Facing A Flood Of Wisconsin Water Stories

I've posted several items of late about water and Wisconsin, and there's a constant theme coursing through them: Bad things happen when you abuse the water or take it for granted, since they're not making any more of it, as the State Supreme Court told us a long time ago.

I've put the items into a list, with a few comments, and I suppose we should leave spot open for the inevitable Enbridge tar sand pipeline debacle coming our way, but as the recent news:

*  We continue to allow a fine Wisconsin trout stream to land on a national list of threatened, impaired waterways.

(Riverbed, dead brook trout photos of The Little Plover River courtesy of the Wisconsin River Alliance)

*  At the behest of big business, Wisconsin recently weakened regulations that were carefully put in place after years of collaborative work to reduce toxic phosphorus from running into lakes, rivers and streams: Ohio's 4th largest city is today paying a heavy price for similar disregard.

*  600 people in Milwaukee lost their jobs in Milwaukee when it stopped raining in Texas. Climate change realities are not limited to South Seas' shorelines, melting Arctic or South American glaciers or burned up forests in Australia or Arizona.

*  It's hard to make a case for diverting precious water out of the Lake Michigan basin - - especially when the law says it can be allowed only as a measure of last resort - - when the water level in a key aquifer beneath your city (Waukesha) is actually rising and you even plan to re-pipe some of that diverted water to undeveloped areas beyond your city limits or neighboring towns. Which have no water shortages.

*  If you were a Governor, it's hard to make the case that you care about clean streams and fishable lakes and drinkable water if your appointees in charge of protecting water have approved, without a full environmental review, tripling the capacity of a Superior-to-Delavan tar sand oil pipeline operated by a company with a record of disastrous oil spills.

*  And if you were that same Governor, you further expose your environmental disregard if you campaign for re-election at a water-dependent sand mining operation as it was quietly settling a major pollution case with state law enforcement - - and while your pipeline-happy environmental 'regulators' want to give another sand mining company with its own bad track record a prize for environmentalism. All for real.

We're getting to the end of this recent stream of bad water stories:

*  Doesn't the effort by a private company to level and otherwise plow, pave and otherwise fill-in a wetland and woodland preserve near Sheboygan - - which already has another impaired waterway running through it within a stone's throw of pristine dunes and Lake Michigan - - and replace it with a fertilizer-heavy, water dependent golf course just about say it all?

Wait, there's more to the story. 

The golf course, where fees would be in the many hundreds of dollars per round and far beyond the reach of the average Wisconsin weekend duffer, will also require a land grab from an abutting state park that is now being considered (wink, wink) by those same oil pipeline/sand mine-enabling/business-friendly environmental 'regulators.'

In the state that gave us Earth Day's Gaylord Nelson, (D), and a bipartisan land stewardship and land preservation fund that bears his name and that of a Republican counterpart, Warren Knowles, and other environmental giants like John Muir and Aldo Leopold.

So...to sum up this summary and fill in any gaps: remember what the Wisconsin Supreme Court said some years ago when Wisconsin really stood for land stewardship, nature preservation and genuine public access to it - - principles again worth fighting for - - when the Justices cared more about guaranteeing public rights to water than guaranteeing their own access to campaign money from resource hogs:

"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin State Supreme Court justices in their opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC