Saturday, September 15, 2018

Runoff from Foxconn site also muddies Robin Vos' Twitter feed

WI GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos posted an upbeat Foxconn flood-projection tweet - - 

MoreAug 22 Here's the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission evaluation of the proposed stormwater quantity management for the Des Plaines River watershed: "no anticipated increase in downstream flood flows."
- - about two weeks before this soggy, messy event:
Torrent of stormwater spills from Foxconn construction site after heavy weekend rains
The Foxconn mud-flood from the first heavy rain event at the project since earth-moving began suggests that Foxconn does pose water quality and quantity downstream issues, because:
Much of the Foxconn campus footprint is in an area where water drains to Lake Michigan via the Root and Pike rivers. But the southwestern portion of the development is located in the Des Plaines River watershed, which means that rain and snowmelt in that area will drain via ditches, creeks and streams into the Des Plaines, or otherwise seep into the surrounding groundwater supply... 
In other words, just like any kind of large development project, Foxconn will transform ground that’s permeable to water — able to retain it in wetlands or draw it into the groundwater supply — into impervious surfaces from which rainfall and snowmelt tends to run off into surface water bodies, often flowing through storm sewers along the way.
In a heavy rain, water falling on rooftops or pavement will flood nearby lakes and rivers much more readily, because it doesn’t have anywhere else to go unless the local storm sewer system can keep up with the torrent. In turn, those sewers eventually have to drain somewhere.
Municipal and county officials in Illinois’ Lake County, which is just across from Kenosha County along Wisconsin’s southern border, have raised concerns that the Foxconn development will mean more flooding downstream for their communities. The Lake County Board passed a resolution in June opposing the loosened environmental standards that Wisconsin and federal officials have applied for Foxconn.
I'll add today's post to my Foxconn archive which dates to June, 2017.

Here's the specific and bigger picture

1 comment:

Allen said...

The change since the picture would be triumphant if the real problems of secret Koch government wouldnt remain. As long as Evers remains silent this will continue-no matter who is elected.