You have until March 21 to send the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources your thoughts - - email, regular mail directions, here - - on the application to the DNR for the green-light to divert 7 million gallons a day of Lake Michigan water to GOP Gov. Scott Walker's beloved, budget-busting project for Foxconn - - a private business headquartered in Taiwan.
This is the same project financed with record-breaking state subsidies organized by Walker and his compliant, GOP-led state legislature where excavation, paving and building on 3,000 acres of Racine County farmland, wetlands, lake beds and stream courses has been exempted through precedent-setting special-interest legislation from routine state environmental assessments and permit requirements.
Here is a full Foxconn archive back to day one.
So, yes, it's important to send in your comments and build a strong record in favor of water conservation and Great Lakes integrity - - despite plenty of reasons to believe that the approval is in the bag - - but also without any illusions.
The diversion application - - to be reviewed by, and receive its up or down ruling from, the DNR and only the DNR - - also seeks DNR approval for Foxconn's flat-screen panel production processes to use consumptively about 40% of the daily diversion, with the balance returned to the lake properly treated.
Here's an overriding thought about all this to consider alongside two others I wrote about Wednesday:
* The application has a fundamental credibility problem.
Why?
Because the DNR has a credibility problem, having been stripped of authenticity and respectability by a Governor who intentionally installed across top management positions a 'chamber of commerce mentality.'
And cut its budget, and laid off scientific staffers and generally trashed its mission to erase its legacy and weaken its relationship with the public and devalue its importance to individuals by creating in its place - - a hybrid agency - - part Department of Agriculture, part Department of Commerce,
Discussed for years on this blog - - here, for example, or here.
And let me be clear here that I am addressing the senior, politicized management of the agency on behalf of Walker's vision and not the hard work of many DNR staffers who continue to do their jobs day-in-and-day out with public service dedication and professionalism.
The DNR would have more credibility on many matters, and the Foxconn diversion review would be seen as more than done-deal kabuki if the agency hadn't also:
* Approved for a sand mine business a permit to destroy rare wetlands and timber - - though recent sworn testimony claimed that senior DNR officials had intervened in the permit review against the assessment of expert staff on the side of the business.
* Long-promoted an earlier application for a Lake Michigan diversion for the City of Waukesha that included sending diverted water for communities near Waukesha which hadn't applied for the diversion. The application was eventually reviewed by the DNR's insistence that the diversion include Waukesha's neighbors, for the most part, was deleted.
* Ignored its own pollution rules in 94% of the cases which came its way.
* Deleted climate change science and related materials from its official website.
* Recommended to its official oversight board that state park land inside a state park be made available to a major Walker donor for upscale, privately-owned golf course construction.
And also issued a related permit - - the first of several - - so the developer could fill wetlands on his golf course's proposed 247-acre Sheboygan County site along the Lake Michigan shoreline - -a site on which scores of acres rich in timber, wildlife habitat, dunes and native artifacts will be bulldozed, stripped clean and otherwise turned into fertilizer-enriched fairways, putting greens, and a driving range.
All close to Lake Michigan. Nice symmetry with the Foxconn Lake Michigan diversion pipe not too far to the south off Racine County.
The DNR as directed by Walker and his hand-picked, big-business friendly team have repeatedly bent and massaged Wisconsin rules and law for special-interest advantage.
So let's build the record, with our eyes wide open.
This is the same project financed with record-breaking state subsidies organized by Walker and his compliant, GOP-led state legislature where excavation, paving and building on 3,000 acres of Racine County farmland, wetlands, lake beds and stream courses has been exempted through precedent-setting special-interest legislation from routine state environmental assessments and permit requirements.
Here is a full Foxconn archive back to day one.
So, yes, it's important to send in your comments and build a strong record in favor of water conservation and Great Lakes integrity - - despite plenty of reasons to believe that the approval is in the bag - - but also without any illusions.
The diversion application - - to be reviewed by, and receive its up or down ruling from, the DNR and only the DNR - - also seeks DNR approval for Foxconn's flat-screen panel production processes to use consumptively about 40% of the daily diversion, with the balance returned to the lake properly treated.
Here's an overriding thought about all this to consider alongside two others I wrote about Wednesday:
* The application has a fundamental credibility problem.
Why?
Because the DNR has a credibility problem, having been stripped of authenticity and respectability by a Governor who intentionally installed across top management positions a 'chamber of commerce mentality.'
And cut its budget, and laid off scientific staffers and generally trashed its mission to erase its legacy and weaken its relationship with the public and devalue its importance to individuals by creating in its place - - a hybrid agency - - part Department of Agriculture, part Department of Commerce,
Discussed for years on this blog - - here, for example, or here.
And let me be clear here that I am addressing the senior, politicized management of the agency on behalf of Walker's vision and not the hard work of many DNR staffers who continue to do their jobs day-in-and-day out with public service dedication and professionalism.
The DNR would have more credibility on many matters, and the Foxconn diversion review would be seen as more than done-deal kabuki if the agency hadn't also:
* Approved for a sand mine business a permit to destroy rare wetlands and timber - - though recent sworn testimony claimed that senior DNR officials had intervened in the permit review against the assessment of expert staff on the side of the business.
* Long-promoted an earlier application for a Lake Michigan diversion for the City of Waukesha that included sending diverted water for communities near Waukesha which hadn't applied for the diversion. The application was eventually reviewed by the DNR's insistence that the diversion include Waukesha's neighbors, for the most part, was deleted.
* Ignored its own pollution rules in 94% of the cases which came its way.
* Deleted climate change science and related materials from its official website.
* Recommended to its official oversight board that state park land inside a state park be made available to a major Walker donor for upscale, privately-owned golf course construction.
And also issued a related permit - - the first of several - - so the developer could fill wetlands on his golf course's proposed 247-acre Sheboygan County site along the Lake Michigan shoreline - -a site on which scores of acres rich in timber, wildlife habitat, dunes and native artifacts will be bulldozed, stripped clean and otherwise turned into fertilizer-enriched fairways, putting greens, and a driving range.
All close to Lake Michigan. Nice symmetry with the Foxconn Lake Michigan diversion pipe not too far to the south off Racine County.
The DNR as directed by Walker and his hand-picked, big-business friendly team have repeatedly bent and massaged Wisconsin rules and law for special-interest advantage.
So let's build the record, with our eyes wide open.
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