Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Same Wisconsin agency enabling polluters given water diversion oversight role

The polluters
Smoke stacks from a factory.
keep winning and winning and the citizens keep losing and losing
File:Confined-animal-feeding-operation.jpg
because the public-sector haters in office and their corporate GOP-based signal-callers with rich campaign donations at the ready are running all three branches of Wisconsin government.

I've lost count of the number of times on this blog I've noted the intentionally-weakened pollution enforcement actions by Scott Walker's "chamber of commerce mentality" Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - - and yet here we have fresh data about the precipitous enforcement decline noted on the same day that representatives of the Great Lakes governors (except Minnesota) are recommending a precedent-setting diversion of Lake Michigan water that includes a controversial wastewater discharge in the Root River through Racine to be monitored on behalf of the Great Lakes region by…the same Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Remember the DNR's $464 fine for a million-gallon manure spill, some of which reached a creek?

Or the DNR's refusal to follow a judge's order to rein in manure contamination of rural drinking water supplies?

Which is what you get when self-regulation and voluntary compliance is the new DNR 'philosophy' for the once-regulated.

As I'd said recently, and which the news today about the Wisconsin DNR's tolerance of polluters reinforces, why would these other states' officials entrust the Wisconsin DNR under Walker - - and I mean the top political appointees, not the dedicated line staffers trying to hold the line despite layoffs and budget cuts and heavy-handed politicized supervision from the top down - - with a shred of responsibility for the monitoring of such a precedent-setting undertaking involving the people's water?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen. You have it exactly right. Those of us that worked for the DNR realize though it had problems it has now been transformed into as much a nothing as imaginable. Except to provide an illusion that state govt is doing what the law still somewhat requires or provide cover.

Know this, the leadership at the DNR cares absolutely nothing about wildlife or fish or forests, only fees. The environment.... as someting to use, protections are a hindrance to be ignored. These people are sickening and disgusting. How they dare abuse millions of us for a handful of rich businessmen to profit is a crime.

By the way, its a lot worse at the DNR than you know or think, it will come out someday.

Man MKE said...

All this makes me so upset I feel like throwing some chairs around.