Oppose Canadian plan for nuclear waste storage near Lake Huron

Because the five Great Lakes are shared US-Canadian trust resources - - note, for example, that some Canadian officials have already stated their opposition to Waukesha's plan for a Lake Michigan diversion - - in 2013, here, and last week, here - -  the advisory role also can flow the other way.

There is a Canadian plan to bury nuclear waste very close to Lake Huron and Americans are free to comment on it through Sept. 1:

Thirty million people live in the Great Lakes basin. Millions more live   downstream of the Great Lakes.  

All of them, we hope, will write Canadian Minister of the Environment Leona Aglukkaq and beg her to not risk our water and our future on something so flagrantly foolhardy. Send your comments on the OPG nuclear storage site to: 

National Programs  

Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency 22nd Floor, 160 Elgin St., Ottawa, ON K1A 0H3  

Or send comments via email to ceaa.conditions.acee@ceaa-acee.gc.ca. The deadline for submitting comments is Sept. 1.

For your "trashed planet" file

There's the immensity of the problem:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be an even bigger dump than we thought

And the intractability; I'd noted these big estimates in 2009, so it's a particularly gloomy problem.

Climate Change webinar Thursday, 8/27

Folks might be interested in this:
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People, planet, and profit. These are the three core areas on which sustainable businesses, or green businesses, focus. It’s a tall order to balance all three, meeting the needs of current generations without compromising future ones.  Today, business leaders across sectors are taking practical steps to tackle climate change through sustainability. The range is wide, from high-tech firms that develop new clean energy technologies to businesses who integrate sustainability into their company culture. Join Climate Reality on Thursday, August 27 at 2 PM ET for a free webinar exploring this emerging movement for everyday climate action. You’ll hear from Climate Reality Leaders in the business world on: how companies are redefining “business as usual” through climate action; the practical steps to sustainability; why green business is smart business; and how to become a Climate Reality Leader and take action. REGISTER NOW Join us to find out how these business leaders are working towards the greater common goal of fighting climate change, and how you can too. We hope to see you there! Sincerely, The Climate Reality Project www.climaterealityproject.org

Signs point to Brookfield on The Road to Sprawlville, Chapter 62

The latest chapter in our continuing series "The Road to Sprawlville" underscores what former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist said during his slide show about development years ago: it's getting harder to see brooks and fields in Brookfield, where the city is being called out for conferring "flexibility" on some developments in an already busy corridor.

This time, reports BrookfieldNow.com, people are complaining that some developments along Calhoun Rd., I-94 and Bluemound Rd. are allowed to erect obtrusive, extra tall "monument signs" at their entrances.

There have been other Brookfield stops in the Sprawlville blog series, like this one, and if you're looking for a bigger context, this site and illustration isn't so far away.

"The Road to Sprawlville" doesn't have its own signature graphic, but I've always liked this one if we're talking about I-94 and signs of the times. That's "Miss Concrete" and "Miss Asphalt" posed with a rather homogeneous brace of Waukesha movers-and-shakers.

Saluting the Monarchs and their champions

I'd posted information in advance of Sunday's annual Monarch butterfly celebration on the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa where activists have been working to preserve the threatened, migratory species - -

and their vital, local habitat under heavy pressure from excavation, building and traffic that has shrunk the wild character of the County Grounds - - a public place.

So we met up there with family, friends and scores of visitors on late summer afternoon, saw up-close prairie restoration work along the Monarch Trail within sight of parking lots, construction cranes, and roads which feed into the traffic machine known as the nearby Zoo Interchange - - and also saw the uplifting restorative payoff by dedicated volunteers, like Barb Agnew - -

- - and appreciated by all.

Props to these good people, their grassroots work and the dividends being left for generations coming up.

Their work is a great example of people paying attention to what's needed in one's backyard that stretches to another's - - just as activists are trying to save a nature preserve near Sheboygan along Lake Michigan from golf course development, the Penokee Hills and its woods and wetlands from open-pit mining and pig-farming, and countless Wisconsin streams, rivers and lakes from encroachment, filling and various forms of state-tolerated pollution.

Wisconsin, disconnected

[Updated from 2:58 p.m.] They say we're more interconnected than ever, and who would argue the point?

You can watch a movie or a live sporting event on a smartphone or tap it to a grocery store checkout pad and your bill is paid.

But when I read a piece in the Journal Sentinel online Sunday about some small funding gestures by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission to help smaller Wisconsin communities get better broadband connections, I remembered this story from a few years ago about what happened to a rejected opportunity about ten times more valuable:

State giving back stimulus funds intended for broadband expansion

Money was intended to expand high-speed Internet access

And that reminded me of the modern Amtrak rail connection between Milwaukee and Madison and to a larger Midwest High-Speed network rejected by Gov. Walker though it would have linked all the big cities and economies from St. Louis to Chicago to Detroit to the Twin Cities, etc.

Heck, you can't even find optimal bus connections between and across some cities in Wisconsin because the GOP-led legislature banned the establishment and operation of Regional Transit Authorities.

That short-sighted move continued official Wisconsin, talk-radio inspired hostility to urban transit dating to the late 1990's when Tommy Thompson and his legislative allies banned state planning for light rail systems and sank further consideration for congestion-defeating, development-spurring light rail connections between Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties - - and all the major destinations in between - - the Medical Complex, the Zoo, Miller Park, the Third Ward and so on.

The bias towards special-interest-driven highway building and its flip-side animus against transit is so strong in Wisconsin today that it took a Federal  court settlement a few months ago to insert civil rights and economic justice fairness in the form of some added bus lines into the $1.3 billion Zoo Interstate highway Interchange project already well under way.

The project is part of a regional, $6.5 billion, decades-long seven-county highway expansion and improvement begun some years ago that did not include guaranteed funding for transit expansion and improvement.

It isn't hard to spot more of these intentional program and policy disconnects - - implemented or sought - - that help entrenched conservative or special corporate interests at the expense of everyday Wisconsin citizens, their rights and needs, including:

*  Fee barriers imposed by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission on small solar energy installations, and onerous rules slowing wind farm approvals - - all aiding monopoly utilities or real estate interests.

*  Rejection of available federal Medicaid and food stamp funds - - disconnecting low-income citizens from sustenance and better health.

*  Efforts to obstruct the public's use of the Open Records law, neutralize the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board's non-partisan elections, lobbying and campaign oversight, end the historic public service mission in the UW system's Wisconsin Idea and wipe out convenient early voting hours statewide.

*  GOP power-grabbing moves - - set aside for now - - that would have removed citizen input and control - - some real, some symbolic - - at the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, the venerable institution overseeing many Department of Natural Resources functions. 

In fact, the state is even willing to disconnect crucial, interdependent parts of the geography, the water table and pre-statehood cultures and traditions if there is a business interest which wants to substitute self-interested, government-provided room service instead.

The GOP legislature, with the help of the governor and an out-of-state coal mining company, rewrote Wisconsin mining law so the company could have more easily dug for deeply-buried iron ore and polluted the Penokee Hills and Bad River watershed - - regardless of the obvious damage that would have been inflicted on the landscape, wetlands, woodlands, recreational waters, Ojibwe tribal wild-rice growing estuaries and perhaps even nearby Lake Superior.

The plan has been abandoned - - for now - - but the law's sweetheart privileges for mining companies, and barriers to longer-standing and reasonable citizen powers to participate in permit reviews, is still on the books.

Little wonder that an Iowa pig farming operation now wants DNR permission to drop a huge, 26,000+ animal feeding business in the same neck of the woods; the words is out that the north woods are for sale.

Literally: 

This is the same DNR, recast in 2011 by Scott Walker with a "chamber of commerce mentality," which just disclosed that it wants to sell sensitive publicly-owned acreage including trout spring ponds in Northern Wisconsin that connect pristine groundwater - - and the fish - - to downstream rivers, anglers and local economies.

It may be the era of connections elsewhere in the US, but in fragmented, backward-looking Wisconsin, people are disconnected by policy from modernity and common sense - - reliable Internet service, stress-free absentee voting, ample, customer-friendly, uo-to-date-bus and train links, and important information and transparent state agencies which are cornerstones of a 21-st century democracy.

Maybe damaging access to prized trout is the Wisconsin disconnect too far.

We'll see.

Working yet to save, restore Milwaukee public land

Here's a Sunday destination:
[Update]
Some are having trouble viewing the lovely poster with information, so it's The Monarch Migration Celebration on the Milwaukee County Grounds, corner of Discovery Parkway and Eschweiler Drive (app. 1425 Discovery Parkway), 4:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m., with food, music, hikes, habitat education, fun for the kids, and more.

Get thee to Milwaukee before 9/20

[Updated] That's when the "Van Gogh to Pollock Modern Rebels" show leaves the Calatrava addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. (Below, Van Gogh, Pollock).



.

The exhibit is a lot more affordable and accessible than having to search them out in Paris or New York City.

Also soon to close for the season just up the Lakefront: the Northpoint food and custard stand, so get out and enjoy your Lake Michigan city amenities.

 

Everything's up to date in Minnesota

Great reporting by Politico.com about a giant trash processing plant in the heart of Minneapolis - - and thirty-years of companion innovative planning and action - - that is cleaning the air and transforming the city into a national and international model:

The Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, better known as the HERC, has emerged as the centerpiece of Minneapolis’s own push to be carbon-neutral by 2030, as Minnesota’s largest city looks to vault itself into the world’s top tier of sustainable cities.

Politico.com offers fascinating, long-form reports.

Remember this one about Wisconsin's regrettable love affair with highway expansion at the expense of road maintenance and transit?

As the state has shifted resources into freeway megaprojects, 71 percent of its roads are in mediocre or poor condition, according to federal data...

Data show global warming deniers say isn't happening

No doubt staffers for Oklahoma's Republican US Senator and climate change naysayer Jim "Snowball" Inhofe made sure the boss didn't read his Thursday USA Today:

July was the hottest month worldwide since records began being kept in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Thursday.

The temperature in July, when averaged for all locations around the planet, was 61.86 degrees, topping the previous hottest months of July 1998 and July 2010...

Worldwide, the combined average temperature over land and ocean surfaces for July 2015 was 1.46 degrees above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, NOAA reported...

Last month also marked the 39th consecutive July — and 365th consecutive month — with a global temperature that was above average.

WI firefighters join others endangered by climate change

As Wisconsin firefighters head west to battle record-setting wildfires, others on the front lines are telling their story with a frame not often heard. Take a look at this short film:

GOP to kill WI oversight agency found with no substantial problems

Wisconsin Republicans have lined up top-to-bottom to kill the independent and non-partisan Government Accountability Board though an audit has found nothing to merit the drastic steps - - including the removal of civil service Executive Director Kevin Kennedy - - Republicans say they will implement.

The GAB's sin? Validating recall petitions which put Scott Walker into a 2012 election, and working with investigators conducting an inquiry into the propriety of some funding of Walker's recall campaign - - suspended by the WI Supreme Court but perhaps on its way to the US Supreme Court.

So what the Republicans are doing to Kennedy and the board made up of retired judges, many appointed by Gov. Walker, is a spiteful move led by the same hyper-partisan people who tried to slip into the budget the erasure of the state Open Records law, and the Wisconsin Idea, too.

The connection: getting rid of accountability procedures they do not like but cannot control.

Walker should be buoyed with 39% WI job approval rating

No need to be Gloomy Gus about his favorability rating falling to 39% at home. Hey - - he's still beating pal Chris Christie's home state numbers and is running ahead of what folks generally think about the banks and big business.

Not to mention that only 36% of US households subscribe to Netflix, and look how popular Netflix is. Walker is killing Kevin Spacey!

And Walker's staff at the State Capitol can tell him not to worry that 57% of Wisconsinites disapprove of his performance as Governor, since surveys also show 57% of people in Iceland believe in elves.

WI is out on the DNR's limb

When Bucky reads the news about the state of the environment and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources run right now intentionally with a "chamber of commerce mentality"  - - that with the agency's OK, the new Wisconsin budget raised camping and entrance fees while ending direct funding for state park operations; that the agency is on board with selling thousands of acres of state land, including sensitive and vital trout stream ponds in Langlade County; that the corporate NW Wisconsin land owner holding mineral rights to miles and miles of deeply-buried, low-grade iron ore for which there is no market for the foreseeable future is intent on finding another open-pit iron mine operator to seek DNR permission under weakened state mining law to grind down the pristine Penokee Hills, clearcut the forests and damage Bad River waters and regional wetlands after the GTac mine debacle; that an Iowa company plans to seek the DNR's permission to build and operate a 26,000+ pig-raising operation within runoff and sniffing distance of Lake Superior not far from the proposed mine site; that severe water pollution has taken place on the DNR's recent watch from frac sand mine spillage in the St. Croix River and runoff from huge cattle feeding operations into neighboring waterways and residential wells; that the DNR is doing minimal environmental reviews of, and the state budget blocked county insurance mandates for, a tar sand pipeline expansion to run the length of the state and carry more oil than the Keystone XL pipeline too - - etc. etc. - - Bucky is right to ask the DNR: Is this the agency's management philosophy, the end game for Wisconsin? 

Reported, again: Wisconsin is #1 for middle-class loss

The Internet again discovers that Wisconsin is #1 on the wrong-to-lead list:

5 States Where the Middle Class Is Being Destroyed

As we and others told you months ago:

Wisconsin's middle-class has taken biggest US hit

Coalition for the Great Lakes has website, information

Several organizations have combined into a Great Lakes Compact Implementation Coalition that is

advocating for a non-diversion water supply for Waukesha.

The CIC also has a website, lots of data and materials, and an e-information sign-up service.

Government, science and service enhance Wisconsin water

You won't find a more rewarding read in Wisconsin media today, and probably for a long time, than Karen Herzog's page one report in the Journal Sentinel about a system developed by UW-Madison scientists that provides real-time, live-saving information about wave conditions to thousands of sea kayakers out to enjoy the Apostles Islands yearly in the scenic-but-potentially-rough waters of Lake Superior.

Also involved in this effort: Federal and local agencies - - and, of course, citizen activists - - who are working together to maintain the beauty and safety of the islands and their unusual sea caves which draw visitors and commerce to this unique spot in Northern Wisconsin.

Herzog also reported last year that the key UW scientist behind the Lake Superior wave information technologies is also working on a similar system to provide data about dangerous currents along the Lake Michigan coastline in Port Washington, and perhaps Milwaukee.

So when you hear people or pundits disparage "the government," or science or the UW-Madison, remember that it is the public service mission in those very institutions - - which all of us own - - that keep these special parts of our state and the environment we inherited valuable and safe.

And accessible to all - - as is our right - - under the Ninth Article of the Wisconsin Constitution, known as the Public Trust Doctrine, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources:

The public trust doctrine

Wisconsin's Waters Belong to Everyone

Wisconsin lakes and rivers are public resources, owned in common by all Wisconsin citizens under the state's Public Trust Doctrine. Based on the state constitution, this doctrine has been further defined by case law and statute. It declares that all navigable waters are "common highways and forever free", and held in trust by the Department of Natural Resources...

All Wisconsin citizens have the right to boat, fish, hunt, ice skate, and swim on navigable waters, as well as enjoy the natural scenic beauty of navigable waters, and enjoy the quality and quantity of water that supports those uses.

And that is why people must speak out and organize against the abuse of these rights, especially when Wisconsin's chief water stewards fall down on the job, or are manipulated by special interests or ideology to sacrifice the public's rights to water and its benefits.

When an ideologue, with allies, breaks a contract...

What happens? I'll post a long, summary item and a short reminder to keep you on track, and then deliver to you the news and the headline, without comment:

Talgo to keep trains, get $10 million more in settlement

 

Walkerite DNR hits new environmental low

Walker got 65% of the 2014 gubernatorial vote in northern Wisconsin's Langlade County (check the map) - -  but the free marketeers in the Legislature and an ideological ex-developer DNR Secretary Stepp said the DNR should sell land, so no one should be surprised at this report - - it's been acomin' for a while - - in the Journal Sentinel (thank you, Lee Berguist), and no Wisconsinite is immune from a turn under the bus:

DNR move to sell prime spring ponds outrages trout anglers

You want one of these, Bucky? 

Go to the supermarket - - unless people organize against the plan and that "chamber of commerce mentality" running the agency.

WI bear hunters continue to throw dogs to the wolves

Notice how many of this year's bear hound killings or woundings by wolves in Wisconsin have taken place close to previous depredation sites and areas of known wolf activity.

Why bear hunters put their dogs at such risk is beyond me, though Wisconsin law, through a DNR program, compensates the hounders - - even scofflaws and repeat applicants - - up to $2,500 per wolf-killed dog during the bear season through an only-in-Wisconsin program.