Friday, August 5, 2016

Attention, media: note the other dead zone story in Green Bay today

Media may not have to time to take a look today, but here's hoping they notice the dead zone in Green Bay, and I'm not talking about the empty chairs and speaker slots at Donald Trump's rally from which Paul Ryan, Scott Walker and other Wisconsin GOP officials suddenly got to busy to occupy.

I'm talking about the dead zone in the waters of Green Bay - - a lifeless area miles long - - where aquatic life has been snuffed out by farm runoff and other pollutants.

A fact noted frequently on this blog - - here and here - - because you can attribute much of the dead zone to politicians, including Walker, in thrall to major, monied Ag and dairy and industrial special interests which have won from Walker and the Legislature a series of weakened environmental laws, regulations and policy decisions - - even membership on advisory boards - - that degrade science, diss the public and ultimately allow for more phosphorus, chemical and manure pollution in the groundwater, lakes, rivers and streams which flow into Green Bay and Lake Michigan.
File:Confined-animal-feeding-operation.jpg
And which is also likely heading for Lake Superior on the other side of the state, too, given the Polluter Lobby's latest poke in the eye to both citizens and the US EPA which has told a dismissive Walker to clean up the state's water and follow the law.

Leading to perhaps unprecedented grassroots and legal intervention on behalf of people whose drinking water is polluted by feedlot expansion that feeds the dead zone.

Read up on the latest of these pro-manure policies and decisions - - Walker, his corporately-managed Department of Natural Resources led by a developer contemptuous of science and her own employees, and an environmental policy oversight board Walker tried to neuter but has captured anyway, rewrote pollution and manure runoff rules at the behest of Big Ag - - that will perversely encourage - - with the force of law - - large animal feeding operations to dispose of more manure with fewer controls, and on their terms, on the land, in the water and through the air.

In the era of water safety awareness spurred by tragic, human-caused water contamination in Flint, few states would achieve a dead zone and related water pollution through policy carelessness and outright corporate bias in one of its historic and most important water resources to become Flint 2.0

But welcome to Green Bay, Wisconsin, national political media.

Take a good look around.

We're even giving environmental awards to record-seeting polluters.

On, Wisconsin. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

When dairy corps rule the world:
#1 Hundreds of innocent badgers needlessly killed in attempt to control bovine TB;
http://www.nature.com/news/scientists-track-badger-cow-encounters-to-understand-cattle-tb-1.20378

#2 Hundreds of Wisconsin wells, lakes and rivers destroyed by manure in preparation for...more CAFO's, fewer healthy Badgers.