Walker, water, wetlands, Foxconn & the DNR; 1-post review.

I've consolidated much of the recent Walker-GOP-privatizing war on the environment, below:

* For WI environment, February was 28-day GOP siege

None of what took place last month was an accident. 

* Memo to Walker, Foxconn: Lake Michigan is blue, not 'black-green, sudsy.'

In addition to the mechanics of Foxconn's proposed diversion of water from Lake Michigan to be presented in Racine on Wednesday - - schedule, details, 3/21 comment deadline, here - - let's make sure we hear rock-solid guarantees to clean the factory's wastewater before its return to the lake.

And also discussion about the relationship of wastewater discharges - - planned and unplanned - - to the known losses of wetlands, lakes and stream routes allowed on the approximately 3,000-acre Foxconn site through sweetheart legislation that exempted the project from routine site assessments and environmental permitting

Because we want the lake to look like this - - 

- - and not this, as I posted earlier: 

Let's just say no "sudsy" discharges will be welcomed, like those described here: 

...published reports [show] Foxconn's finger-pointing disdain for rules on the books: 

Chinese electronics suppliers FoxconnT echnology Group and UniMicron Technology Corp. have been criticized by Chinese environmental activist Ma Jun and five nonprofit environmental organizations for polluting nearby rivers with factory chemicals. 

According to the environmental groups, water with a black-green color and a chemical odor have been dumped from both Foxconn and UniMicron plants into the Huangcangjing and Hanputang rivers -- which feed into the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. 

“Sudsy” water is dumped from Foxconn twice a day... 

* Walker has debased the WI agency reviewing the Foxconn diversion ask

The diversion application - - to be reviewed by, and receive its up or down ruling from, the DNR and only the DNR - - also seeks DNR approval for Foxconn's flat-screen panel production processes to use consumptively about 40% of its daily diversion, with the balance returned to the lake properly treated.

Here's an overriding thought about all this to consider alongside two others I wrote about earlier: The application has a fundamental credibility problem..because the DNR has a fundamental credibility problem. 

*  Under Walker, Wisconsin is an environmental outlier

Wisconsin's slippery history with current and projected Great Lakes diversions - - plural - - boost the state's outlier reputation.]

Wisconsin is light years away from the nationally-leading environmental state bequeathed to us by John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Gaylord Nelson and generations of preservationist activism.

The decline and fall of Wisconsin's environmental stature is due to Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' and pro-polluter record that intentionally turned Wisconsin into a donor-driven and special-interest-favor dispensing and pollution-enabling environmental outlier.

* Foxconn diversion would be 5th for environmental outlier Wisconsin

Before Foxconn, there was Waukesha, New Berlin, Menomonee Falls and Pleasant Prairie.

So don't let the Foxconn diversion divert you - - a complete archive about Foxconn is here - - from our state's greedy, arrogant and even slippery connections to Great Lakes water which only enhance our fast-growing identity as an environmental outlier. 

*  A Foxconn Fever primer

[Updated continuously from July, 2017] This archive follows Wisconsin's award of $4.5 billion in state and local funds, plus waivers of routine judicial and environmental reviews, for a promised Foxconn factory development on Racine County farmland and wetlands near Lake Michigan.