I'm posting a series of preliminary reactions - - Part 1, here - - to the unveiling by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources today of its long-awaited 'realignment' which we already know intends to reward some of the state's biggest polluting livestock operations and heaviest users of groundwater already being deregulated with the privatizers' Dream Scenario:
Writing their own environmental permit rules.
Kinda like telling habitual reckless drivers they can set their own speed limits, or letting smokestack emitters decide what constitutes air pollution.
It bears noting that the DNR, run with the 'chamber of commerce mentality' Scott Walker installed atop the intentionally-diminished department, is already under scrutiny by the US Environmental Protection Agency for systematically evading state obligations under the US Clean Water Act since 2011.
That Walker and the DNR's corporatized management team would move to further enable the groundwater hogs in the state whose operations also have spilled millions of gallons of manure into streams and let it leak its toxins into residential wells tells me these things:
* The Walker administration continues to thumb its nose at the EPA.
* The Walker administration continues to put private profit and Walker donor interests above the people's constitutional rights to clean water.
* Even if the EPA writes clean water orders for the state, or takes over the clean water enforcement program, as the EPA can do, the Walker administration is cynically betting that the incoming Donald Trump EPA team will undo any remedial actions ordered, or will withdraw the threat of federal action, period.
I can't see any other explanation for Walker's DNR to further deregulate clean water enforcement in the state just a few weeks after EPA officials came to Madison, spent several days in a highly-publicized records inspection spurred by numerous citizen and expert complaints, and held a heavily-attended public session in Eau Claire to take more public input on the clean water crisis in the state.
Writing their own environmental permit rules.
Kinda like telling habitual reckless drivers they can set their own speed limits, or letting smokestack emitters decide what constitutes air pollution.
It bears noting that the DNR, run with the 'chamber of commerce mentality' Scott Walker installed atop the intentionally-diminished department, is already under scrutiny by the US Environmental Protection Agency for systematically evading state obligations under the US Clean Water Act since 2011.
That Walker and the DNR's corporatized management team would move to further enable the groundwater hogs in the state whose operations also have spilled millions of gallons of manure into streams and let it leak its toxins into residential wells tells me these things:
* The Walker administration continues to thumb its nose at the EPA.
* The Walker administration continues to put private profit and Walker donor interests above the people's constitutional rights to clean water.
* Even if the EPA writes clean water orders for the state, or takes over the clean water enforcement program, as the EPA can do, the Walker administration is cynically betting that the incoming Donald Trump EPA team will undo any remedial actions ordered, or will withdraw the threat of federal action, period.
I can't see any other explanation for Walker's DNR to further deregulate clean water enforcement in the state just a few weeks after EPA officials came to Madison, spent several days in a highly-publicized records inspection spurred by numerous citizen and expert complaints, and held a heavily-attended public session in Eau Claire to take more public input on the clean water crisis in the state.
They are also going to let them do their own plan and spec review for construction of these facilities. That is a huge red flag and a gigantic shift in operations.
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