Local resistance blocks another N. WI water export scheme

You may remember a few years ago that neighbors concerned about local water supply sustainability rose up against a plan in Vilas County to bottle and export local spring water. 

That plan seems to have dried up:

With New Land Purchase, Carlin Lake Water Dispute Seems Finally Over

Another similar proposal surfaced recently in Bayfield County that has run into local government resistance and objections from the Red Cliff Ojibwe nation: 

Plan to bottle artesian well water from Herbster rejected by Bayfield County committee

A video, here. 

And further information from the Red Cliff nation, here, and here.

At the heart of these controversies is a clash between the treatment of water as a commodity to be controlled and exploited for private gain, and a bigger-picture belief that water's life-and-cultural-sustaining properties require intentional and cooperative conservation that begins by respecting where the water originates.

And informs practices in the public interest that guarantee water is used and managed as close to its source as possible.

An ethic squashed during the last decade by Walkerism, a coordinated offense that continues statewide even though Walker was defeated in November, 2018.

Even when public health is jeopardized:

The bad news is that WI's gerrymandered GOP legislators say they will delete funding from the upcoming state budget to replace lead water pipes; they did the same thing two years ago because too many kids in Milwaukee might have gotten the benefit. 

And to stay consistent with that embrace of lead-laden household water pipes and their long-standing support of animal waste in well water, Republican legislators are refusing to write statewide standards into the budget that would speed the removal of toxic "forever chemicals" from state waters.

Or when law and public property are abused:

Opponents of the Kohler golf course project won a major round [in late May] when Sheboygan Circuit Court Judge L. Edward Stengel affirmed that the WI DNR had awarded the project its key wetland-fill permit based on incomplete and inaccurate information, as the opponents had argued.

This blog, being called "The Political Environment," has followed these matters since 2007, so stay tuned.