After imperiously assisting in the earliest days of first term a wetlands' fill for a campaign donor/developer, followed by signing a business-enabled wetlands development bill in front of a cheering convention of Realtors and developers, right-wing WI Governor and corporate bellhop Scott Walker has put the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources on staffing and budgetary life support with just enough energy left to set more wetlands-fillings and Big Ag groundwater withdrawal permissions into motion.
So it's not surprising that within a week we would learn that the DNR is preliminary approving the largest wetlands-fill in a decade that will grind down pristine acreage for the frac sand underneath, and is goosing along a plan to fill more wetlands so another donor/developer can build a high end golf course along Lake Michigan and partially into an adjoining state park.
These projects' planers pledge to fix up some other degraded land as environmental compensation, but everyone knows that so-called 'artificial wetlands' are not as good as the real thing, and you wouldn't have to scramble to out together a remediation plan off-site if you weren't bulldozing it in the first place.
And this 'fill-it/pave-it' mentality I've written about for years - - notable exception, Walker's potholed roads as all that money heads for overbuilt major highway expansion - - spins off into local communities, like Wauwatosa, where leaders have worked with developers and even the County and UW-M to continually grab off and level what's remaining of the people's land known as the Milwaukee County grounds.
Those policy-makers probably figure, if the state can do it, why can't they?
The bigger picture with facts and figures, here.
So it's not surprising that within a week we would learn that the DNR is preliminary approving the largest wetlands-fill in a decade that will grind down pristine acreage for the frac sand underneath, and is goosing along a plan to fill more wetlands so another donor/developer can build a high end golf course along Lake Michigan and partially into an adjoining state park.
These projects' planers pledge to fix up some other degraded land as environmental compensation, but everyone knows that so-called 'artificial wetlands' are not as good as the real thing, and you wouldn't have to scramble to out together a remediation plan off-site if you weren't bulldozing it in the first place.
And this 'fill-it/pave-it' mentality I've written about for years - - notable exception, Walker's potholed roads as all that money heads for overbuilt major highway expansion - - spins off into local communities, like Wauwatosa, where leaders have worked with developers and even the County and UW-M to continually grab off and level what's remaining of the people's land known as the Milwaukee County grounds.
Those policy-makers probably figure, if the state can do it, why can't they?
The bigger picture with facts and figures, here.
