No Foxconn factory, so no need for air permits, Great Lakes diversion
Foxconn says it isn't going to build a factory in SE Wisconsin, so it shouldn't retain various water diversion and air pollution permits and permissions which the factory was said to require.
Last spring the WI DNR rushed through permissions for Foxconn to emit nearly 800 tons of air pollution annually and divert about seven million gallons of Lake Michigan water daily.
And the Walker administration got the Trump administration to relax air pollution enforcement over a swath 0f SE Wisconsin to permit Foxconn's air pollution to comply with the weakened standard.
While those various permits are under a host of challenges from environmental groups and jurisdictions downstream and downwind in Illinois, it seems as if all those permitted exceptions are not longer needed if Foxconn is not going to be operating a manufacturing facility that would have needed the water diversion and air emission permits.
Will the DNR suspend, withdraw or otherwise shelve these permits and permissions?
And will the legislature rethink the special wetland-filling stream-altering, lake-bed-filling exemptions to state law it also gave the company for a massive factory complex now in doubt?
Last spring the WI DNR rushed through permissions for Foxconn to emit nearly 800 tons of air pollution annually and divert about seven million gallons of Lake Michigan water daily.
And the Walker administration got the Trump administration to relax air pollution enforcement over a swath 0f SE Wisconsin to permit Foxconn's air pollution to comply with the weakened standard.
While those various permits are under a host of challenges from environmental groups and jurisdictions downstream and downwind in Illinois, it seems as if all those permitted exceptions are not longer needed if Foxconn is not going to be operating a manufacturing facility that would have needed the water diversion and air emission permits.
Will the DNR suspend, withdraw or otherwise shelve these permits and permissions?
And will the legislature rethink the special wetland-filling stream-altering, lake-bed-filling exemptions to state law it also gave the company for a massive factory complex now in doubt?
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Cathy Stepp hired a “team project manager that we brought in to the department to oversee and kind of be a project superintendent for the permitting processes that will be required,” Stepp said. “We stand at the ready.” https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/dnr-hires-manager-to-speed-environmental-permitting-for-foxconn/article_14f179cd-8ed6-5c76-b397-8ddfa19d256a.html
The DNR’s Foxconn project manager was Eric Ebersberger, a former deputy administrator for environmental management who led the department’s successful effort to divert Lake Michigan water to Waukesha. He left the department in 2016 and returned Monday as a limited-term employee, said DNR spokesman Jim Dick.
The person at DNR responsible for overseeing the streamlined environmental permitting for the Foxconn manufacturing plant, Erick Ebersberger, has been appointed Interim DNR Budget Director for the DNR Office of Management & Budget.
Here is what the DNR website says about him: "Ebersberger's public service experience goes back more than 25 years, including working as deputy administrator in the Environmental Management Division, as chief of the Water Use Section within the Bureau of Drinking Water and Groundwater, as an analyst and manager in the Bureau of Management and Budget and as an attorney in the Bureau of Legal Services."
Weird that the bio doesn't mention FoxConn. Almost like no one wants to admit this happened. https://dnr.wi.gov/news/releases/article/?id=4690
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