Wisconsin Environmentalists Punch Through on Protecting Water

Sierra Club-John Muir Chapter

When Wisconsin State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Wisconsin Rapids and ALEC) is so frightened of being exposed as a fraud and avowed enemy of the environment that Krug says he will file a libel suit against MAL Contends for pointing this out, you know the consciousness of the Wisconsin people on protecting our waters has expanded.

As Tribal leaders in northern Wisconsin meet with the EPA this week to stop the proposed "largest open-pit iron ore mine in North America" that would flow directly into the Lake Superior watershed, in central Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Friends of the Central Sands whom Krug and Scott Walker rightly fear politically, has put out a powerful video on declining water levels in Wisconsin (see below).

In south-central Wisconsin, the Center for Investigative Journalism has a new piece out by Kate Golden on the dangers cow manure presents to drinking waters aquifers: Poisoning our waters.

Big Ag, and any operation dumping cow manure into the environment, are poisoning Wisconsin citizens by draining water through the accelerated use of high-capacity water wells, encouraged by the Scott Walker administration's DNR, and sending back liquid cow manure into the environment.

"In Walker’s first year in office he turned the DNR into an 'enterprise agency' with 'increased operating flexibility to enable the agency to improve customer service and business support.' This shifted staff and resources away from monitoring, oversight and compliance with environmental regulations and created the Office of Business Support and Sustainability at a time when two major threats to clean air and water were ramping up: Frac sand mining and massive Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) with thousands of head of livestock," notes Rebecca Kimble in The Progressive Magazine (March 2013).

From Wisconsin Friends of the Central Sands: