Walker Probably Peeved: Other Governors' Radical Anti-Environmentalism Getting All The Ink

Tea Party and extreme Republican governors other than Scott Walker get all the attention in this New York Times piece about gutting state environmental protections.

I can hear some assignment editor barking, "and not that Walker guy. Give someone else a chance."

After all, in the land where Earth Day was founded, Walker killed the federal construction of high-speed rail between Madison and Milwaukee, stopped the conversion of the UW-Madison power plant from fossil fuels to biomass, and wants to end mandated recycling and get rid of the state's grant support for local community recycling efforts by transferring that funding to business development. Trash hauling? Landfill maintenance?

And...

Is hamstringing the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund's operations - - that's our state's bi-partisan, signature open space preservation program.

And plans drastic cuts to local transit systems, is suspending the enforcement of controls on phosphorus dumping by municipalities and paper companies into Wisconsin waterways, and has consolidated rule-making by the Department of Natural Resources and other agencies into his office, and pretty much exempted the filling of small wetlands parcels from routine permitting reviews.

When he gets full control of the DNR's board, look for the selling of state forests and other public assets.

Then he'll make the Dirty Governors' list.

There are too many posts on this blog about these issues to refer you to, but this summary by 1000 Friends of Wisconsin is a starting point.