Thursday, February 18, 2016

WI Assembly kills wetlands safeguards, science, local controls

It's hard to keep up with the multiple assaults - - heres a list of about a dozen - - on public, Wisconsin land, air and groundwater - - not to mention the outright contempt shown for constitutionally-guaranteed water rights for all the people - - that the GOP-led Wisconsin Legislature recently approved, proposed or is poised to enact - - but a couple of today's votes already in the books on this last-day-of-session FavorFest to special interests take the cake:
[One bill ends] safeguards for about 9,000 water bodies with endangered species and other sensitive features for an indefinite time period. 
Assembly Bill 582...would remove local authority to enact temporary moratoriums on rapid development of industries such as frac sand mining... 
The bill also includes a provision to stop judges from according great weight to the expertise of state agencies... 
The tradeoff dance between the two houses of the Legislature included the Senate removing - - yea! - - new dredging permissions to property owners, but - - boo! - - expanding the ease with which bodies of water could escape sensitive designations.

The Walkerites have been targeting these sensitive waterway designations on behalf of developers for years.

And targeting wetlands for insider/developers since Walker's first, January 2011 days in office.

So, going, going... 
Canoeing




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2 comments:

Patti said...

Our once-proud state is no longer Wisconsin. Our assaulted and disgraced state is now called Walker'sin. :{

my5cents said...

As I have said before, the Republicans who are in power in Wisconsin are systematically taking away all local public control over anything and everything. The problem is that they are not necessarily transferring that power to the state. In some cases they are handing the power over to private citizens or businesses. This is their way of systematically getting rid of government oversight of things that are in the public's interest. It's their way of shrinking government. In another three years none of us will recognize our state for what it was. It will truly be a Wississippi with rampant pollution, dirty streams, rivers and ground water, scavenged forests, unkempt parks and public places, and potholed city streets, etc.