MN better water steward, neighbor than Walker's WI

Minnesota continues to shine while Wisconsin is stuck in darkness and muck.

While Wisconsin lets the threatened Little Plover River run dry,

River Alliance of Wisconsin photo

wants water-hogging and often polluting CAFOs to expand, has enabled widespread well-water contamination through lax oversight, and exempted the huge Foxconn site from an important environmental review mocked by big business, Minnesota just did the opposite to help guard everyone's waters downstream from the Mississippi River headwaters. 

Minnesota’s largest potato producer is backing away from a controversial expansion just south of the Mississippi River headwaters after state regulators insisted on an environmental study of the potential contamination of groundwater. 

That's the difference between a state which sees its relationship to public resources as steward, opposed to a state that sees itself as the sole dealer in a high-stakes card game it rigged for the richest players.

Examples, aplenty, including:

WI public officials tilt land, water conservation to corporate goals

A ruling on the validity of a wetland-fill permit the Wisconsin DNR has granted for controversial golf course development on a nature preserve and inside a popular Lake Michigan shoreline state park will be issued in several months, reports The Sheboygan Press.

And it's why Wisconsin's impaired waterways have doubled during Walker's tenure, an ugly statistic sure to worsen when another Walker pet project, toxifying metallic mining, gets underway.