I want to salute former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager who sadly passed away yesterday by posting this link to one of her opinions brimming with relevance and scholarship.
As Wisconsin contemplates granting the City of Racine a diversion of Great Lakes water to supply the Foxconn project with the bulk of a requested seven million gallons from Lake Michigan daily, I suggest you her 2007 opinion and analysis of Great Lakes water management, goals and diversions - - an opinion not widely reported by media or widely distributed at the time.
Lautenschlager's opinion was released before the Great Lakes Compact now in force won its approvals in 2008.
And while the Compact and agreements in force at the time Lautenschlager wrote her opinion have some dissimilarities, her documentation of the development of US-Canada agreements managing the Great Lakes which the two countries share - - and especially her supporting scholarship about the importance of water conservation and the Public Trust Doctrine which predate the Compact and protect the people's fundamental rights to water - - are powerfully instructional and relevant right now because Wisconsin in the Scott Walker/Attorney General Brad Schimel era has been debasing the Public Trust Doctrine and the value of water conservation while pursuing yet another controversial Lake Michigan diversion, this time for Foxconn.
It is huge loss for Wisconsin that Peg Lautenschlager is gone at the far-too-young-age of 62, but we are fortunate that she left us a rich, publicly-spirited legacy, of which this opinion is but a sample.
As Wisconsin contemplates granting the City of Racine a diversion of Great Lakes water to supply the Foxconn project with the bulk of a requested seven million gallons from Lake Michigan daily, I suggest you her 2007 opinion and analysis of Great Lakes water management, goals and diversions - - an opinion not widely reported by media or widely distributed at the time.
Lautenschlager's opinion was released before the Great Lakes Compact now in force won its approvals in 2008.
And while the Compact and agreements in force at the time Lautenschlager wrote her opinion have some dissimilarities, her documentation of the development of US-Canada agreements managing the Great Lakes which the two countries share - - and especially her supporting scholarship about the importance of water conservation and the Public Trust Doctrine which predate the Compact and protect the people's fundamental rights to water - - are powerfully instructional and relevant right now because Wisconsin in the Scott Walker/Attorney General Brad Schimel era has been debasing the Public Trust Doctrine and the value of water conservation while pursuing yet another controversial Lake Michigan diversion, this time for Foxconn.
It is huge loss for Wisconsin that Peg Lautenschlager is gone at the far-too-young-age of 62, but we are fortunate that she left us a rich, publicly-spirited legacy, of which this opinion is but a sample.