Walker has been framing his legacy: any room for this?
From the Minnesota Star Tribune comes this heartbreaking, infuriating story about the all-too-familiar water quality issues in rural Wisconsin's Central Sands:
From the Minnesota Star Tribune comes this heartbreaking, infuriating story about the all-too-familiar water quality issues in rural Wisconsin's Central Sands:
WATER PRESSURE second in a three-part series
BABY’S DEATH SPARKS WATER SAFETY FIGHT
Wis. residents take on state and powerful ag industry
In central Wisconsin, the conflict is driven largely by the proliferation of giant irrigation rigs that arc over mile after mile of flat farm fields. They make this one of the nation’s most productive farm states, with $88 billion a year in sales from food and food processing.
To many neighbors, however, they create an untenable drain on water that is tearing communities apart.
People in the Village of Plover, Wis., saw their favorite trout stream dry up, leaving thousands of dead fish for the raccoons. Nearby, recreational lakes ringed with summer homes have periodically shriveled into wetlands over the past 15 years, depressing property values and pitting lakeshore owners against the state government in a lawsuit over the meaning of public trust.
And Celina Stewart, a young mother in the tiny town of Nekoosa, lost an infant daughter to a fatal brain malformation that has been associated with high levels of nitrate, a fertilizer byproduct found in the community’s drinking water. Her tragedy led to a community well testing program this year, which found that 40 percent of the homes had nitrate concentrations that, like hers, were far above the legal limit.I've been following these unacceptable realities in rural Wisconsin for years, summarized, in part, here:
A collection of blog posts about Kewaunee, Central Sands CAFOs
Beginning with this May 5 item:
Contaminated Central Sands waters echo Kewaunee County concernsAlso including this July 30 posting,
WI Central Sands the next Flint? Kewaunee County already soaks up that honor.And this July 24 posting about CAFO contamination in the Central Sands area:
Central Sands residents: call legislators, agencies about the water. Now.And this July 19 posting:
Where you can't drink the WI water. Or step in it.And this recent installment about CAFOs in a series just concluded about Walker's 8-year war on the Wisconsin environment:
Walker's 8-year war on Wisconsin's environment. Part 9. CAFOsEchoed here:
SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 2016
Another day, another WI groundwater crisis story
This time we have fresh data that Big Ag is helping deplete the Little Plover River, a Class I trout stream. Which is not news.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 3, 2014
Wisconsin's Little Plover River Running Low. Again.
Big agriculture and a DNR that lets corporations have their way with Wisconsin waters that belong to everyone are again enabling the same trout stream in Portage County to fall to worrisome levels:
The River Alliance of Wisconsin cites the River's situation as a warning about the consequences of state water misuse; I posted last year some of the Alliance' Little Plover photos, below, and mentioned the river's problems in a summary blog post from last May that included more than a dozen links cataloguing the many threats to public waters in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker and his party's obeisance to businesses which think the state's groundwater and surface water are theirs to deplete, pollute and otherwise expropriate have only intensified the state's water crisis.
The Little Plover runs about 6 miles before it empties into the Wisconsin River. It attracted national attention when parts of the river ran dry in 2005. American Rivers named the Little Plover one of the nation's 10 most endangered in an annual assessment in 2013.It's a discouraging, infuriating, repetitive story.
The River Alliance of Wisconsin cites the River's situation as a warning about the consequences of state water misuse; I posted last year some of the Alliance' Little Plover photos, below, and mentioned the river's problems in a summary blog post from last May that included more than a dozen links cataloguing the many threats to public waters in Wisconsin.
Scott Walker and his party's obeisance to businesses which think the state's groundwater and surface water are theirs to deplete, pollute and otherwise expropriate have only intensified the state's water crisis.
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River Alliance of Wisconsin photos |
