WI env. wrecker, climate change denier gets big EPA job

I'd more or less predicted it, but it's official:

The Wisconsin DNR's proven wetland-filling, climate-change information-scrubbing and 'chamber of commerce' anti-environmental tool is bringing her Donald Trump worship and McDonald's store management skills to a senior regional EPA position.

Now an entire region- - including Missouri, where Stepp has a home in Branson - -  is in the hands who of a far-rightwing bureaucrat who brought fear, poor morale and despair to the once-proud DNR.

Remember that Stepp, a home builder and former GOP State Senator, rose to the top of Walker's DNR selection list after she posted a ranting, mocking, partisan name-calling screed against the DNR:

Those of you that haven't had the pleasure of peeking behind the scenes of our state agencies like DNR, Health and Family Services, etc...need to know how some of the most far-reaching policies come down on our heads.

The most crushing/controversial rules that businesses have to follow in our state are--most times--done through the "rule making process" of our state agencies. Without bogging everyone down with some really boring procedure talk, suffice it to say that many of these great ideas (sarcasm) come from deep inside the agencies and tend to be reflections of that agency's culture.

For example, people who go to work for the DNR's land, waste, and water bureaus tend to be anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes, karner blue butterflies, etc...This is in their nature; their make-up and DNA. So, since they're unelected bureaucrats who have only their cubicle walls to bounce ideas off of, they tend to come up with some pretty outrageous stuff that those of us in the real world have to contend with.

Stepp cared so little for the environment in Wisconsin, and so little for the people her laissez-faire, shoulder-shrugging withdrawal of pollution science, inspections and enforcement that when manure-tainted brown water ran from rural kitchen taps she couldn't get one single bottle of fresh water delivered, as the DNR had promised, delivered into the heart of manure-overflow country.

So heads up, US EPA region 7, with your nationally-signifiant Ogallala aquifer, your Nebraska sandhill crane flyway habitat, your Iowa corn crop - - nine tribal nations - - and more. (Stepp wanted to help fast-track what would have been the continent's largest open-pit iron ore mine upstream from the Bad River tribal land and waters.)

Walker will replace her with someone just as reliably-rightwing and ideologically-robotic - - someone who will push ahead with the predicted watershed damage at the Foxconn site - - because, as she said, less environmental oversight and faster wetland filling, stream diversion and construction on shorelines and into lake beds is a good thing - -  or at the Kohler golf course ticketed for a Lake Michigan shoreline nature preserve, or at the 26,000-hog CAFO near Ashland's water supply in a pristine Lake Superior bay - - but perhaps with a smaller appetite for agency-wide Halloween parties.

If that's the good news, God help us.