The Political Environment: WI DNR blows off the US EPA. Again.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

WI DNR blows off the US EPA. Again.

While finding the time to stump for Trump, and hire more corporate insiders, and blow off state regulators, and rewrite agency procedures so polluting industries can police themselves, Cathy Stepp - -
Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp proudly shows off her first deer, taken opening weekend last year. In the upcoming TV Special "Deer Hunt Wisconsin 2012, Stepp urges male hunters to take more girls and women hunting. "The secret's out," she says. "Hunting is a lot of fun, so don't keep it to yourselves." photo courtesy of Wisconsin DNR

Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp proudly shows off her first deer, taken opening weekend last year. In the upcoming TV Special "Deer Hunt Wisconsin 2012, Stepp urges male hunters to take more girls and women hunting. "The secret's out," she says. "Hunting is a lot of fun, so don't keep it to yourselves." photo courtesy of Wisconsin DNR

- - atop the DNR again thumbs her nose at the clean water standards and the US EPA - - which just completed an on-site review in Stepp's Madison offices of the DNR's nearly six-year failure to enforce the US Clean Water Act in Wisconsin - - by failing to pass on to local water systems the EPA's advice in February about upgraded procedures for testing for lead, we learn today.

Nine months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned against flushing water systems before testing for lead, the state Department of Natural Resources has not yet passed that advice on to public water systems in Wisconsin.

I'm guessing that Stepp and Walker figure that Donald Trump will appoint an insecticide plant manager or oil company CEO or feedlot manure producer to run the US EPA so Wisconsin can go about leaving the business of clean air and water to the pollution lobby.