WI Assembly seals deal privatizing public waters

The Wisconsin State Assembly Tuesday completed the Legislature's disgustingly predictable overthrow of State Constitutional public water protections and granted permanent groundwater ownership to the state's biggest private well water users, WisPolitics reports.

Yes, "disgustingly predictable," as I've been blogging about this foregone political conclusion here, and about the known consequences of groundwater abuse on the state's rivers, lakes and streams - - like the little Plover River:

And I've followed these issues and others connected to it ever since right-wing Gov. Scott Walker was anointed by Koch interests in 2007 to deliver Wisconsin to for the right's 'chamber of commerce mentality' funders.

So I'm grateful for this Wisconsin State Journal account of the Assembly's action because the writers included these truths which GOP legislators swept aside in favor of their own bought-and-paid for alternative facts about the existing abuse of Wisconsin groundwater in the words of someone they fear and you need to get to know:

Yet the state's leading experts on Central Sands groundwater said in interviews Tuesday that almost all of the region's 300 lakes and many sections of its 800 miles of trout streams have been diminished by wells there.  

George Kraft, a UW-Stevens Point researcher listed 36 lakes of 10 acres or more that have been drawn down by at least a foot, with some down as much as five feet. 

"Biologists tell us that when 10 percent of the flow or more is taken by pumping, we can expect to see impacts to the fish life," Kraft said. "Based on this criteria, there are likely hundreds of impacted stream miles."

To which the GOP legislators, said 'tut tut; we know better.'

By the way, that's the same George Kraft whom Walker bounced from the state's premier groundwater council and replaced him with one of the big groundwater users from one of the really big groundwater-hogging industries the Legislature just got finished rewarding by handing over our water, in perpetuity, and for free:

Wisconsin has a statutorily-created groundwater coordination council; Scott Walker has just replaced the council Governor's representative - - UW-Stevens Point professor and water expert George Kraft - - with Stephen Diercks, a potato grower, according to this industry report.

So, to sum it all up, little surprise then that the State Journal also said this in its report on the future of the bill that will make the current 13,000 Wisconsin high-capacity well permit holders and thousands more to come water-and-resource-and-property-rich:

...the Associated Press reported that Walker signaled Tuesday that he would sign it.