Noting flooding history, Sun-Times bemoans Foxconn paving, 'planning'

The folks across the border and downriver from thousands of flood-absorbing land about to be Foxconn-paved are rightly worried. 

Wisconsin is about to send a lot more stormwater downstream to a corner of Illinois that is already struggling to control flooding...

At a time when climate change is expected to bring more frequent and stronger storms, foresighted officials around the country are finding ways to intercept stormwater and let it soak into the ground or evaporate instead of gushing into the nearest river. They’re building rain gardens, water-absorbing planters, tree trenches, porous pavement, swales, green roofs and subsurface storage projects.

That’s what should be happening on the Foxconn site. 

If I may quote Madison Mayor and current gubernatorial candidate Paul Soglin on this and other Scott Walker environmental, legal, social and financial missteps: 

"He just doesn't care."

A complete Foxconn archive, including posts about the clean air and water pollution the Foxconn project will release in and over Wisconsin and Illinois is here.

And a history of flooding related to climate change documentation Walker persistent ignores is here.
  

Add dairy to tariff wars Trump would have Walker's WI lose

I was expecting a Tweet with a half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich, but Walker managed to serve this up today.

Verified account 2h2 hours ago2 hours agoMoreDeclared it #WICheeseDay throughout the state to celebrate Wisconsin's $43.4 billion/year dairy industry, including our delicious cheese. We’re proud to be America’s Dairyland. #WIProud  

I guess we can conclude Trump's bestie Scott Walker does not read The New York Times.

Trump’s Trade War Could Shut Cheesemakers Out of Foreign Markets

With other countries raising tariffs to American products and signing trade deals without the United States, the American cheesemaker is increasingly standing alone.
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Verified account 

More doubtful Walker can showcase Harley-Davidson for Tariff King

I wrote this a few days ago:

Trump sets WI visit. But to Harley? Doubtful. 

Trump's coming for Foxconn...and a $100,000 premium-ticket GOP fundraiser.  

Think he'll motor on up to Milwaukee? - - where there are Harley-Davidsons everywhere... 

And especially now that there is this:

Harley-Davidson will move some production out of US after retaliatory tariffs

Harley's stock price as of 10:30 a.m. central time today is off more than 5%.

Because tariff wars are so easy to win, as today's news clearly shows.

Last week, the European Union imposed penalties on $3.2 billion worth of American products, many of which are produced in areas that form the heart of President Trump’s political base, in response to steel and aluminum tariffs added by the White House. The list included bourbon from Kentucky, the home state of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell; as well as orange juice, which is made largely in the swing state of Florida; and motorcycles made by Harley-Davidson, headquartered in Wisconsin, the home state of the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan.

[Wisconsin’s cheesemakers say that aggressive trade policies may shut them out of foreign markets.]

So where can Walker and Ryan take Trump for a photo-op that doesn't include Foxconn protesters, Harley-Davidson bikes, or tariff-afflicted family farms or breweries production lines with freshly-pricier aluminum cans?

Here's one person who doesn't have a clue. 

Gov. Walker says Wisconsin companies could be tariff-exempt

  

WI Dem. gubernatorial field - bright, passionate, large - drops by Mequon

Some observations from the Democratic gubernatorial candidates' forum in Mequon Sunday hosted by the progressive activist organization Grassroots Northshore. 

Scores turned out in Mequon to hear seven Democratic candidates discuss the environment, climate change, mass incarceration, local control, education, health care, wage and other issues. The candidates, left to right, seated, were Mike McCabe, Mahlon Mitchell, Matt Flynn, Kathleen Vinehout (blocked by forum assistant, standing), Kelda Roys, Paul Soglin and Tony Evers.

* I was glad to see solid attendance on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I counted more than 200 attendees as the discussion began at about 3:30 p.m.

*  All of the candidates are on the liberal/progressive side of the issues, and are very well-informed; any of the seven would far better represent Wisconsin residents - - rural and urban- - than the ideologically-far rightwing, special-interest obeisant incumbent.

*  At this point, it’s a congenial group, without personal attacks, and focused on Walker and progressive solutions to issues. As the primary approaches, fissures among the seven would take no one by surprise. Nor would it be a shock if another candidate or two left the field, as money and strong polling numbers are limited assets.

*  None of the hopefuls had during the forum what you would call a break-out moment, and that is not surprising given the large field (seven) and thus the need to answer questions with brevity.

*  All the candidates played to strengths in their resumes.

*  By any measurement - - age, race, gender, public sector experience, private sector experience, and more - - it's a diverse group.

I know Madison Mayor Paul Soglin best among the candidates, as I worked for him in the mid-to-late '70's. The others I know principally by reputation and achievement. I thought Soglin did well highlighting Madison’s full replacement of water piping containing lead and use of innovative, neighborhood-based health-care assistants he called "navigators."

Some other brief highlights:

Mike McCabe, formerly executive director of the campaign-spending watchdog organization Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, has a pretty good rap down about  special-interest money driving environmental and other systemic government pollution.

Attorney Matt Flynn was particularly strong against Foxconn, calling the deal Walker made criminally negligent, "if not fraud," and pledging to cancel it.

Small-business owner and former State Representative Kelda Roys spoke passionately about women's health care and reproductive rights.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers strongly condemned Walker's anti-union, teacher-hammering Act 10, and stressed as Governor he'd bring science back to the DNR.

Kathleen Vinehout told the audience her State Senate territory in the western part of the state has more mines than any other district - - sand mines, to be exact - - so she knew first hand that the lack of DNR enforcement inspections under Walker was harming the environment.

Mahlon Mitchell, a lieutenant on the Madison Fire Department and president of its local firefighters' union, echoed the panelists' concerns about the environment, said that a clean environment was good for the economy, and noted he was a deer hunter. 

All, not surprisingly, had nothing good to say about Walker.

Soglin put it this way:"He just doesn't care."

Not Wisconn. Sprawlville

[Update: Foxconn tells WISN-TV's Sunday morning host Mike Gousha it is "surprised" it is not being welcomed with open arms. 

Walker had said the same thing not long ago, and I suggested at the time he bears the blame for poorly prepping Foxconn about the multiple political, fiscal and environmental norms the Foxconn project is bulldozing for Walker's career benefit.]
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For years on this blog I posted stories about destructive 'planning' in Wisconsin under the title "The Road to Sprawlville."

Chapter 4 was about the proposed re-purposing of "Cow Corner" in the Village of Wales for a Walgreen's and some retail stores; posts often focused on Waukesha County projects and paving, sometimes with photographs.

(I wish I had organized them into a single, continuing post, as I have done with Foxconn, but if you enter "The Road to Sprawlville" into the blog index at the upper left they will all come up.) 

Chapter 55 had something of a summary to that point in 2013: 

Wherein we renew our long-running series "The Road To Sprawlville" and revisit frequent stop Pabst Farms - - the planned 'community' on Western Waukesha County cornfields where stalled development and dead dreams of a Bayshore-style mall have lapsed into litigation with the city that lavished millions of dollars in subsidies on the site.

Pabst Farms and other Waukesha sites date to the early days (2007) of The Road to Sprawlville:

For the record, earlier posts in my occasional series about Sprawlville, are here, (on the road to Ft. Atkinson), here (in Dousman), and here (somewhat of a detour - - on the $25 million "diamond-design" I-94 interchange planned to service the planned upscale shopping mall at Pabst Farms, Sprawlville's Capital City). 

And the State Legislature is doing its best to bring Sprawlville to Dane County, showcasing how Team Walker continues to serve the 'pave-it-over' crowd.

But given what we now know about Foxconn - - an extensive archive about the project since July, 2017, is here - - its 3,000 rural acres headed for bulldozing, piping in daily of millions of diverted Great Lakes water, generation of massive amounts of polluted wastewater and dirty air emissions, exemptions from environmental impact reviews, clean air standards, wetlands-filling protections, and inducement of heavy traffic in and out of the project on vastly-expanded roads, it's time for me to remove the title "Sprawlville's Capital City" from Pabst Farms to the west and award it to the Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant.

Where the official ground-breaking, and a rally in protest, are scheduled for June 28th.

Walker wants the area designed "Wisconn Valley," thinking that his inventing a brand with tortured language somehow makes real a link with Silicon Valley.

But what he's doing, rather paradoxically, is firming up the notion of a con and calling attention to what he and his public-policy renegades deleting from both "conservation" and "conservatism:"

Abandoning any pretense to supporting clean air and water. And violating what fiscally-conservative GOP politicians used to stand for: local control, private property rights, restrained borrowing and avoiding the use of government to pick marketplace winners and losers.

So the 69th chapter of "The Road to Sprawlville" now runs from State Capitol to rural Racine County and right through to Mount Pleasant by bulldozing the land, diverting the water, polluting the air and evading or breaking traditional Wisconsin practices and values.

Want Monarchs in your yard? Learn how at 6/24 Tosa workshop

You can learn how to get more of these Monarch butterflies

in your yard, Sunday, June 24:

Planting Party with Friends of the Monarch Trail

Join the Friends of the Monarch Trail for this fun, easy and educational event where we will be planting seedlings into flats for next year’s planting projects. 

While getting our hands dirty planting pollinator friendly plants, we will share the best ways to plant milkweed and get them established successfully.   

Date: Sunday, June 24, 2018              Time: Noon – 3pm

Location: Barb & Dick’s Flower Shop, 12326 W Watertown Plank Rd, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (Restrooms are available on-site.)

Contact: Barb 414-454-0222 or LuAnne 414-324-6586

Hope to see you there!

Barb Agnew

Friends of the Monarch Trail
www.theMonarchTrail.org

Walker's comfort with immigrant kids' imprisonment presaged at Lincoln Hills

Walker's disinterest in the fate of children incarcerated at the southern border 

was presaged by his long disinterest in the fate of children incarcerated inhumanly in a state prison he 'reorganized' to northern Wisconsin from Waukesha County and has never visited.

Walker moves 6 years late on Lincoln Hills humanitarian crisis

I noted in 2011 that his closing of the boys' facility long-located in Waukesha County to save a few bucks - - the right treats government consolidations as chess board games while human beings and true public policies are risked  and dismissed- - was a mistake: 

Good-bye Ethan Allen School for Boys, a juvenile justice facility at Wales, as I reported earlier.

The workers are stunned. The plan is bad for them, the kids sent there and the community...Walker gave no real warning.

In fact, Walker closed the Ethan Allen School even though the state had just spent millions on improvements there.

But Walker liked moving jobs to the north, and upending a Jim Doyle initiative to boot, regardless of the consequences, which included mass inmate gassings, as WKOW-TV reported in December, 2015 without any reaction, apparently, by Team Walker.

Then roll forward to this report of mine a year ago:

On Walker's watch, Lincoln Hills is a humanitarian crisis

Victimized guard says Walker shares blame for her beating...

Now there is reporting of the details surrounding a suicide attempt at the female unit at the youth prison that has left a teenage-girl in this state facility with permanent injury... 

Do you remember this disgusting story about conditions in the state's youth prison which we the taxpayers pay for?

Lincoln Hills youth had toes amputated after run-in with staff

Grassroots groups will rally vs. 6/28 Foxconn ground-breaking

Dozens of groups will rally in Mount Pleasant on June 28th to protest the Foxconn ground-breaking at which President Trump, Gov. Walker and other officials are set to attend, organizers say.

...the Gaia Coalition Network, made up of nearly 40 organizations, is planning a mass-demonstration called, "Operation: Shake the Ground!" to voice their objections to a perceived misuse of public funds, to seizing the property rights of landowners and homeowners, to siphoning off water from Lake Michigan as well as posing other environmental threats, and to granting contracts to some of Walker's biggest donors.

Note also that the grassroots group "A Better Mount Pleasant" continues its activism. 

Trump's schedule apparently includes a high-end GOP fundraiser in the area.

I will add this post to my 11-month old Foxconn archive which now has nearly 200 items, most with multiple links to other items, documents and information.

Thousands of acres like this cabbage field are now in an area designed 'blighted,' available to be seized by local government for Foxconn uses.

And if, or when, now-caged children are further harmed or disappear?

There have already been under-reported deaths associated with Trump's zero-tolerance humanity immigration policies.

A suicide in jail and a murder in Mexico: family separation and deportations have a body count.

And since there could be consequences worse for some of the more than 2,000 displaced immigrant kids than the trauma already being inflicted on them, we ask now:

Is that what it will take to move Trump off the 'wash-my-hands-of-this-waste-of-time attitude towards what he set in motion?

Or to get the First Lady to prove she cares?

Or to get a one-dimensional-career-first-Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker to respond on a human level about what is happening in our name, with our money, and supported by a National Guard deployment of his creation?

Separated family members detained in cages

Detained children lying on matresses within a caged area

Photos provided by Custom and Border Protection to reporter on tour of Ursala detention facility in McAllen, Texas. Reporters were not allowed to take their own photos.

WI, US mid-term elections only hope for climate change action

Dane County Executive Joe Parisi wants federal and state officials to acknowledge that climate change is responsible for recent, destructive flooding.

Good that he's trying to advance the discussion, but the real key is voting out climate change deniers and replacing them with science-based activists - - or simply realists willing to accept what their own well-informed advisers have published.

Because the Walker and Trump administrations' rhetoric and deeds are hostile to climate change science, findings and solutions, even preparations any responsible public official should be taking; Walker, as I pointed out just yesterday, toured areas extensively flooded once again up north while persistently ignoring the findings and recommendations of his own emergency management officials who have declared that climate change presents a continuing threat to the state.

While having just removed state protections from 100,000 acres of flood-mitigating wetlands, and opening the state to potentially-polluting metallic-mining right at the waters' edges.

For Walker, climate change is something to scrub off state websites and ignore,  rather than confront.

Want more proof?.

On his official twitter feed, Governor Clueless posted several videos shot from a helicopter over the flood damage up north - - none from Dane County, for the record - - but the images came with a gee-whiz, look at all that water kind of commentary which you could understand from a tourist - - 

Verified accountJun 18MoreThis is an amazing image of the force of water. 

- - but not from an informed public official who wanted to get to the bottom of things.

About an area hard hit by big storms for a third year in a row.

In fact, Walker's lack of scientific and policy awareness was matched by a total lack of self-awareness, as he posted a view of the very river that would have  been filled with toxic mine runoff right now had the open pit iron operation been opened which he pushed for several years ago, and from whose operators his campaign benefited from a secret $700,000 donation. (I cannot copy the image, but you can easily see it for yourself if you scroll past Walker's many self-promotional Foxconn and other campaign style tweets):

Governor Walker‏Verified account @GovWalker

View of the Bad River flooding.

Seized, imprisoned kids? Walker's tweets looked elsewhere

Verified account
‏Verified account @ScottWalker  8h8 hours ago

#NationalSelfieDay is a good chance to remember good times with the @Brewers.

About Trump, Walker silent no more, because...

A Trump/Walker/Foxconn fund-raising extravaganza is in the works.

Wonder if, by coincidence, that came up at today's Walker/Foxconn/White House visit, lunch and related agendas?

MADISON — Gov. Scott Walker joined with other governors for a lunch meeting at the White House with President Donald Trump.

Walker’s spokeswoman Amy Hasenberg said the governor was in Washington on Thursday to participate in a U.S. Department of Commerce meeting with Secretary Wilbur Ross and Foxconn executive Louis Woo to talk about why companies should invest in Wisconsin. 

And we know what Walker didn't bring up. 

Seized kids? A Craven Gov. Walker shrugs, bails

Because: 

His staying mum on southern border forced child-parent separation avoided follow-up possible separation - - from Trump's $100,000 donors.

 

Walker should read state report on climate change hazards, mitigation, planning

[Updated at 5:00 p.m. with a timely report from the Michigan UP, where people are actually doing something about this 'new normal.' And across the border in Canada, more action: 

Thunder Bay, Ontario didn’t think adaptation and mitigation for climate change should be a priority until a massive 2012 storm destroyed 5,000 homes and left the wastewater treatment plant under 45 feet of water. 

The disaster prompted the city to embark on a strategy to become a climate-ready city.]

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Walker toured flood-ravaged NW Wisconsin Monday night and made emergency declarations for the area.

Similar story in 2017.

And in 2016.

Summarized here.

Does he ever wonder why he's making the same trip to deal with the same consequences, or if the matters need more attention than Boy Scout campground cleanup practices which he said made up his climate change action plan?

If only there was someplace he could read up on the issues: 

EPA has been warning about climate change flooding - - since 2003.

Like a website put up by his own state government:

WI DNR scrubs climate change information from its website

Or by other Great Lakes states, including some also run by Republican Governors:

Unlike WI, other Great Lakes states not deleting climate change information

Finally - - has he ever read his own Emergency Government agencies' (WEM) latest and detailed update in a continuous process that plans for hazard identification and mitigation to reduce repeat disasters? 

The Journal Sentinel laid it out in the wake of the disclosures that Walker's DNR had scrubbed climate change science and links from its web site.

Heck, I'll even copy out a key section or two so he doesn't have to sift through on his next disaster tour flight the lengthy state report:

4.4.2 Climate Change in the State Plan

While there remains some debate about the cause of climate change, there has been a documented change in weather patterns over time in Wisconsin. In the past 50 years, average statewide temperatures have increased by about 1.1°F. It is also likely that the state will see more extreme weather events.1 Section 3 of Appendix A, Thread Hazard Impacts and Risk Assessment (THIRA), further discusses national and statewide climate change projections and mitigation potential. Because a change in climate has the propensity to affect the severity and extent of the natural hazards addressed in the THIRA, the potential impacts of climate change are addressed in each natural hazard section.

As a state-level agency, WEM does not do bricks-and-mortar mitigation projects; that is a local responsibility. 

However, WEM has the opportunity to influence and encourage local mitigation efforts through training, technical assistance, and resource allocation. To reflect this, WEM has included several new action items in the Mitigation Strategy in Section 3 of the Plan. They encompass a variety of approaches including, but not limited to, the following:

• Incorporating information on planning for future conditions into trainings
• Incorporating Climate Resilient Mitigation Activities into the scoring system for project
  applications
• Updating WEM’s local mitigation plan review document to include criteria on the assessment of changing future conditions, including weather patterns.
  
  4.4.3 Climate Change in Local Plans
  
  
  
  WEM Mitigation staff looked at all approved local and tribal plans from 2011 through 2016 and all plans in process for which a draft has been submitted.

Figure 4.4.3-2: Inclusion of Climate Change in Local Plans by Type of Jurisdiction

Because of the relatively small sample size, it’s difficult to draw meaningful conclusions, but overall it seems that generally over time more plans are starting to include climate change. Additionally, it appears as though countywide plans are the least likely type to include climate change even though quite a few of them do. As more plans in the state are developed and updated, more data will be available to use to paint a more accurate picture...

Figure 4.4.3-3 shows which communities have fully included, mentioned, and not included climate change in their local mitigation plans. Many communities along the Lake Michigan coast have included it. Notably, three counties that did not include a discussion of climate change mentioned it in relation to the impact to lake levels and coastal erosion. The state mitigation plan also describes the impacts climate change could have on coastal hazards.

With the exception of the Fox River Valley in Brown County and the surrounding area, the major population centers and areas of the state experiencing the most growth (Madison/Dane County, southeast counties, St. Croix County, Eau Claire County) are covered by mitigation plans that include climate change.
Many communities around the state are engaging in other planning and activities in preparation for climate change:

• The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, the leader in mitigation in the Milwaukee area, commissioned a Climate Change Vulnerability Analysis in 2014. The study looked at likely climate-related impacts through 2050.
• The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, Bureau of Science Services compiled the La Crosse Area Climate Adaptation Study in 2013. The Study involved community engagement and suggested future steps. One of the suggestions was to incorporate adaptation into local mitigation planning.
• The City of Madison and Dane County are both engaged in climate change planning. Madison developed a Climate Protection Plan that describes climate change and looks at current and potential future impacts the City’s practices have on the environment. The Dane County Climate Change and Emergency Preparedness report, prepared by the Climate Change Action Council, discusses climate risks and identifies adaptation opportunities and strategies to increase resilience. The Action Council is led by Dane County Emergency Management.
  The trend toward including climate change in local plans parallels the direction of the state plan. WEM Mitigation staff will continue to look for ways to inform and support local communities in their planning efforts and will work with communities to understand their concerns and challenges in planning for and implementing long-term, cost-effective mitigation measures.