Spring comes to UWM's woods which Walker wanted privatized

You may remember that Walker tried unsuccessfully to use the state budget to open UWM's Downer Woods to potential development.

A walk through the site today shows that would have been lost, and props to neighbors who sounded the alarm.

Walker Foxconn-campaign strategy clarified Monday

Updated from 11:46 a.m. Walker's taxpayer-paid, Foxconn-related, campaign style state tour is already posted six times on his state-paid Twitter feed:

Verified account 51m51 minutes ago51 minutes agoMoreToday we are seeing more of the Foxconn Bonus throughout WI. The company & its construction manager are going above & beyond their contractual obligations to benefit the state & its workers. Lots of smiling faces @MichelsCorp in response to the announcement. ---------------------------------------------------

Faux fiscal conservative Walker's central '18 Foxconn/campaign message rolls out today with equal parts ego, hypocrisy and strategist-honed p.r.

He's on a taxpayer-paid statewide 'tour' like his multi-stop tax-giveaway announcements last month where he'll make the same pronouncements, milk Foxconn for all its worth for himself and play down the obvious: that SE WI will be first in line for whatever job and spinoff benefits are produced by the state's subsidies.

A sensitive point for him, as he defensively revealed on Twitter feed 3 hours ago:

In addition to the 13,000 direct jobs in Racine, the $10 billion Foxconn investment in Wisconsin will have a positive economic impact all over the state. Some people don’t want to admit that’s true but the facts show otherwise.

Also from Walker's Twitter feed, 32 minutes ago:More

In Black River Falls this morning, at Hoffman Construction to talk about the positive impact of Foxconn’s new $10 billion investment in Wisconsin. People will benefit all over the state.

Where he'll say nothing about its foundations - - less-publicized, lower-tech, lower-wage jobs, plus  dirty air, filled wetlands or scammed Lake Michigan water while he wraps himself in campaign-ad-ready rhetoric about jobs.

Walker to take part in Foxconn site development announcement

This is the same site he ducked when $264 million in state-budget-draining, statewide-project cancelling road work began at his direction. 

Reminds me of the guest who shows up and eats hearty when dinner is served but leaves before the dishes have to be washed.

I've added this post to the full Foxconn archive on this blog, here.

Foxconn Fever primer

Foxconn always planned WI plant as lower-skills hub

I'm not sure why Foxconn's intention to hire thousands of lower-skill workers for lower-tech-and-wage jobs in Wisconsin is worth the Sunday Journal Sentinel hard-copy banner.

On August 11th, I wrote:

WI now talking about < $15-per-hour Foxconn jobs

For the record:

Walker's initial Foxconn hype focused on new jobs averaging about $54,000 annually, but Wisconsin is now acknowledging it will subsidize those at the $30,000 level.

Assembly Republicans introduced revisions to the bill Friday. The new version retains the tax breaks but ties them to jobs created that pay at least $30,000 and exempts salaries over $100,000 from the calculations.

With 2,080 hours in a working year - - 40 hours x 52 weeks - - the subsidies to Foxconn will include jobs paying less than $15 per hour.

And aren't these the kind of jobs open to automation?

And will Foxconn be paid by Wisconsin taxpayers when these jobs are created, then robotized out of existence...?

One more thought: A financial calculator finds the average income needed for a family of four to live a "modest but adequate" lifestyle in Kenosha County is $81,457.

That posting was a follow-up to an August 7th analysis that made clear that Foxconn had somewhere other than SE WI in mind for a high-tech, R&D center:

Foxconn eyes MI as high-tech development site 

Chinese media and The Detroit News are reporting that Tawian-based Foxconn is eyeing a Michigan investment in driverless car, artificial intelligence and other high-tech fields.

As they say across the lake, Michigan is leading the way in driverless car tech...

So... it's worth asking in light of the Michigan-focused reports if states will be played off each other for Foxconn investments, and if Wisconsin is overpaying with its $3 billion incentive and water-rule bending package while Michigan has pledged $200 million, and whether artificial intelligence and driverless car technology have more lasting growth potential than flat screen television and other LCD panel manufacturing.

Final thought, and as I've pointed out often, that the WI Foxconn plant is in GOP Assembly Speaker Robin Vos' district, and needs to attract thousands of lower-income workers who are less likely-to own cars to an area Vos has worked hard to strip of regional transit coordination and connections is just plain stupid.

Vos' long transit blockade does not help Racine's Foxconn future

The posts cited above are at this archive.

Final thought: It's no secret that development and opportunity in SE WI have been distorted by anti-urban public policy decisions that disconnected minorities who are concentrated in Milwaukee - - the biggest city in the state but landlocked by state law - - from jobs, housing and other regional benefits.

This post is one of the summaries on that topic I've posted over the years:

State and regional governments keep Milwaukee, minorities isolated, part II

I am also adding here a link to SEWRPC's most recent report on affirmative action, hiring and staffing, and note that, as it has in the past, the agency says in these reports that it continues to struggle attracting minorities to its most-senior positions.

And SEWRPC candidly includes this ironic, telling, all-encompassing reality about jobs and the Milwaukee-centered region which Scott Walker's anti-urban, anti-transit policies have made worse: 

Transit services have -- at least temporarily -- been terminated by Waukesha County to the Commission’s primary work place in the Waukesha area. 

Today 38 percent of Commission employees commute from Milwaukee County residences. The Commission has long recommended in its plans, and advocates strongly for improved transit service to job centers throughout the Region. 

The Commission has identified the severe transit funding problems in the Region, and the need for dedicated funding. 

Echoing its 2012 affirmative action report:

In its 2011-2012 Affirmative action report - - click on the pdf at the bottom of this SEWRPC page - - SEWRPC says:

Transit services have -- at least temporarily -- been terminated by Waukesha County to the Commission’s primary work place in the Waukesha area.

Four-to-five years is "temporarily"?

Contaminated Central Sands waters echo Kewaunee County concerns

Tainted well water in northeast Wisconsin and especially in Kewaunee County, near big dairy operations

Manure runoff in Kewaunee County

is getting recent, long-overdue attention.

In fact, the DNR makes bottled water available in Kewaunee County to any resident experiencing what's called a 'brown water event.'

But these conditions are not limited to Northeast Wisconsin, as the US EPA showed up in Central Wisconsin last week and began digging a huge number of test wells to track down the source of well water contamination there.

On Monday, workers from the EPA began a large-scale project to drill wells in Juneau County near a large dairy farm to test for elevated levels of nitrates and other contamination, according state and federal officials...

The farm in question, Central Sands Dairy in the Town of Armenia, is a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, with a permit to manage more than 6,000 cattle, state records show.

I'd written about this in 2016: 

Groundwater in the Wisconsin's central sands region is both over-pumped and contaminated at high levels by animal waste runoff, but officials have been unable 
or unwilling to stop it.

.

The owners of that dairy are major Walker donors - - noted also in this summary posting - -  and have been stymied in their efforts by local activists, officials and litigation to build another large concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO, in Wood County.

Given Walker's laissez-faire approach to DNR management and on-site inspections, weak laws approved by a Legislature obeisant to Big Ag and Big Dairy and continuing expansion of CAFOs while small farmers fail, it's going to take a cleansing blue wave to drastically reduce the brown water events.

Final notes:

The grassroots group Protect Wood County has an information website, and this important notice:

Saratoga’s Community Water Test Results 

May 14, 6:30 – 7:30 PM at Saratoga Town Hall 

Kevin Masarik, integrated specialist with UW Extension in the College of Natural Resources – University of Wisconsin Stevens Point will deliver results.

And the grassroots group Kewaunee Cares has a powerful website, too. 

One blog post consolidates recent Foxconn air and water news

Here's a mini-archive focused on recent, fast-moving Foxconn-related air and water issues
 
consolidated from the continuously-updated "Foxconn Fever" post (now at 181 items):
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* WI AG Brad Schimel, GOP ally of Scott Walker and his 'chamber of commerce mentality'-driven DNR, will not protect SE Wisconsin from already-dirty air soon to be laden with another 796 tons of pollutants to be emitted by Foxconn - - so Illinois AG Lisa Madigan is stepping in with a federal lawsuit to do Schimel's work for him. And for us.

Foxconn-friendly EPA air regs for SE WI get IL lawsuit

* Walker may not know or care that he's earned a spot at an historic climate change crossroads, so here's the story.

Walker's Grey Skies win is one for record books' material

* Michigan legal activists urge Great Lakes states to take over review of Lake Michigan diversion for Foxconn which Walker's DNR hurriedly-approved. This is an effort to invoke the Great Lakes Compact. To save it.

MI group raises alarm, seeks wider review of Foxconn diversion

* Walker needs Foxconn to distract voters from his still-failed 250,000 new jobs promise. And if that means sacrificing clean air, clean Lake Michigan water, the integrity of the Great Lakes Compact, Racine-area wetlands and billions in public subsidies, so be it.

Walker wants Foxconn as distraction from his failed 250,000 new jobs promise

* Trump, Walker, DNR and US EPA coordinate to ensure that SE WI will not have strongest air quality standards, rule, enforcement. #MWSA.

Making Wisconsin smoggier again

*  US EPA exempts SE WI and thus Foxconn site, environs from stronger clean air rules. Big win for Walker, Foxconn, but not children, seniors, joggers, asthmatics, COPD sufferers, etc.

Pharmacies, RR/ICUs big winners in latest Walker Grey Skies push 

 * Multiple review and permit exemptions, easy air pollution approvals and a questionable Lake Michigan diversion hurriedly greenly by the DNR for the Foxconn project are part of the larger environmental damage Walker and the GOP have wrought statewide.

Walker's lazy, loose 'policy-making' is fouling Wisconsin land, air and water

* The other seven Great Lakes states have the right under the Compact to review the WI DNR's approval of a diversion for Foxconn. And history shows that other diversion approvals given additional reviews are improved.

The other Great Lakes states could review the Foxconn diversion

*  Wisconsin's DNR needs an updated, reality-based mission statement, given its obeisance to Foxconn and other special interests it reflexively serves through Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality.'

Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality DNR needs a new mission statement

* Walker goosed along a quick Lake Michigan water diversion approval for Foxconn, but he may run into opposition from other Great Lakes states and supporters of the Wisconsin Constitution, Article IX.

The WI DNR adds quick approval of Foxconn diversion to quick approval of air pollution permits 

 * Yeah, says the DNR, no need to worry about Foxconn's intention to spew more than 700 tons of pollutants a year over Racine County. Next up: all that Lake Michigan water Foxconn wants, and says it will clean.

Foxconn's 4 air emission permits get quick WI DNR speed-dating 

*  Small City of Milwaukee research agency again unearths facts about a Lake Michigan diversion.

Milwaukee report exposes state's pathetic Foxconn diversion 'due diligence  

 * A blog reader suggests converting the 7-million-gallon-per-day Lake Michigan diversion for Foxconn and Mount Pleasant into daily tanker truckloads. It's a big, long line. 

Foxconn Lake Michigan diversion = 1,100 tanker trucks everyday in a 14-mile long line. 

 *  Illinois and New York are raising the same kind of questions which Wisconsin water activists aired at a recent hearing about the legality of Foxconn's bid for a Great Lakes diversion being pushed by Gov. Walker. His DNR gets to review and can approve the application - - unless the other Great Lakes states mount  substantial resistance.

Illinois, New York raise questions about Foxconn's bid for Lake Michigan water

*  Wisconsin pushed through the Great Lakes regional body a controversial Lake Michigan diversion for Waukesha, but the other states attached conditions due to Wisconsin's checkered environmental stewardship under Walker which could come back and bit the Foxconn diversion.

Awareness of Walker's poor water stewardship spreads to other Great Lakes states

Foxconn-friendly air rules for SE WI draw IL lawsuit

The headwinds against Walker's beloved Foxconn project are gathering; do we need to replace Foxconn Fever with "Foxconn Follies?"

To the call last week from legal and environmental activists in Michigan for broader review of the controversial Foxconn water diversion hurriedly greenlit by Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' DNR, you can add the federal lawsuit Illinois is preparing over a preposterous recent EPA dirty air ruling that will help enable Foxconn's DNR-approved, 796-annual ton-air pollution spew. 

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Friday announced she plans to file a lawsuit challenging a recently issued ruling by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that significantly reduces the area of southeastern Wisconsin that would face stricter air pollution regulations....

In a news release, Madigan’s office said the EPA ruling would allow “proposed massive Wisconsin Foxconn plant to pollute air....and...is putting a company's profit ahead of our natural resources and the public health.”

“Despite its name, the Environmental Protection Agency now operates with total disregard for the quality of our air and water, and in this case, the U.S. EPA is putting a company’s profit ahead of our natural resources and the public’s health,” Madigan said. “I will file a lawsuit to protect the environment and people from the consequences of this unsupported decision.”

Nice to see the Illinois AG doing for Wisconsin what its own corporately-obeisant, Pruitt-pandering AG will not do for his own state and a clean environment.

I had made the connections between the recent EPA ruling, Walker's priorities and the Foxconn air permits, here: 

Last week it was the DNR's rushed approvals for four air pollution permits to allow Foxconn to emit annually 796 tons of eye-watering, land-and-water contaminating smog and other airborne pollutants.

 

Today it's the US EPA approval at Walker's request to exempt much of SE Wisconsin from clean air standards that will apply to much of the state and country.

The EPA found that portions of Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Door and Kenosha counties along the lake were in violation of a new tougher ozone standard. 

Racine County — the future home of the Foxconn Technology Group — was declared to be in compliance with the standard. 

The EPA also exempted Waukesha and Washington counties from 2015 standards advanced under Obama administration. 

By the way, data from the American/Wisconsin Lung Associations had already graded Kenosha, Milwaukee, Ozaukee and Sheboygan Counties "F" for particulate (read: ozone) pollution, and more data show the thousands and thousands of Wisconsinites in those counties and elsewhere in the state already at risk from pediatric asthma, adult asthma, lung cancer and cardio-vascular disease.

At UW-Madison 5/9 water program, major issues, speakers on tap

Looks really good.

Please join us from 8:00am-1:00pm on Wednesday, May 9th in the Overture Room (#241A) of  the Gordon Dining and Event Center  where water experts from around the state will meet to discuss their latest research at the 2018 Water@UW-Madison Spring Symposium. 

The theme for this year’s symposium is “Connecting People and Water Scholarship Through Better Communication – On Campus and Beyond.” 

In addition to a series of 21 speed talks highlighting water research on the UW-Madison campus and beyond, we will feature presentations from several “Science Storytellers” who use different media to communicate water research to a broad audience. Following each session of talks, don’t miss opportunities to chat with our experts over snacks and coffee and a panel discussion on “Science Communication for Maximum Impact” to conclude the day.

 This event is free and open to the public. See below for a complete list of speakers and topics, a complete agenda of the day’s events can be seen here.

Gov. Pothole foists project cancellations, 2nd-worst-repaired-in-US roads on WI

I had a professor who credited Henry James with having said "all our limitations are self-imposed," but today you could hear that from drivers battling our getting-even-sorrier state roads.

Especially if they understand that road money is cascades into Walker's campaign centerpiece - -  a/k/a Foxconn - - at the same time the state's GOP-self-imposed transportation funding 'crisis' has produced, according to this new report:

* The second-worst repaired roads in the nation - - a repeat Walker 'win.'

* Further cancellation of studies to expand the interstate from Madison to the Dells - - a process WisDOT's obfuscators earlier called "re-prioritizing." 

And while Gov. Pothole, GOP Assembly Speaker Vos and GOP Senate Majority Leader keep fighting over whether to solve this binge of over-spending by adding licensing fees, boosting gas taxes or continuing to borrow more money for your kids and their kids to pay off, the state has on Walker's watch cancelled the expansion of the interstate from the Marquette Interchange to the Zoo Interchange.

And slowed down work on the aforementioned Zoo Interchange.

Because there's not enough money.

And because Walker as far back as 2003 was all for adding scores of new lane miles on so-called 'improved' freeways in SE Wisconsin to the tune of $6.4 un-budgeted taxpayer dollars  

And now because, well, you know: Foxconn.

So remember Foxconn's gravitational pull on general state funds and transportation budgets, and the GOP's one-party FUBAR State Capitol Circus of Dysfunction which I described in February (below) the next time you drop into a pothole or crawl through rush-hour congestion and summer tourism traffic on so many major WI roadways:

Walker's Foxconn Fever infects state road repair budget

Idiocracy on full display.

All hail Governor Pothole as his Foxconn Fever spreads with predictable side-effects:

Funding for Wisconsin road maintenance plummets. Foxconn cited. 

Judge voids wetland-killing permit WI Assembly tried to fast-track

Remember the GOP-led WI Assembly's quiet, 11th-hour efforts to legislately hand a Georgia sand mining firm a permit to fill a rare Wisconsin, timber-filled wetland?

Remember the former staffers at Walker's 'chamber of commerce mentality' DNR who testified, more or less, that the project's permitting process had been commandeered at the agency internally by senior, political appointees? 

Yeah, that permit for this project.

The DNR approved plans by the company [Meteor] to destroy 16.25 acres of wetlands, including 13.37 acres of white pine and red maple swamp. A white pine, red maple swamp is considered imperiled by the DNR because there are few remaining sites in Wisconsin.

Meteor's plans would be the largest wetlands loss from the sand industry in a decade, according to the DNR. 

Well, a judge just invalidated the permit. Big win for the people, wetlands,
the Wisconsin Constitution's Public Trust Doctrine, the integrity of state conservation stewardship and common sense..

MI group raises alarm, seeks wider review of Foxconn diversion

Citizens, experts and state governments questioned the speedily-approved Lake Michigan diversion for Foxconn,

and the DNR said they'd cooperate with a deeper review, so here we go, thanks to FLOW, a Michigan water stewardship group.

And, as I'd said, there were going to be headwinds like this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO MEDIA: May 4, 2018

Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor                                                  Phone: 231-944-1568

FLOW (For Love of Water)                                                Email: dave@flowforwater.org

Jim Olson, Founder & President                                                  Phone: 231-499-8831

FLOW (For Love of Water)                                                 Email: olson@envlaw.com

FLOW Challenges Wisconsin’s Approval of Lake Michigan Water Diversion

A Lake Michigan water diversion approved by the State of Wisconsin is inconsistent with the Great Lakes Compact and threatens an open season on Great Lakes water, FLOW said today.

The Traverse City, Michigan-based science and law center asked Great Lakes governors and a Regional Body established by the Compact to review Wisconsin’s approval of a 7 million gallon per day diversion request by Racine, Wisconsin, a city entirely insides the basin, primarily for the Foxconn Corporation in Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources approval of the diversion is based on a faulty interpretation of the Compact and sets a dangerous precedent, FLOW said.

“We can’t go into this century’s water crisis with a loosely conceived decision that turns the ‘straddling community’ exception to the diversion ban on end,” said Jim Olson, founder and president of FLOW. “The Compact envisioned sending water to cities that straddle the basin with existing water infrastructure that already serves residents on both sides of the divide. Wisconsin has shoe-horned Racine’s request to extend its pipes outside the basin to serve a private customer, not a public water supply. Scores of other communities and private interests could start doing the same, and billions of gallons will ultimately end up outside the basin.”

“Wisconsin’s approval of this diversion doesn’t just bend the Compact, it threatens to break it,” said Dave Dempsey, Senior Advisor to FLOW. “The Racine-to-Foxconn diversion must receive the highest degree of scrutiny, and if it is discovered that the application of this exception violates or is not consistent with the Compact, the Council, Regional Body, and parties or citizens must correct the error before it is too late.”

The approved diversion allows the City of Racine to extend its existing water supply system to an area of Mt. Pleasant not served by a public water supply and outside the Great Lakes watershed.

FLOW’s challenge has two parts:

·         The Foxconn diversion stretches the Compact’s exception to a ban on diversions for so-called straddling communities that is intended “solely for public water supply purposes,” primarily residential customers. The exception was intended to assist communities with public water supply systems that already extend across the divide and serve a straddling public water supply, with emphasis on residential users. The Racine-to-Foxconn diversion is simply a diversion of an in-basin city’s in-basin public water system to an area outside the basin for an industrial purpose, as acknowledged publicly by state and local officials.

The City of Racine circumvented the requirement by using its gross water utility system-wide data to show that its in-basin system serves 30,425 residential customers, 848 multi-family residential customers, about 3,000 business, commercial, and 302 industrial users. But the water diverted or transferred here is the 7 million gallons covered by the Racine application. If the analysis is limited to that required by law, the primary purpose of the diversion is to serve customers outside the basin who are commercial and industrial—the Foxconn plant project, and not residential users.

·         The Foxconn diversion violates the exception for “straddling communities” because the exception is solely for public water supply “within” or “in” “the straddling community.” A customer area in an incorporated town like Mt. Pleasant is not a public water supply of Mt. Pleasant, and therefore Mt. Pleasant without its own public water supply system does not qualify as a “straddling community.” To interpret the exception otherwise, is to allow a city inside the basin to divert water to a new customer in an area outside the basin by merely assuming the identity of an existing community whose corporate limits straddle the basin divide. This is not what the exception was intended to allow; it does not serve the public water supply of Mt. Pleasant; and it serves the customer and newly diverted water on the part of Applicant City of Racine.

The Council and Regional Body have broad authority to bring actions, exercise rights as aggrieved parties, or exercise powers of review for consistency, compliance, uniformity based on a joint commitment to protect the integrity of the Great Lakes; this means upholding the diversion ban and interpreting and applying the exceptions to the ban as written. The Racine in-basin community proposed diversion for primarily industrial use by an industrial customer in Mt. Pleasant, but outside the basin, does not qualify for the straddling community exception.

The Council and Regional Body and affected or aggrieved parties should demand an investigation, review, and determination of whether or not the Racine proposal and final determination by the Wisconsin DNR fall within, meet and/or comply with the “straddling community” exception standard, FLOW said. 

http://flowforwater.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/FINAL-FLOW-Foxconn-comment-to-Reg-body-and-council-05-03-18.pdf

Walker's Grey Skies win is records' book material

Scott Walker's done it!

He's found another way to bring Wisconsin special recognition in addition to his headline-grabbing wars on clean water, hungry families, women's health, public employees, poor people, federal funds or ethical spending.

Though he may not be aware of the achievement, so let me make the connection so he gets the recognition and you can join the celebrations, too:

At the very moment - - on May 1 - - that we learned that major SE Wisconsin population centers would be exempted at Walker's request from stronger US Clean Air rules  - - an exemption smoothing the way for Foxconn's precedent-setting polluting emissions over Racine County hurriedly permitted by Waker's Wisconsin DNR  - - the world had just finished - - on April 30  - - its first continuous month recording greenhouse gas levels not known for eons, experts report.

For the first time since humans have been monitoring, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have exceeded 410 parts per million averaged across an entire month, a threshold that pushes the planet ever closer to warming beyond levels that scientists and the international community have deemed “safe.”

Call it kismet, call it karma, but, really, wow, because if the atmospheric data keeps hitting those historic levels, Walker can say long after he retires to the private sector which First Lady Tonette Walker said was her husband's 'real money' destiny that he made sure as Wisconsin governor that he kept the line moving.

Though to be fair, Walker and the rest of the 'chamber of commerce mentality' officials he's put in charge of clean water, fresh air and press release production probably didn't know they were in the midst of so many newsy trends since Walker had deleted climate change information from official state webpages and got rid of the people and positions at the Department of Natural Resources devoted to climate science study.

And to be 'more fairer,' as the Wisconsin State Journal's late scribe Roundy Coughlin would have put it, and as Urban Milwaukee has pointed out, some of the potentially-harmful contaminants likely to be produced by Foxconn processes are heavy metals that could cause problems in waste water treatment, so not everything of concern about Foxconn and the environment is an air pollution or lung disease issue to fret about.

Nonetheless, Walker has helped maneuver Wisconsin again into a national, perhaps international, conservation, so kudos to him for turning a routine May day, even May Day, into Mayday!

Get Robin Vos his own regional transportation authority

WI GOP Assembly Speaker, transit foe, and world traveler Robin Vos

opposed and killed regional transportation authorities statewide.

But by the looks of this story, he just might need one of his own.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos received about $13,000 in travel and perks last year — including overseas trips that he extended for personal reasons — bringing his four-year total to $57,000.

Favorite movie?