My friend and highly-regarded water law expert Melissa Scanlan has written a fine op-ed about fundamental environmental obligations under Wisconsin law which the state seems intent on skirting to hurriedly approve the controversial Foxconn development.
Scanlan makes a commonsense observation about the exemptions to environmental law and procedures which Gov. Scott Walker and other project proponents are committed; I appreciated the whole of Scanlan's argument and especially her clarity when describing project supporters' looming self-inflicted wound:
Scanlan makes a commonsense observation about the exemptions to environmental law and procedures which Gov. Scott Walker and other project proponents are committed; I appreciated the whole of Scanlan's argument and especially her clarity when describing project supporters' looming self-inflicted wound:
The legislative package also includes broad exemptions from the state’s environmental protection laws, including laws designed to protect the public’s rights to clean and reliable freshwater....
These exemptions run afoul of Wisconsin’s Constitutionally-required “public trust doctrine....”
To exempt this massive set of projects from those protections is an abdication of the legislators’ and Governor’s promises when they took office to uphold the Wisconsin constitution.
A surefire way to bungle this deal is to add environmental exemptions that will be tied up in court for years and then be thrown out as unconstitutional.