and we'd do ourselves an economic and resource management favor by paying closer attention.
I recently posted an item about the daily cost of the Iraq war - - $250 million - - and showed that the entire annual cost of renewing the US Clean Water Revolving Fund, $4 billion, amounts to 14 days of Iraq war financing.
Here's another example of how important domestic programs don't have the money they need - - but figured in Iraq daily spending, the shortfalls look easily affordable.
The US Fish & Wildlife Service needs $2.5 billion to meet a backlog of tasks. That's 10 days of Iraq spending.
But without the money, the service, which operates in all 50 states, will cut 20% of its staff.
Anglers, hunters, hikers, conservations, whether red state or blue, Democratic or Republican, etc. etc. etc. - - does that make sense?
Careful readers of The New York Times may have noticed last Wednesday that an intriguing climate change event is scheduled on Saturday, April 14th, at the bucolic Mississippi River retreat center at Sinsinawa Mound.
The event, a conference, is being sponsored by the Madison-based environmental group Clean Wisconsin, and the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa Mound, located near Hazel Green in southwestern Wisconsin.
The conference will be one of nearly 900 varied national climate change gatherings and rallies scheduled so far on April 14th.
This national action chain is the brainchild of William Mr. McKibben, an author, long-time environmental philosopher and activist.
The Wisconsin event, on regional global warming and water issues, will feature Mike Tidwell, whose book, Bayou Farewell, predicted tragic consequences if a large hurricane were to hit New Orleans.
Other experts, including staffers from Clean Wisconsin, will give talks and conduct workshops on media, activism and other subjects.
To get more information and register, visit either Clean Wisconsin or the Domincan Sisters registration site.
As they say: April 14th - - Save The Day.
The Obama people said they didn't create it, and I'm not taking a position one way or the other in the Obama/Hillary Clinton/Rest of the field contest - - but is it where campaign ads are headed, assuming it is indeed an truly independent attack ad?
It could be the beginning of the end of campaign control of electronic advertising.
New mantra for southeastern Wisconsin, where the local planning agency (SEWRPC) is the lead group pushing widened expressways into both cities and rural areas:
Be More Like Indiana.
As this story indicates, who'd want to live downstream from these Waukesha Lake Country folks?
Probably not, even though this Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story ought to make readers sit up and take notice. And notes.
Advocates of moving water out of Lake Michigan to the City of Waukesha without a solid commitment to returning it often pooh-pooh the impact their 20-24 million gallon daily diversion would have on the lake.
Heck - - Larry Nelson, Waukesha's Mayor, has said the amount of water that Waukesha wants evaporates from the lake in less than a minute.
A million gallons a day here. A billion gallons a week there. Multiplied exponentially by other communities (Chicago, and the fast-growing northern Illinois suburbs included), power plants (WE Energies' Oak Creek complex included), and various other users including water bottlers, and it won't take long to deal the Great Lakes a mortal blow.
Two questions not addressed in the Journal Sentinel article:
Where on these issues is Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, the key water management agency in the state, which bungled the initial review of New Berlin's Lake Michigan diversion application?
And will the state's legislative study committee get off dead center and recommend the necessary legislation to implement pending amendments to the vital, conservation centered US-Canada Great Lakes Compact?
Without the Compact's upgraded standards and procedures, diversions could happen without guaranteed conservation and water return flow measures, adding to the Great Lakes decline.
Uh, oh: they're producing a powerpoint version of Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth - - for kids!
And while you're on that site, get more acquainted with Grist. It's a fine online stop always filled with informative and funny stuff about politics and the environment.
Finding out that an error in Miller Park's construction had been sending bathorom flushings into the Menomonee River for years shows how vulnerable our waterways are to human error.
And how one project - - the stadium's construction - - could undo so much of the good work of another - - the Menomonee Valley restoration.
These lessons in the laws of unintended consequences should be at the forefront of other regional proposals that involve water.
Officials in New Berlin and Waukesha continue to press for diversions of water from Lake Michigan that are now prevented by federal law.
Those cities continually tell us that diversions would no negative impact on lake levels or quality - - but there is no consensus on those arguments.
Waukesha is considering using a Lake Michigan tributary, like the Root
