You may remember a few years ago that neighbors concerned about local water supply sustainability rose up against a plan in Vilas County to bottle and export local spring water.
That plan seems to have dried up:
With New Land Purchase, Carlin Lake Water Dispute Seems Finally Over
Another similar proposal surfaced recently in Bayfield County that has run into local government resistance and objections from the Red Cliff Ojibwe nation:
Plan to bottle artesian well water from Herbster rejected by Bayfield County committee
A video, here.
And further information from the Red Cliff nation, here, and here.
At the heart of these controversies is a clash between the treatment of water as a commodity to be controlled and exploited for private gain, and a bigger-picture belief that water's life-and-cultural-sustaining properties require intentional and cooperative conservation that begins by respecting where the water originates.
And informs practices in the public interest that guarantee water is used and managed as close to its source as possible.
An ethic squashed during the last decade by Walkerism, a coordinated offense that continues statewide even though Walker was defeated in November, 2018.
Even when public health is jeopardized.
Or when law and public property are abused:
Opponents of the Kohler golf course project won a major round [in late May] when Sheboygan Circuit Court Judge L. Edward Stengel affirmed that the WI DNR had awarded the project its key wetland-fill permit based on incomplete and inaccurate information, as the opponents had argued.
This blog, being called "The Political Environment," has followed these matters since 2007, so stay tuned.
