Wisconsin Clean Water Activists Post New Video, Enough Is Enough

Clean water advocates from across Wisconsin gathered
at the state capitol in Madison to demand clean and
safe water. Image is from a video filmed in November 2015
(Mal Contends)

Clean water assaults have citizens on edge

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Public Trust Doctrine Article 9, Section 1 of the Wisconsin Constitution states the waters are in trust for public purposes. The Public Trust Doctrine is the foundation of water law in Wisconsin, and it is under full-spectrum attack by Republicans.

To politicians' claims of 'we didn't know,' the cesspool of Republican politics becomes clear as children are rushed to hospitals because mothers bathed infants and toddlers in toxic bath water, (Seely, WisconsinWatch),

A child at a Wisconsin clean water rally holds a
sign reading A CAFO poisoned my water.
Image is from the Video, Enough Is Enough, by Eric Peterson

Protect Wood County and Its Neighbors from central Wisconsin is out this week with a video chronicling the fight for clean water in the Badger State.

People want fresh water and protections for their families from Big Ag operations, CAFOs. CAFOs are massive factories that render tourism and recreational regions economic and environmental moonscapes by poisoning groundwater and surface water.

Clean water advocates face a sophisticated political machine protecting polluters. Two pro-pollution Wisconsin state representatives are betraying

Bill Iwen of Kewaunee County, Wisconsin has his retirement
cut short by corporate polluter

their communities to protect corporations that direct pathogens into families' homes and environments. This is a simple fact that caused one polluters' protector, State Rep. Scott Krug, to threaten a libel suit against this site in 2014. Krug backed down.

The pro-polluters are State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin) and State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa, Wisconsin). They are considered vulnerable Republicans despite representing gerrymandered districts drawn to elect Republicans, and are protected by their areas' corporate media.

From Criste Greening of Protect Wood County in central Wisconsin:

For those of us living in Saratoga and Rome and who have been in our fight from the beginning, it has been a long and emotional four years. Four years of frustration, long hours of travel, thousands of meetings, and complete mental and physical exhaustion.

Clean water drives are a common site in Kewaunee County
in northeastern Wisconsin.

However, there has also been life-long friendships made spanning the miles across our beautiful Wisconsin countryside. Connections that will not diminish and fade when this fight finally comes to an end.

Thank you Eric Peterson for producing such a heart wrenching video that brought me to tears. And thank you to all our brave citizen warriors across Wisconsin who are standing up and fighting back.
---

Lynn Utesch at center is a veteran, small farmer and clean water
activist. Utesch and family live in Kewaunee County
in northeastern Wisconsin. Utesch has launched a state assembly
campaign against a prominent political shill for water polluters,
State Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin).

The new video produced by Eric Peterson of Protect Wood County is below. It chronicles the fight for clean water from people in northern Wisconsin, northeastern Wisconsin and central Wisconsin as citizens now see the normalization of water poisoning.

"I watched the people watching the video at the meeting last night and the emotion was strong; frustration with the weakening of our protections, anger at the people supposed to be protecting our environment, and encouragement with the power of our group and like minded citizens successfully making progress around our state," writes Don Ystad of Rome, Wisconsin in an email this morning.

Enough is Enough

Corruption Fuels Mining Company's Moves in Northern Wisconsin

When the multibillion-dollar mining corporation with a record of poisoning the environment came into Wisconsin and announced it intended to dig and operate a 20-mile, open pit iron-ore mine in the Penokee Hills of Northern Wisconsin under the authority of state legislation the mining company drafted, opposition arose quickly.

Gogebic Taconite, one cog in the huge private mining conglomerate, Cline Resource and Development Group, determined they wanted the iron-ore extracted in what would be the largest mine in Wisconsin's history, and the Republican Party decided they wanted the $15 million they received from the mining concerns.

What the people of Wisconsin want is of no concern.

What environmentalists and Native Americans wish specifically similarly is of no apparent concern, as now Iron County (Wisconsin) officials are threatening to evict, arrest and prosecute the Lac Courte Oreilles band which has set up a Harvest and Education camp near the mining site.

The Bad River Band soon will set a similar camp.

Iron County is the least populated county in Wisconsin, isolated in the north woods; and its district attorney, one Martin Lipske, is known for being corrupt, incompetent and provincial. A lot like the Republican Party.

Worse, Lipske is suspected of deceitfully pursuing and obtaining the conviction in 1997 of an innocent man, Don Miller, now serving a 42-year sentence for a crime that he apparently did not commit, though Lipske has been shown to have been made aware of exculpatory evidence.

Small town justice in the deep north woods in a county selling out the environment and taking away the life blood of an innocent man.

Lipske refuses comment on all matters now, and in recent weeks has gone silent on the mining operation as his history has hit Wisconsin political blogs.

Now, Lipske pursues his effort on behalf of Gogebic Taconite to charge a 26-year-old woman protester, Katie M. Kloth, 26, of Stevens Point, with robbery with force, misdemeanor theft, and two counts of criminal damage to property.

Her crime?

Kloth yelled at Gogebic Taconite personnel and allegedly stole a cell phone some weeks back.

Lipske has amble experience in throwing people in prison for years without cause. But the spotlight is beginning to shine on Lipske now, illuminating a corrupt and cowardly man ... hiding.

This will change, and I predict here Lipske will meet justice for his crimes.

As for the environment under threat by Gogebic Taconite and supported by Iron County officials and the Republican Party, public consciousness of the planet we inhabit has a way of exploding.

"No one should be surprised by what this mining company is doing. So many people in this country have been raised without an environmental ethic. It's hard for them to develop a sense of the earth as an organism when you live in an artificial setting and away from what's natural," said Becky Gawboy, a Native American environmental and education activist living in rural northeastern Minnesota. "Corporations like this mining outfit are simply the culmination of a culture that is obsessed with material things like TVs, isolated and alienated from the living world. Of course they can't make healthy decisions about the environment because they don't see themselves as part of it. They wish to devour it. Really, corporation are evil entities and as corporations have evolved they have become the center of darkness, a rapacious, destructive force."

Iron County, Wisconsin is not Lowndes County, Alabama—a notorious, racist county 1,100 miles almost due south from Hurley, Wisconsin.

But small-town injustice and corruption join Iron County and Lowndes County.

Iron County features an epic case study in corruption and a huge corporation v. families and the environment; the fate of this clash is directly dependent on how many good men and women remain silent.