Reports Chronicle Scott Walker-GOP Work for Wisconsin Water Polluters

"We have a choice about the kind of world we leave to
future generations.But unless we heed the warning signals,
there may be no historian to recall one day
that we failed to act in time."— Charles H. Stoddard

"Brought into right relationships with the wilderness, man
would see that his appropriation of Earth's resources
beyond his personal needs would only bring
imbalance and begat ultimate loss and poverty by all."
— John Muir

A three-part investigative series by Ryan Schuessler examines Scott Walker's politicization of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR) and the scale of pollution of Wisconsin's fresh waters, noting specifically the DNR's protection of polluters, (Aljazeera-America).

Part one examines the politicization of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Part two looks at the effect high capacity wells are having on the state’s Central Sands region. Part three reports on the Kewaunee County water crisis in northeastern Wisconsin and the Kewaunee-Door county peninsula.

Schuessler's series comes as Ron Seely and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism begin publishing a series on the same crisis of Wisconsin water in an investigative series entitled Failure at the Faucet this week.

Following the trajectory Scott Walker has set Wisconsin on will result in nationwide questioning of the safety of Wisconsin's abundant fresh waters and threaten our flourishing tourism and recreation pursuits.

This is widely regarded by environmentalists as a betrayal of the legacies of Increase A. Lapham, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Gaylord Nelson, Charles H. Stoddard and Sigurd F. Olson.

The biggest polluters imperiling Wisconsin's water is Big Ag and the industrialized factory farms known as CAFOs, (Concentrated (Confined) Agricultural Feeding Operations).

Lake Huron in north-central Wisconsin dried up from High
Capacity water wells in Waushara County
- Photo: Ryan Schuessler

The CAFO practice of massive and confined breeding of cows (and pigs) and vectoring the pathogen and toxin-laden manure into the environment has led to the toxification of both surface and groundwater.

Combined with the use of 1,000s of high capacity wells that suck up over 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, streams, lakes and small water wells are drying up.

In the Central Sands region alone, Schuessler notes, "[i]n 1950 there were fewer than 100 high capacity wells in the Central Sands. Today there are more than 3,000, or nearly half of all those in the state."