The River Rat

No need to re-plumb MN and WI to stop Asian carp

2012-01-31T09:38:00.005-06:00

What a mess Asian carp would make of this treasure: the Lower Wisconsin Riverway.

Rat has harped -- or should I say, "carped" -- on this before. It's about the inattention paid to the threat of Asian carp invading the upper reaches of the Mississippi River basin -- meaning great Wisconsin rivers like the St. Croix, Black, Chippewa and Wisconsin.

It's in sharp contrast to all the attention paid -- in a recent instance, $2 million of attention -- to how to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. (The Asian invaders are far likelier to find a path to Wisconsin via the Mississippi than via Lake Michigan.) A group of private foundations bankrolled a study to see how the Chicago canal and related stormwater and sewage systems would have to be re-plumbed. The study was released today (January 31).

http://www.glc.org/announce/12/01caws.html

At first glance, this report is great work: it details plans and their costs to separate the basins to minimize the spread of invasive creatures between the two basins.

It exposes two other things: how excruciatingly slow the Corps of Engineers is in doing the same work (their own study of the issue is more comprehensive, but won't be completed until 2015), and shows how desperately we need a similar investment for the upper reaches of the Mississippi River.

Minnesota's natural resources department has put more effort to this question than its Wisconsin counterpart, but you get a sense from both agencies of contradictory positions: that either Asian carp are inevitable, or that because a few strays have been found in our border waters for years doesn't mean there will be an infestation (i.e. no evidence that they're breeding).

You gotta wonder how a couple million dollars of intense and serious study might clarify this question. Rat's not sure where such money is lying around, but the first step has to be making a case for it.

Wretched Mining Bill Moves Up

2012-01-26T13:47:00.002-06:00

Before the party-line vote to approve the awful mining bill and send it to the full Assembly, it was all Rat could do to keep from squeaking out loud in outrage at the antics of some of the legislators. Representatives Louis Molepske, Penny Bernard Schaber and Sandy Pasch asked hard questions about the eight amendments to the bill that were offered up by Republican members of the Assembly Committee on Jobs, the Economy and Small Business. The mealy mouthed answers they received made it abundantly clear that none of the amendments did a thing to address the myriad concerns raised by citizens from around the state. Representative Pasch didn’t mince words: “This whole process has been tainted. The amendments don’t address any of the concerns we all heard over and over again.”

The proposed bill significantly weakens protections for groundwater, lakes, streams and wetlands, undercuts public participation and reduces the ability of the communities most impacted by a mine to protect themselves. At a day-long hearing in Milwaukee, those in opposition to the bill outnumbered supporters two to one. Even more telling, at another day-long hearing in Hurley where support for a new mine and the hope of jobs it represents runs high, no local citizen or elected official supported the provisions that weaken environmental protections or public process. But on Tuesday, the Assembly Committee approved it anyway.

And the amendments they made have nothing to do with protecting people or the environment – they are about covering the butts of the bill authors, pure and simple. The changes made do nothing more than

obscure the bill’s most blatant violations of federal law and Wisconsin’s constitution. Incredibly, Representative Amy Loudenbeck showed the cards of the Republican Assembly caucus when she stated that was in fact the intent of at least one of the amendments. The Public Trust Doctrine, a long-standing component of the state constitution, mandates the state protect waterways for the public. The proposed bill stated that because a mine is in the public interest (?!!), water withdrawals needed for mining activities outweigh any subsequent harm done to lakes and rivers. Recognizing this clearly violates the Public Trust Doctrine, an amendment to soften this language was offered “to reduce the chance for legal challenges,” according to Representative Loudenbeck.

Despite the outpouring of concerns and recommended revisions to the bill to protect Wisconsin citizens and natural resources, the Committee’s Republican members chose instead to just listen to the warnings of their attorneys about where the bill is most vulnerable to be overturned in court. Nothing like sound public policymaking, eh?

Posted by the River Rat

A million reasons why there won't be a mining bill

2012-01-19T13:53:00.004-06:00

The environmental crowd is pensive these days, waiting to see what the Wisconsin Legislature does with the mining legislation that Republican legislators have cooked up, with chefs from the mining industry clearly present in the kitchen. Hundreds have testified at two different hearings against this bill. So too have supporters, but a public opinion poll last fall showed a majority of Wisconsinites do NOT favor weakening environmental laws for the sake of an iron mine.

The mining bill is the proverbial elephant in the room when it comes to environmental matters, but there are also a couple of skunks in that same room that could do equal or greater damage to the rivers, lakes and land, all across Wisconsin. More on those in a minute.

The next act with that elephant should be that the bill gets passed out of the committee that spawned it, the Assembly Committee on Jobs, Economy and Small Business. That's what Capitol watchers are watching for: will the bill get voted out of committee, so the Assembly as a whole can vote on it (where it will pass)?

Rat's guess: NO, it will not make it out of committee. Why? In part because of well orchestrated and passionate opposition to the bill, but also because Republican cash constituents got a lot of what they wanted with the skunks that have been passed out of committee.

And there's another reason they don't want to put it to a vote. But let Rat wax about those skunks for a minute. One skunk deregulates digging, dirt-moving, tree-cutting and so forth on land next to water. Ya can't let some dumb environmental law get in the way of a guy carving out a small harbor for his pontoon boat on a tiny lake. The other skunk is a trash-the-wetlands bill, whose authors believe you wreck a wetland where you want to put a truck stop as long as you get to make a fake wetland somewhere else where it will never bother developers.

These crappy bills HAVE been voted out of committees in both chambers of the Legislature. They will likely pass in both chambers next week and Gov. Walker will sign them.

So, Republican legislators can tell the home builders, the realtors, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and other enemies of the environment that they delivered. Delivering for an out-of-state mining company is less important politically to them than keeping the aforementioned homeboys happy and their campaign donations rolling in.

But there's another reason Republicans would just as soon sit on a mining bill right now -- oh, make that about a million reasons. That would be the fact that their man, Gov. Scott Walker, will be recalled and put to another vote. The last thing Republicans want is to have a few pounds of iron ore hanging around the neck of Walker in a recall election, when the populace is at best ambivalent about a fast-tracked open-pit iron mine 25 miles from the beloved Lake Superior.

Walker has been pretty quiet about the Penokee Hills mine, other than to utter his usual "jobs" line. But a mining bill, foisted and passed by fellow Republicans, would wash up on Walker's shore in a recall election, and the GOP does not want to deal with that litter.

Stinky Process, Stinky Bill

2011-12-15T16:55:00.003-06:00

Rat snuck into the December 14 Assembly Committee on Jobs, Small Business and the Economy hearing on their fit-for-the-garbage-pail (and I don’t mean that in a good way) mining bill. Held in Milwaukee so the suits at Caterpillar, one of the biggest manufacturers of mining equipment in the world, could claim that jobs would be saved in Milwaukee if a big strip mine is allowed in northern Wisconsin, the committee’s ploy ended up biting them in the behind.

The suits were certainly there, but they were far outnumbered by folks who saw the bill for what it is – a give-away of Wisconsin’s natural resources to an out-of-state company. People came from around the state, including a busload of opponents from Ashland County where the impacts from a strip mine would be focused, who braved icy roads and an over seven-hour drive to be there. It was hard to avoid getting stepped on as the room was packed with about 400 people, and of the people who registered to speak, opponents outnumbered supporters 121 to 64, a ratio of 2:1.

Here’s what River Alliance Policy Program Manager/River Rat Lori Grant had to say to the committee:

“In 2006, after several years of work, the River Alliance was very pleased when the legislature designated 40 northern rivers as Outstanding and Exceptional Resource Waters. Six were in the Bad River Watershed, including the Bad River itself. In 2009, the Brunsweiler River, also in the Bad River Watershed, was the first state Wild River designated in over 40 years. But now we fear those efforts may have been a waste of time.

To be clear, the River Alliance of Wisconsin is not opposed to mining in general, or a fair process for considering a mine – as long as the environment is protected. However, any strip mine constructed and operated in the Bad River Watershed under the proposed bill would be allowed to irreparably damage these pristine waterways and the watershed as a whole.

Make no mistake – this bill substantially reduces environmental protections from mining.

We are opposed to:

Rushing the bill to hearing without providing citizens the opportunity to read and understand it’s far-reaching implications for our natural resources

Preventing the citizens most impacted by a mine, not to mention DNR, from challenging the information provided by a mining company

Forcing DNR to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and make permit decisions in an absurdly short time frame, without adequate staff or funds - in essence removing science from the permit process

But our greatest concerns are the drastic changes to protections for water.

Unlike Minnesota and Michigan, those states most cited as having model mining laws, as well as Wisconsin’s current mining law, this bill creates “special” environmental standards for iron mines. Other industries and businesses in the state, not to mention property owners, must adhere to common, statewide standards to protect groundwater, lakes, streams and wetlands. But this bill sets its own standards for mining, and goes so far to state that where the mining law conflicts with other laws, the mining law trumps all others.

These “special” standards:

Allow mine wastes to be piled next to rivers and lakes, in floodplains and areas where groundwater contamination is deemed likely. A property owner can’t build their cottage too close to the water, but mine wastes with up to a 50% slope? No problem.

Require DNR to allow critical wetlands to be filled, as long as there is mitigation someplace in the state. That certainly doesn’t do much for the rivers fed by that wetland if the mitigation is three counties away.

Completely reverse consideration for making major alterations to rivers – dredging, filling, widening, straightening (or shall we say burying in mine waste or obliterating altogether?). Current law prohibits alterations that do irreparable damage to natural resources. Instead, the bill requires DNR to allow such alterations if they will not “significantly” impair public rights or degrade water quality. The term “significantly” is not defined, and the bill prohibits DNR from creating rules that would better define or list criteria for making such a call. Given that one of the stated intentions of the bill is to take subjective decisions out of the mine review process, this provision adds more.

The bill requires DNR to allow huge groundwater withdrawals and direct withdrawals from rivers or lakes, even if it will severely draw down the resource. Why? Because remarkably, the bill declares that the needs of the mine, when it comes to water withdrawals, are in the best interest of the public. The needs of a mine are declared to prevail over drinking water and trout streams?

This is just a short list of the potential damage the bill would allow, but the overriding presumption that mining should be permitted at all cost is pervasive throughout the bill. The River Alliance cannot support any bill that maintains this presumption”.

It should be quite on the mining front until after the holidays, but Rat will be keeping nose to the ground on this one.

KO'd by CAFOs

2011-12-15T09:33:00.006-06:00

CAFO is not a new brew at your local coffee shop. It's a classic bureaucratic acronym -- Confined (or some say Concentrated) Animal Feeding Operation.

It goes by more pejorative descriptions -- factory farm, industrial agriculture, animal factory.
Technically speaking, a CAFO is a CAFO only if it has at least 1,000 "animal units" -- another peculiar bureaucratic formulation that translates to about 700 milk cows.

And in Wisconsin it's the milk-cow CAFO we worry about. As dairy farms got big and broke through the CAFO sound barrier, they housed around 1,000, maybe 2,000 cows tops. That's been the case for years until another sound barrier was broken, to where 5,000, 7,000, even 10,000-cow dairy operations are starting to appear. The first and most notorious was Rosendale Dairy, in Fond du Lac County, whose huge size and cavalier attitude about the impacts of tens of millions of gallons of manure prompted neighbors, People Organized to Protect the Land, to organize, challenge and resist.

Equally notorious is Larson Acres, in Rock County, whose legal troubles with neighbors over groundwater and stream contamination prompted the dairy industry to successfully push for removal of most local decision-making regarding big livestock farms. Larson Acres is still in litigation; its neighbors and the town government made their case against Larson Farms' water pollution before the Wisconsin Supreme Court this fall.

Rock County citizens see deja vu all over again with another mega-dairy of 5,000 cows. This one, Rock Prairie Dairy, had originally proposed to spray its manure through sprinkler-like irrigation devices, but public outcry forced a change in those plans. The farm got its pollution discharge permit from the Wisconsin DNR in June.

And Big Dairy arrived in Adams County too, with 6000-cow Richfield Dairy getting permitted both for pollution discharge and to pump up to 130 million gallons of water per year in a part of the state where groundwater is being stretched to its limit.

Like most of these huge dairies, Richfield's permits are being legally challenged by neighbors likely to be affected by the hundreds of millions of gallons of manure being spread and tens of millions of gallons of water being withdrawn (and exported away, in the form of milk, of course).

One retired DNR official has said that agency is totally ill-equipped to give good scrutiny to these huge dairy farms. But even if the agency had 20 people devoted full time to reviewing CAFO permits, it would be up against this political and economic fact: no one in charge of state government wants to mess with the dairy industry. And it's not just the Scott Walker regime; Jim Doyle also had a sweet "Deal With Big Dairy."

Is this due simply to the industry's political clout? While that clout is considerable, Rat doesn't believe it's that simple. Given this state's struggling economy and as the other pillar of Cheesehead economic clout, manufacturing, continues to decline, the "raw wealth" of agriculture, in particular the dairy industry, is very appealing. Dairy farmers take natural resources and render it into high-value products. There's little infrastructure cost to prop up the industry, no unions to fight (just undocumented workers, but that's another story), and pollution controls are minimal.

It's an economic gift that gives generously, and no elected official accountable for the Wisconsin economy wants to mess with a (excuse the pun) cash cow like that. Opponents of CAFOs have to acknowledge that as they storm the dairy industry's barricades.

Christmas Rush – At the Capitol, not the Mall

2011-12-13T13:03:00.002-06:00

Some members of the legislature are hell bent on adding to their list of attacks on protections of Wisconsin’s natural resources before the year is out. Confused by the bum-rush? That seems to be the intent. While we haven’t yet seen (as of today, anyway) an expected bill revising wetland protections, here are the two biggies:

1. Gutting Protections and Public Process for Mines

Assembly bill LRB 3520/1, written at the behest of an out-of-state mining company behind closed doors, dramatically weakens environmental protections, removes local citizens from the permit review process, and forces DNR to rubber stamp permits for new iron mines. Less than a week after the 183 bill saw the light of day, the Assembly will hold their public hearing in Milwaukee, more than 325 miles from the proposed mine site.

In a nutshell:

The bill and the process by which it is being rammed through the legislature takes away the voice of Wisconsin citizens.
It elevates mining above all other industries and businesses in the state, applying special rules that allow mines to bypass the environmental and public health requirements that apply to everyone else.
It takes science out of decision making, from preventing experts from questioning the mining company’s data to cutting the permit review time so short, DNR literally won’t have the time to review information and make valid decisions.

The hearing will be held at State Fair Park, Tommy Thompson Youth Center, beginning at 10:00.

2. Fast-Tracking Development in Lakes and Rivers

While conservationists are headed to Milwaukee to oppose the Assembly’s mining bill on Wednesday, December14, both the Senate and Assembly Natural Resource Committees will be voting on the controversial bill that “streamlines” the permit process for private projects in our public waterways.

The tremendous outpouring of concern by many of you to your legislators and at the public hearing in October did make a difference. The authors have removed many of the most blatant special interest giveaways, but the rotten heart of the bill remains. Now known as SB 326 in the Senate and AB 421 in the Assembly, the bill still:

Requires automatic approval for private projects in public waters;
Places the burden of proving a project will be harmful on neighbors instead of requiring the developer to prove it won’t;
Legalizes party decks and gazebos illegally built on lakes and rivers; and
Stops DNR from limiting pier construction in the state’s most sensitive shore areas.

The Assembly Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment will meet at 9:30 in Room 412E of the Capitol

The Senate Natural Resources Committee will meet at 10:00 in Room 300 SE.

No public testimony will be taken, but don’t let them take their votes out of the public eye. If you can’t make the mining hearing in Milwaukee, take a few minutes of your Wednesday morning to let the committee members know, we are watching.

It Finally Has a Name -- Even Two

2011-10-21T15:58:00.003-05:00

Credit the Occupy Wall Street people with simplifying the complicated topic of the dominance of the bankers over the political system by naming the bankers the “One Percent” and the rest of us rats on this sinking ship the 99%. One photo Rat saw from the Wall Street occupation said it beautifully. It depicted a woman holding her granddaughter and a sign that read, “99% chance that you’re with us.”

Finding an easy way to explain how wealth has become skewed to the top of the economic food chain is hard to do without pummeling people with lots of numbers and arcane economic theory. But there are people – and from the mainstream academic world, not just a park bench in Manhattan – who are making this topic more accessible and interesting.

Rat recently found a rat hole in the swank new Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at UW-Madison, where I snuck in to overhear a talk by Yale University political scientist Jacob Hacker. Author of Winner Take All Politics, Hacker tossed out lots of numbers to explain the wealth disparity. The most salient: how the One Percent’s percentage increase in income since 1970 is six times higher than that for the rest of us. Another: 40% of all income increases in the U.S. since 1970 went to the One Percent.

The typical rat brain struggles with numbers, but also with big words. Rat hopes the big word “oligarchy” rings a bell with the 99% of Americans who are not the One Percent. Another academic, political economist Jeffrey Winters, of Northwestern University, has re-introduced that term to the political discussion, along with one he may have coined –the wealth defense industry.

Read his article http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1048. A useful complement to Hacker’s numbers, Winters’ narrative account of how the uber-rich have wired the political system (for them, the most important thing to do) to their considerable advantage, and they more wealth they amass, the more lawyers, lobbyists, right-wing think tanks and political contributions they deploy it to protect it.

You have to hope the powerful evidence these two scholars have assembled, paired with the gritty passion of the Occupy Wall Streeters, will give ordinary Americans, in their beleaguered status as the 99%, pause to ask how the country got where it is. Sure, it’s “the government,” but bad government is a byproduct of the oligarchy’s putting the wealth defense industry to work to manipulate government to its benefit.

Rat remains nonpartisan, so I will end this note about partisan politics. Both Hacker and Winters make it clear there is not one political party on which to hang the country’s financial crisis; both have the blood of the 99%’s ever-shrinking economic prospects on their hands. Sure, Republicans align much more with wealthy interests, but Democrats have abetted them at crucial times, and failed to explain to American voters, in real and honest terms, the threats to their economic self-interest.

Someone please put a lamprey on some congressmen

2011-10-18T14:01:00.003-05:00

Rat was enjoying an August afternoon on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, with my rat-letts (offspring), who commented on how clear the water was, despite the fact the beach we were lounging on was right next door to heavily-industrialized Gary/Hammond/Chicago.

I hated to inform the young rats that in this particular instance, such clear water was probably a bad thing. Lake Michigan is being scrubbed sterile by trillions of quagga mussels, an invasive critter that devours the tiny plankton that the rest of this Great Lake's food system depends on. Elsewhere on the Lake Michigan shore, the clarity caused by the quaggas only encourages another scourge -- cladophora, a stringy variety of algae that creates a great green stinky mass when it washes up on shore.

But leave it to Congress to not only ignore how these invasives are destroying the Great Lakes, but try to pass a law that Rat officially dubs the Free Passport for Invasive Creatures Act. The proposed law would exempt ballast water (that's the water ships take in and dump out of their hulls to balance their loads) from pollution regulation, and makes it illegal for states to have tougher standards than federal ones. http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/211979/

This is a really bad idea. In its sponsors' defense of costs to the shipping industry, it totally ignores the billions of dollars of repair and maintenance costs and lost recreational revenues from the invasives that are fundamentally altering the Great Lakes.

For a fine, and very sobering, assessment of the weird paradox of how mussels are making the lakes both nutrient-rich and starving them of nutrients, and therefore messing with the entire system, see this new report from the National Wildlife Federation. http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/Media-Center/Reports/Archive/2011/Feast-and-Famine-in-the-Great-Lakes.aspx

The whole thing makes Rat want to loose sea lampreys upon those members of Congress supporting this bill. Also an invader to the Great Lakes via the Atlantic Ocean, lampreys attach themselves (that's the mouth of one in the picture up there) to their victims and eventually suck them dead. Lampreys know only cold-blooded animals, so as far as members of Congress go, that definitely works.

(This bill was passed out of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last week on a voice vote, so it's hard to know how the two Wisconsin members serving on that committee -- Rep. Reid Ribble and Rep. Tom Petri -- voted on the measure. When Rat's moles find out, we'll let you know.)

A Nasty Trail of Mining Dirt

2011-10-05T11:19:00.011-05:00

As a rat, I have a deep appreciation for cunning and admire a bit of deviousness. After all, that’s how my kind has survived in this rough, sometimes unfriendly world. But even I was taken aback by the latest high jinks in the hallowed halls of the state capitol, and the doublespeak and outright lies by those who stand to gain.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or should I say in deference to my many friends who do indeed live under rocks, blissfully oblivious to state news), there has been much ado about a renewed interest in mining in Wisconsin, and a giant, out of state corporation has made known their intent to create an enormous open pit taconite mine in Ashland County. Couched in the tired old cliché that environmental protections kill jobs, there has been much rhetoric about how state laws protecting water resources undermine the potentially vast economic boon that open pit mining could bring to Wisconsin.

In spring, a terrible bill completely undermining environmental protections and clearly written by the mining industry was leaked to the public but was never formally introduced. Just last week, blithely ignoring the well-documented history of boom and bust cycles accompanying mining operations around the world, and without questioning the mining company’s assertion of how many local jobs their operation would actually create, the state senate has created their “Select Committee on Mining Jobs” to look at “streamlining” the state’s mining laws.

First there was a bit of a kerfuffle over who would be appointed to the select committee. The Democrat legislators recommended to join the committee were rejected by the Republican leadership. Then a day later, the recommendations were accepted after all. But that very same day, the Guv introduced a special session (and we all remember the last one, don’t we?) called “Back to Work Wisconsin.” Buried in the long list of bills touted as helping to create jobs are proposals to revise state laws guiding protection of wetlands and streams. There are no details yet, but you can bet they’ll be chock full of many of the exemptions the mining company hoped to achieve through their bill this spring. Suddenly it all makes sense – who cares who’s on the Senate Select Committee on Mining Jobs? After these special session bills, they won’t have much to talk about anyway!

And then there’s the mining folks. The Wisconsin Mining Association, a self-proclaimed non-partisan organization reconstituted from the dark days of debate on the Crandon Mine that had been proposed at the headwaters of the Wolf River, hosted a press conference to proclaim their fervent belief that job creation and environmental protection go hand in hand. They issued a list of catchy “principles” including this kicker: “The Wisconsin Mining Association believes that facts matter.” Well, that’s certainly comforting. Unfortunately they don’t seem compelled to actually use them.

They also issued their list of key elements of new mining legislation, prefaced by a totally fabricated history of the current mining law. They flatly state, “Wisconsin’s mining laws were written for sulfide mines.” According to the Legislative Reference Bureau, the non-partisan record-keeping arm of the legislature, the fact is that current laws were written for all metallic mining, with a special emphasis on taconite mining! As a result of the Crandon mine debate, the law was amended to add an extra step for proposed sulfide mines, but that step does not apply to taconite mine proposals. There is absolutely no need to change our current laws to ensure the efficient review of a taconite mine proposal. The real issue is that an enormous, deep mine in the Penokee hills could not possibly proceed without utterly devastating the water resources of the region, and the changes demanded by the Wisconsin Mining Association and their cronies in the legislature are to allow just that.

posted by the River Rat

Cry A River for the Paper Industry?

2011-09-13T16:40:00.003-05:00

Never did this Rat expect to write a salutation to the Wisconsin paper industry, given how it dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in Wisconsin’s rivers and constipated them with their dams. We are still cleaning up after the industry on the Fox River, getting rid of toxic PCBs from the mud and muck of that fabled river.

Last week we learned that New Page, an Ohio company that owns four paper mills in Wisconsin – oh, make that three now, but it had been four up until February, and as many as six a few years ago – filed for bankruptcy. It is staring at over $3 billion in debt.

The latest plant to be shuttered by New Page was their facility in Whiting, near Stevens Point. 360 jobs gone.

Given this industry was a voracious tree-eating, pollution-spewing monster parked on the state’s major rivers, do we even cry a river for them?

Yes. Despite its history of resource abuse, the paper industry cleaned up its act. It required a federal law and state enforcement to do it, but they got there. The Wisconsin River is a recreational gem these days, a possibility unheard of in 1970. Even the bedraggled and dumped-upon Fox River is being rehabilitated, its image improving yearly as the water quality improves in kind.

But not just on the river but out in the woods too we have decried the paper industry – all those trees cut, all that forestland ravaged. Even though industrial forests are treated like cornfields, that land once provided wildlife and bird habitat is now being cut up into 40-acre hunting plots and disrupting the continuity of that land that made for such good habitat. Many are lamenting the loss of the big forest tracts, for the sake of the birds.

Consolidated Papers was the kingpin of Wisconsin paper. Its empire was strung up and down the Wisconsin River and far afield into northern Wisconsin, where it raised and cut the pulp to feed its mills. It was a community-minded corporate citizen, helping build facilities and parks in the communities it had plants in and providing family-supporting wages. (Most paper plants in the Wisconsin and Fox river valleys were unionized.)

When Consolidated sold to Stora Enso, a Finnish company, in 2000, you could hear the dominoes getting stacked up, foretelling what was to come. By 2007, Stora Enso sold the mills it had bought from Consolidated at Biron, Wisconsin Rapids, Whiting, Niagara, Stevens Point and Kimberly. The first domino dropped in Niagara (320 jobs), where the rusting hulk of that mill looms over the small town like a metallic alien crashed into the river bluff. (Check out the picture.) Kimberly was next (600 jobs), and just this year, the plug was pulled at Whiting (360 jobs). Biron, Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids are still operating, but with dark clouds over their smokestacks.

Wisconsin had the key ingredients to make a paper industry – trees, moving water, and hard-working people. The trees have grown back, the rivers have largely recovered, but good-paying paper mill jobs are gone. Some of it is due to cheaper raw material and labor in Asia. Some of it is due to paper industry greed and shortsightedness. Some of it is due to the very device through which you read this essay – the paperless Internet.

For many reasons, especially how a healthy paper industry helped many Wisconsin communities and families prosper over the decades, we should lament its demise.

Fair Thee Well Alicia Rae

2011-08-24T10:08:00.006-05:00

Rat recently swam over to Milwaukee and from the harbor watched as the Alicia Rae, the last working commercial fishing boat in Milwaukee, left Milwaukee for good.

Lake Michigan has been evicting commercial fishers for many years. The lake’s ecology keeps changing with the continued introduction of invasive species mostly by way of ballast water in large Great Lakes shipping vessels. It’s difficult to blame just one culprit since the story of various species invading Lake Michigan waters and the resulting rise and fall of dominant fish populations is beginning to read like a volume on European history.

But if Rat were to point a pointy-clawed digit at today’s main offender, I would come up 900 trillion digits too few, for those quagga mussels sure are prolific little buggers. I should say prolific little morsels, but my poor belly hurts just looking at them all.

Dan Egan wrote a bittersweet piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about Dan Anderson, the captain of the Alicia Rae, and his story of leaving the Lake Michigan fishery behind. Or as Dan put it, “The lake left me. It’s gone.”

The rivers that Rat calls home, like Lake Michigan, could use some help battling invasive species, and someone could really lend a paw to help battle all that oppressive algae that’s been blooming this summer. (Not to mention my fur; it’s startin’ to stink!) After all, we wouldn’t want to read stories of businesses people dependent on rivers saying things like, “The river left me. It’s gone.” Would we?

Photo: Satellite view of an algae bloom in Castle Rock Lake on the Wisconsin River. Courtesy of UW SSEC and WisconsinView

Wiscosnin DNR B-slapped by federal agents

2011-08-03T16:46:00.004-05:00

That's BUREAUCRAT-slapping, just so we're clear here. Rat's use of crude vernacular is against its code of rat ethics.

But the bureaucrat-slapping of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources by fellow bureaucrats of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is remarkable, for the no-nonsense thoroughness of the communique, and for the fact that it was even written.

On July 18, the EPA's Chicago office informed the DNR that it has found "numerous apparent omissions and deviations" from how DNR is supposed to enforce clean water laws.

In fact, EPA slapped DNR a total of 75 times for various omissions and deviations. In effect, EPA is telling DNR: "You are blowing off federal law and we're not happy about it." Some examples:

EPA tells DNR that it is too restrictive in who they allow to make a legal challenge of a water permit. They point out that Wisconsin lacks clear-cut ways for the public to participate in DNR's water pollution enforcement process.

EPA tells DNR that it can't let the state's transportation department off the the hook from controlling erosion at road construction sites: "Wisconsin cannot simply exempt DOT projects from [stormwater] permitting requirements."

EPA contends DNR is letting the fox of municipalities watch over the hen house of their own stormwater programs.

There are 72 more.

EPA asks DNR to respond to this letter by mid-October. For scores of these deficiencies, its communique asks the agency to "include a plan, with schedule and milestones," for how DNR will comply with federal law. EPA is even asking for new administrative rules and statutes for some of these deficiencies. (Guess EPA hasn't been hanging around Wisconsin in recent months, where old environmental laws are being gutted, and new ones have as much chance as a rat at a cat convention.)

This EPA letter indirectly stems from a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last spring which said, in effect, that the DNR didn't have to carry out certain provisions of federal clean water laws unless the EPA specifically ordered it. This appears to be that order.

The rat-paw prints of fellow river rats at Midwest Environmental Advocates are all over this opus from EPA. EPA cannot be dictated to, of course, but MEA has been sure to keep EPA apprised of the slippage we all have observed over the years in Wisconsin DNR's consistently and evenly enforcing clean water laws.

A bridge too big and way too expensive

2011-07-15T10:22:00.004-05:00

Elected officials and road proponents continue to peddle an oversized and expensive bridge over the St. Croix River at Stillwater, Minnesota -- a river that's a federally designated Wild and Scenic River.

In pushing Congress to release federal funding for a $700 million, 4-lane bridge, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker ignored a proposal of the aptly-named "Sensible Stillwater Bridge Partnership" to build a far less expensive, tidier bridge that's far more appropriate for that setting.

There's no doubt the existing rickety lift bridge has got to go. (It would be spared and mothballed under any re-building scenario.) But spending $700 million on an oversized bridge in tight budget times, when there are so many infrastructure projects going wanting -- especially when there is an intestate highway bridge 6 miles to the south of this spot -- it is eminently sensible to go with a 3-laner at an estimated cost of just under $300 million.

That's a savings of at least $300 million that could be put to other road or transit projects.

Opponents of the mega-bridge have dubbed it the "Bachmann bridge," because of the enthusiastic support the bridge gets from the otherwise budget-hawkish Rep. Michelle Bachmann. It should be pointed out that support for the excessive bridge is bi-partisan, including Wisconsin Rep. Ron Kind and the St. Croix County board of supervisors, a few of whom expect to do well in land speculation if a big bridge is built.

Those guys will cash on land development anyway, even with a more modest bridge. They could do the right thing and get behind the Sensible Stillwater Bridge push, be fiscally responsible, and help maintain the unique scenic status of the Lower St. Croix.

Beautiful Beulah and WI's Supreme Court

2011-07-13T14:19:00.003-05:00

With dysfunction, scandal, and even purported physical assaults being the focus of Wisconsin's Supreme Court these days, you might have missed a recent wise -- and extremely rare unanimous -- ruling by the Court on an important water issue.

The Supreme Court ruled, 7-0, last week that the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources has the authority to regulate the pumping of groundwater if that pumping might affect surface waters nearby.

Here's the story: the village of East Troy, in Walworth County, wanted to install a new municipal well, not far from the shores of Lake Beulah. Lake property owners got nervous, and pushed DNR to determine whether taking hundreds of thousands of gallons from the groundwater and putting into the kitchen sinks and front lawns of East Troy residents might drain their lake.

The DNR determined no, it wouldn't, and besides, it's not their job to regulate how taking water from underground might affect water on the surface.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court determined that yes, indeed, the DNR DOES have the authority to regulate so-called "high capacity" wells, as long as scientific evidence could show harm.

This decision is huge for the lakes and rivers of this state. Up to now, the DNR has been unwilling to tell groundwater pumpers, like farmers and cities, to cool it on their pumping, even if they had evidence that pumping was draining dry a river. The most vivid case of this is the Little Plover River in Portage County, which has dried up in past summers. Scientists are certain that crop irrigation and heavy water use by the nearby village of Plover causes the Little Plover to dry up.

In the case of the Little Plover, the DNR set a minimum flow that the river is not supposed to go below before......well, we don't know what they'd do, because the agency has been reluctant to extend its authority to connecting groundwater pumping to surface water effects. They regulate the two separately, but the Supreme Court decision ought to give the agency a clear signal they can insist to parties drawing huge amounts of water out of the ground that they have to be conscious of the effects of that pumping on nearby lakes and streams.

Whether the DNR actually acts on this newly clarified legal authority is another matter. "Open for business" these days means "open to ignore environmental impacts." At least DNR can't hide behind lack of clear authority. The Wisconsin Supreme Court resoundingly gave it to them last week.

Don't look for much more unanimity for that gang, however. Maybe they need to spend time together on a river -- amazing what curative powers flowing waters have.

River Disappearing Act

2011-06-23T11:37:00.008-05:00

Dear Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources:
You have a few customers who need your service – the Manitowish River, some lonely, sexually repressed sturgeon, and a bunch of my river rat buddies have been left high and dry. Cutting off spring flows to the Manitowish River to fill the lakes upstream is a real turn-off, if you know what I mean, for the sturgeon, musky and pike all trying to perpetuate the family name in the river system, and nearly 1600 acres of sedge meadow wetlands critical to the life cycle of myriad plants, animals and fish are quickly filling in with willow. The really silly thing is this cycle of draining the lakes in fall so people don’t have to risk ice damage to their piers and then refilling them in spring is also trashing the upstream lakes – a lot of plants die off when they’re exposed in fall, opening the door for invasive species to flourish. See my earlier post below, The “Man”itowish River - No Rest for Weary Wildlife for the background story.

With the help of a few well-placed cameras and a video recorder, we’ve now got footage of the dewatering of the Manitowish River wetlands. Historically in a dry year, this transformation from a continuous inundated wetland to a few pockets of standing water might have taken place over the course of 4 or 5 months well into the fall. Due to the mismanagement of the Rest Lake dam upstream, what you will see happened in a mere 22 days this year , leaving amphibians and fish stranded to die.

It ‘s not just the backwater sloughs and wetlands that are being impacted. The photographs below are of the main channel of the stream. In the first photo the flow of the river was 240 cubic feet per second. The second photo was taken only four days later after the flow had been decreased to a trickle (40 cubic feet per second) after they closed the gates of the dam.

Come on, DNR, the time really has come to fix this decades-old problem. Make a decision, and issue an order to operate the dam in way that truly protects all public interests, not to mention the lives of my fellow river dwellers. You could be heroes, and establish a legacy for a new way of managing river systems in Wisconsin. Not only would it save the Manitowish and its struggling sturgeon population, but it would bring Wisconsin’s dam management out of the dark ages and set the stage for a new way of doing business that manages the resource for all.

You know you’ve got the authority and all the information you need to put a stop to slaughter. I hear your new regime is all about customer service - the only question I’ve got is, who is the customer? Is it just the folks on Rest Lake who find it such a boring inconvenience to pull their docks in fall, or is it me?

Lies. Dam Lies.

2011-05-26T15:47:00.000-05:00

A bill that passed the Wisconsin Senate this week and is on track to be voted on by the Assembly will allow hydropower from megadams in Canada to count toward utilities’ renewable energy requirements. This proposed language would alter state law as a sweetheart deal for one utility: Wisconsin Public Service (WPS), of Green Bay.

WPS will purchase more than 500MW of energy from Manitoba Hydro, a deal worth over $2 billion. WPS wants this power to count as their renewable energy requirement but is hindered by one small roadblock: current law explicitly exclude Manitoba megadams from being considered renewable. Current language acknowledges the cultural and environmental devastation these dams brought to the Churchill River system and the Northern Cree tribes that subsisted on it.

But these are not existing dams sitting around waiting for a customer. Exports of power to Wisconsin and Minnesota has been the justification to build three brand new megadams. The proposed dam construction will continue to create massive reservoirs, flood forests, release methane into the atmosphere and increase mercury into the water, fish and animals. Getting the power from Canada to Wisconsin will also require more high powered transmission lines (of the controversial Arrowhead-Weston type) a detail that has been conveniently omitted from the PR for cheap energy put out by WPS and the sponsors of this bill in the Wisconsin Legislature.

This bill is bad news for rivers and for the renewable energy industry in Wisconsin. This proposed change first appeared as part of last year’s package of clean energy initiatives, but that version was accompanied by an increase in the percent renewable energy to be required of utilities. (River Alliance was on record as opposing it even last year.)

This time around, the higher renewable energy standards have been droppd. Without them, the cheap Canadian hydropower will flood Wisconsin within the next decade and completely remove any incentive to develop in-state renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources. (Oh, that’s right – they’re making wind energy harder to produce too.)

Call it cheap. Call it politically expedient. Just don’t call this renewable energy. That would be a dam lie.

Grass Carp Found in Lower Wisconsin River Confirmed Sterile

2011-05-24T14:44:00.002-05:00

You may remember that on April 27^th the Wisconsin DNR stumbled upon two large grass carp just downstream of the Prairie du Sac dam. This was a significant finding because it was the first time an Asian Carp had been found in the Wisconsin River. See previous blog on April 29^th for more background.

The DNR biologists who found the carp sent a sliver of its head including a piece of its eye to a USGS lab in Louisiana to determine if this fish had been capable of breeding in our waters. They also sent a few bones to another USGS lab in Missouri to determine how old the fish was (we are still waiting for the results from the latter but WDNR biologists believe it to be at least 10 years old).

The results from Louisiana are in and are quite encouraging – the fish is triploid. A triploid fish is one that is modified to have an extra set of chromosomes that prevents the fish from forming glands necessary to reproduce. Triploid carp are still legally released in many states for use in aquatic plant management. Today, thanks to NR 40, it is ILLEGAL to release even triploid carp.

While we can all sigh in relief as we dodged this biological bullet, this remains to be a harsh reminder that Asian Carp are quite capable of invading Wisconsin through our western border, the Mississippi River. This is believed to be the way in which this pair of Grass Carp found their way to Wisconsin.

Join the River Alliance as we partner with Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway, Sauk River PAL and many more to prevent the spread of invasives within the basin! »

Lawmakers and Mining Companies Hand Us A Gift

2011-05-16T15:10:00.005-05:00

Granted, you normally wouldn't dub draft legislation that strips, guts, gouges, unhinges, declaws and strip-mines (you might say)Wisconsin mining laws and regulations a gift.

But you have to congratulate the mining companies poking around northern Wisconsin for iron ore, and the two feckless tools they found in the Wisconsin legislature, to make it so much easier to rally public support against a proposed iron mine in Wisconsin.

The mining companies told two legislators (Honadel and Zipperer) just what they wanted, so the two lawmakers made the mining companies' every wish in come true.

There's strong local support in Onieda County for the jobs the mine may bring, and if you're living in Grantsburg or Union Grove or somewhere -- and the mine isn't in your back yard -- you might think: "Well, they need jobs up there, and it can't be that bad, could it?"

And maybe that's how people might have seen it -- a good thing at best, a minor environmental disruption at worst. Now, thanks to this draft bill, even someone in favor of the mine might wonder what we're getting when the bill:

would allow the Dept. of Natural Resources less time to review a mining proposal than it takes your mechanic to change out your blown transmission;

says really bad information about the mine -- say, a circle on a piece of paper saying, "Mine Goes Right Here" -- is not grounds for DNR to deny the mine;

claims wetlands are expressly made sacrifice areas for mining tailings, and can be mitigated (replaced, which doesn't really work for wetlands, but never mind) anyhere in the state;

blows off (meaning does not require!) analysis of environmental or health hazards the mine could cause;

blows up any process for public input into how the mine will be regulated.

And on and on.

Despite how hideous and egregious this bill is, it is turning out to be handy ammunition for mining opponents. It's obvious the mining companies and the Walker administration want to railroad this mine through. Rat doubts most Wisconsinites think we are this desperate for iron mining that we are willing to throw out any vestige, any pretense, of review or process for this project. And other legislators in the area, who may have been ambivalent or felt compelled to support the mine because of the jobs prospect, can now easily oppose the legislation because it
makes mincemeat of any reasonable review process of the mine, including public scrutiny.

You'd think they'd learn from the last mining project that got blown up by smart and well organized opposition. But Crandon mine cheerleaders made several blunders along the way that helped catalyze public opinion against it.

It's hard to imagine we could be so lucky this time, but it appears we're up against hubris and arrogance once again. But their first cousins are stupidity and blindness, and this bill is a first sign of that.

The "Man"itowish River - No rest for weary wildlife

2011-05-10T10:06:00.004-05:00

Now being just a river rat, I am not a hydrologist by any stretch of the imagination. However, it doesn’t take a scientist to know something is fishy here on the Manitowish River in Iron County. It’s a ghost town here with no sturgeon, breeding duck pairs, or even river rats to be found.

Back in the day the Manitowish River was the place to be in the spring when it flooded its banks and created over 1600 acres of wetlands or as I like to call them – home. These wetlands would persist through spring and slowly dry out through August or September.

Today it is a different story. It turns out that Excel Energy and the landowners on Rest Lake, a dammed lake upstream in Vilas County, have decided that it was a good idea to draw down the lake in the fall to protect their piers from being damaged by the ice. I guess it is out of the question that they remove their docks from the water come winter like the rest of northern Wisconsin. Therefore, in the spring as soon as the ice is 75% off the lake, they shut down the flow of the river by cranking the dam damn near closed to refill the lake as quickly as possible during the spring runoff event, precisely the time us wildlife are trying to make whoopee downstream in the wetland. I spoke to a few of my friends to ask them how this impacted their mojo.

The word on the stream is that the fish get stranded in small pools of water where they are busy spawning when the water is suddenly shut off. Today there are less than a dozen female sturgeon around and they don’t feel much like spawning these days. Our feathered friends from shoreland birds to waterfowl are here one day and gone the next, forced to find another wetland to call home.

As for us river rats, it’s a dire situation in the fall. We like to build our homes in the wetland in preparation for winter when unbeknownst to us the folks upstream are drawing down Rest Lake sending an unnatural pulse of water through the system. We build our homes in what we think is a wetland protected from the elements. When they are done drawing down the lake and close the dam, we come to find out that our homes are left high and dry. In a Wisconsin winter that means frozen…. frozen dead.

This battle has been raging for a while now. The Wisconsin DNR and the USGS is gathering data this year in hopes of being able to mandate Excel to be a bit more considerate (of us wildlife) in its management of the dam. Come on WDNR and USGS, lend us a hand here already.

Fun in Fond du Lac County: A Tale of Two Rivers

2011-05-05T10:31:00.009-05:00

Flow along with river rat Laura DeGolier, of Fond du Lac, as she describes a recent run down the obscure West Branch of the Fond du Lac River, with fellow rats Lindsay Wood Davis, Amanda Davis, and Denny Caneff.

Quiet, secluded, available only by water, sliding a kayak or canoe into the West Branch of the Fond du Lac River from the dike road in the Eldorado Marsh, a few miles west of the city of Fond du Lac, is a real pleasure. The current has carved a path through the cattails and allows easy passage through this watery space inhabited only by wildlife.

When gliding through the marsh birds, ducks, herons and coots are easily disturbed by rare human intruders. Sandhill cranes leave their feeding for a quick flight around before settling down again. Blue winged teal and mallards respond with noisy takeoffs as the intruders move along the river.

Passing under the abandoned railway that marks the south boundary of the Eldorado Marsh is the first sign of civilization (other than distant traffic noise). It is another ½ mile before you cruise under the Hwy. 23 bridge, and the tale of the second river begins.

The stream narrows here, forcing the water to crowd into a smaller area and the speed of flowing water picks up. By the time the canoes and kayaks reach Town Line Road all eyes are on the river and there is less time to gawk at the wildlife along the stream bank.

Ahead the river is tumbling downhill – so surprising for this flat landscape. You can see the downhill tilt of the racing water as it flows over hidden boulders creating small whitecaps on the water’s surface. All hands are on the paddles and ready to pull harder on this side or rudder on that side to overcome the pull of the current as it crashes into the bank and then moves back into midstream.

Hawks fly overhead; an owl is moved from its resting place, and warblers hurry to keep up with the speeding canoes and kayaks. And the water keeps tumbling downhill around bends in the river, past farm houses and new developments high on the hill above the river. The ride down the river is quite like sliding down a bannister. Scenes of the wooded lands with standing water, open farm fields and marshy areas catching the overflow flash past as the captains of their vessels keep focused on the speeding river ahead.

The water is cold on this April day and no one has a desire to take a bath in the churning, rushing flow. The pace is exhilarating; there can be few thoughts of anything other than navigating the swirling water ahead.

The pace stays very fast until the Forest Ave. bridge, where it slows slightly. Still, at this time of the year with the water level high, the pace is lively on into Fond du Lac where the West Branch eventually meets with the East Branch and its heavy burden of eroded soils, and then the merged branches wind another couple of miles through the city to the Lake.

The West Branch tells two tales -- quiet and secluded at its origin, then falling with the natural drop of the land from the high point in its watershed to the level of the city.

Grab a kayak and a friend or two, especially on a spring day, to explore this obscure and quiet river, which becomes a thrilling raceway to Lake Winnebago – a riverine gem to experience and treasure.

First Asian Carp Found in Lower Wisconsin River

2011-04-29T09:57:00.009-05:00

On Wednesday, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ researchers collected a grass carp (this is not the high flying carp that knocks people out of their boat) while shocking the Lower Wisconsin River. The fish was found about 3/4 of a mile below the Prairie du Sac Dam.. It was 40 inches long and weighed 40 lbs. This is the first report of this non-native invasive species in the Wisconsin River. However, the grass carp is not new to the area. The good thing is that there is no evidence of successful spawning by the species in Wisconsin waters. We can hope that these two adults were just on vacation and are not proof of a breeding population. (Note: photo above is not of the carp recently collected in the Lower WI River).

History of Grass Carp in Wisconsin
Grass carp were imported from eastern Asia in 1963 to control submersed aquatic vegetation in aquaculture ponds and were first documented in the Mississippi River along Illinois in 1971. In 1983 it was first found in Northeast Wisconsin (the green square dot on the map) in a stocked pond. It is used as a biocontrol agent to keep aquatic vegetation in check. In 1990 it was found to be stocked in many more ponds at golf courses in Southeast Wisconsin (note all the blue dots). It is illegal to stock grass carp in Wisconsin and these populations have been eradicated.

Impacts
No these suckers don’t spread fins and fly like their cousins the silver carp. However, they do cause damage. Like the common carp, they can alter water quality causing an increase in turbidity, reduced dissolved oxygen, and an increase in plant nutrients. They also remove aquatic vegetation which leads to an alteration in the invertebrate and fish communities.

Join the River Alliance as we partner with Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway, Sauk River PAL and many more to prevent the spread of invasives within the basin! »

Look at this dirty picture!

2011-04-27T08:29:00.005-05:00

Editors note: The correct date for this photo is April 12 following a heavy rain.

Rats love dirt, and dirty pictures really excite us.

But this dirty picture gets this River Rat's dander seriously up. This is a bat's-eye view (well, okay, hawk's-eye view; bats don't fly this high) of the city of Green Bay, where the Fox River disgorges its red-brown tide in the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. The picture was taken April 12.

This is one of those thousand-word pictures. It says more than we want to know or admit about how we take care of our farmland. What you see is soil, washed off thousands of acres of land upstream, washing into Green Bay, where it does no one any good.

Is this inevitable? It's been a rainy spring, after all. Absolutely not. Farmers have known for decades what practices minimize soil erosion. Allow me to get technical here a minute, but we know what to do: conservation tillage (leaving crop residue on bare fields), grass waterways (flowing water runs over grass and not through muddy gullies), stream buffers (grassy strips along rivers to keep soil on the field and out of the river) -- all these practices work, are well known, and not only are they affordable, they of course "make" money because soil is a farmer's economic life blood.

But with the corn-and-soybean imperative pushing Wisconsin and midwestern farmers to grow more of those erosion-prone crops (much corn ends up as ethanol, and the beans go to Asia to feed factory chickens) they rip out these conservation devices with impunity. Even dairy farms, which used to depend on alfalfa for cow feed -- alfalfa doesn't need to be plowed up every year -- are replacing that soil-holding crop with corn silage. So, more erosion, more dirt in the rivers, more red in Green Bay.

Allow Rat to pile on with more bad news: our good friend and fellow river rat Bill Berry explains in his Capital Times column this week that soil erosion is even worse than public officials are telling us, as he reviews a recent Environmental Working Group report. http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/bill_berry/article_b26e14f3-dba6-563c-a193-ebeb3390bb3a.html

Many thanks to Bill Hafs and Vicky Harris, of Green Bay, astute observers of land and water, and a special thanks to Steve Seilo of Photodynamix of Green Bay, who supplied the eye-popping aerial shot. www.photodynamix.com

Bad water runs up- and downhill -- toward Illinois?

2011-04-14T10:26:00.004-05:00

We Wisconsin rats love to poke fun at our ratty brothers and sisters to the south, in Illinois. Despite the family rivalries, we stay in close touch.

They tell us about some strange human traditions in Illinois, particularly in that rat-heaven city of Chicago. (Rats used to thrive in the rivers there, when they dumped meat packing plant offal and raw sewage right into the river.)

But here's the strange tradition they told us about: apparently they dye the Chicago River GREEN on St. Patrick's Day.

We've also learned that here in Wisconsin, the governor wants to put more money into tourism promotion -- get more people to come here to go boating and skiing and fishing and stuff, the kind of things humans spend a pile of money on and do twice a year.

Here's the Rat's suggestion for the Wisconsin governor: given all this talk about water in Wisconsin going bad by going green (You haven't seen yet? Check it out: http://wisconsinrivers.org/bad-h2o/bad-water-is-bad-for-business), why not put that tourism promotion money into a billboard campaign?

Put up 30 billboards all over Chicagoland, or run a few TV spots, with pictures of Wisconsin rivers and lakes that "go green" with no dyes, no paints, no taints or tinctures. Tell them to come on up to Wisconsin, where the green in the water is "natural" (it's just a little pollution).

Wisconsin Dept. of Tourism, here's a suggested slogan for the billboard campaign:

Make St. Patrick's Day Last All Summer! Come to Wisconsin Where the Green in Our Water is the Real Thing

And here's some copy for you for the TV spot:

"Tired to fighting Loop traffic just to see a green river once a year on St. Patrick's Day? Flee to Wisconsin, where green water lasts all summer! Unlike the fake green in the Chicago River, this green water gets so thick you can stir it with a stick -- great interactive fun for the kids! Some of it even turns a blue-green color. (Disclaimer: this water could be toxic.) And you'll find those friendly folks in Wisconsin will welcome you with open arms: they won't go in that water, so you don't have to worry about big crowds and traffic jams!"

The Rat welcomes any and all suggestions from readers that we will send to the Wisconsin tourism people promoting our green water to Flatlanders.

Top 10 Tips for Effective Advocacy on the State Budget

2011-04-13T14:22:00.002-05:00

Guest Rat Vicky Selkowe, who works (hard) to keep River Alliance Board Member and State Representative Cory Mason in line, shares words of wisdom on how to get your legislators to really listen:

Many of us are concerned, dismayed, and outraged by numerous provisions in Gov. Walker's proposed budget bill. What's important is that we channel that outrage into effective advocacy. I have more than a dozen years of policy advocacy experience in Wisconsin at groups like the Institute for Wisconsin's Future, the Neighborhood Law Project, and the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families. I've worked for the last two years for State Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine) and staffed him on the Joint Finance Committee during the 2009-11 biennial budget. Every day, I see examples of amazing advocacy efforts...and countless examples of "advocacy" that makes me cringe because it falls short of being effective. Don't be in the "cringe" category. Make your advocacy on the state budget as effective as possible.
Below are my Top 10 Tips for Effective Advocacy on the State Budget, plus some bonus tips at the end for in-person meetings with legislators. Use 'em, share 'em, make 'em your own but whatever you do, speak up! We are at a crossroads in our state and there is too much at stake for you to be silent.

Top 10 Advocacy Tips:
1. Provide your full name - say it clearly and slowly if you're leaving a voicemail message and make sure your email includes your first and last name. You should always do this, and you should especially do this if your email address is something like bunny310@xmail.com and gives no clue as to your real name.

2. Provide your full address and your phone number. Include your street, city, and zip. Though legislative staffers enjoy hearing from and reading the views of citizens from around the state, we are most interested in responding to constituents. To confirm that you are a constituent, we need your full address. Again, if you're leaving a voicemail, say it clearly and slowly - staff writing down your information are not mind-readers, nor can we understand you when you speak at mach speed or mumble, nor are we likely to play your message three times to try to understand it if you're not clear.

3. State your position clearly. If you are emailing, put your position in the subject line of your email, i.e. "I oppose Walker's Medicaid budget provisions" or "Budget Cuts to K-12 Will Be Devastating to My Community" or "I'm Opposed to Budget Changes to Recycling." In a voicemail, state it early on in your message after your name, phone number, and address. Picture the bleary-eyed staffer sifting through hundreds of emails and take pity on that poor soul AND make your message as effective as possible by making it clear whether you're writing for or against a provision and what provision you're referring to.

4. Don't send form messages. Tell YOUR story. Are you a teacher? Are you a correctional officer? What will the budget as a whole or specific provisions mean for you and your family? Give some context to help the staffer or legislator understand the real impact of this bill on your life, your family, your colleagues, your work. The emails that are most compelling and memorable are the ones that are personalized. The ones that legislators want to read as part of their testimony on the Assembly or Senate floor are the ones that put a budget provision into a personal context. Many, many staffers print out the best emails for legislators to read - but we sure don't print out the form emails unless we know the sender. Imagine your email message being read out loud by the legislator, and make it powerful. I know form emails from listserves & action alerts are easy to send but take the extra 1 minute to personalize your message and its effectiveness increases dramatically.

5. Do not e-SHOUT, yell, threaten, use hyperbole, or send repeated emails. Keep in mind that the person listening to your voicemail, reading your email, or talking to you is likely a staff person, not the legislator. Putting your email in 44 point all-caps red font or menacingly threatening the legislator's re-election will not enhance your credibility. We also tend to roll our eyes at messages that are clearly exaggerations. Make yourself credible by sticking to the facts. (And there are plenty of provisions in the state budget that will be detrimental to our communities - no need to resort to hyperbole or exaggeration to highlight the consequences of these provisions.) You're also not likely to be well-received if you send an email every day. I understand the impulse, but being a pest doesn't make you more effective.

6. Don't email "all legislators." While it's fine to email all legislators and all staff, you really are just cluttering the inboxes of all of the state reps and state senators who don't represent you and who are likely to just delete your message. Be more effective and more efficient: find out who actually represents YOU here: http://legis.wisconsin.gov/w3asp/waml/waml.aspx and contact YOUR state Representative, state Senator, and, of course, the Governor, who supposedly represents us all.

7. Speaking of the Governor, don't forget to contact him. Even though persuading him is perhaps a bit of a lost cause, you still want to be "counted" as on the record about the budget and the provisions you're concerned about. So make sure you send him an email letting him know your views: Govgeneral@wisconsin.gov.

8. Feel free to email your legislators' staff members in addition to the Representative/Senator. Don't feel "bad" about it. It's their job to respond to constituent contacts. The official "rep" and "senator" email boxes are full to overflowing and you may get a faster response if you cc staff. Find the staff names & emails for the Assembly here: and for the Senate here.

9. Do your homework before you contact a legislator. Spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out if your representatives are for or against the bill before you make contact. Most legislators have staked out a position on this bill already. Nothing makes you look like a turd more than calling a legislator's office and yelling at whoever answers the phone that "he'd better not support this piece of crap bill or I'm going to vote him out of office!" (see also #5, above, re. threats and yelling...) when the legislator you're calling has been a vocal and outspoken opponent of the bill.

10. Absolutely contact your legislators even if you know they're already on your side. They love to hear from constituents who have their back and agree with them on an issue. It makes 'em feel all warm & fuzzy. And because they're working around the clock right now and are anxious and exhausted, your encouragement and thanks are often what sustains them through the long hours. AND legislators are keeping tallies of how many constituents contact them about different budget provisions, so you want to be counted. So yes, even if your legislator is a progressive champion and you're pretty sure he or she is on your side, call or email anyway. Just be nice. And it never hurts to flatter them.

If you can, schedule an in-person meeting with your Representative or Senator's office about the budget provisions you're most concerned about. These meetings, if done right, are incredibly effective. So if you're meeting in-person with your elected official, all of the above tips apply plus the special "bonus" tips below:

11. Be Nice to Staff: If you get a meeting with a legislative office, you will more than likely meet with staff. Don't be disappointed by this. You'll likely get more time with staff than you would with the legislator anyway, and staff have the ears of their bosses.

12. Remember "the legal pad": In a legislative meeting, the legislator or staff will likely be taking notes on a legal pad of paper. You want four main things recorded on that pad of notes at the end of the meeting so make sure you gear your communications to getting these four things conveyed effectively:

Who are you? (A constituent? A teacher? A local elected official? A health care professional? A bus driver? The Exec Director of a nonprofit?)
What is your issue? Provide a clear, concise - ONE PAGE MAX - statement of your issue.
Why is your issue important? (Why does it matter to you and why should it matter to the elected and his/her staff?)
What do you want the elected official to do about it? (What is your "ask"?)

13. Don't Wing It! Effective Advocacy Takes Preparation. Do your homework ahead of time to prepare for your meeting. You'll want to think about questions like: what is the legislator's background? What is her/his voting record on your issues? Who is the best messenger to bring along from your group/community on your issue? (A business person? A doctor? A teacher? A local elected official?) What district-specific facts or stories can you gather? What is your "ask"? (Do you want the legislator to author an amendment to undo a terrible budget provision? Speak out against the provision at a press event? Vote against the entire budget?) Who will speak at your legislative meeting, and in what order? Who will do follow-up, and when?

Feel free to email me at vicky.selkowe@legis.wi.gov if you or your organization is looking for additional advocacy tips. A recent powerpoint presentation/podcast I prepared for Forward Community Investments is available here.

Enjoy clear water while you can

2011-04-11T08:42:00.004-05:00

We rats enjoy a little slime, a bit of goo where it doesn't belong, a touch of funk here and there where it's particularly offensive. And we know you humans do not, which is why we're convinced we're superior creatures, but that's for another day.

One place we know where you don't like your funk is in your lakes and rivers -- where your kids swim, where you throw sticks for your dogs (and you think rats are dumb?), where you go for a picnic on a warm summer day.

Maybe you satisfied your inner picnic on some lakeshore or river bank last weekend when temps hit the high 70s. And did you notice how the water was clear and clean?

Let Rat snicker here and say to you: it won't last long. Some more nice warm days and you'll see:

A green ooze take over
where Rover
chases his stick.
But if he goes in
he just might get sick.

Seems too that green water is bad for business. Check out that Tom Dorsey guy -- he seems especially peeved by the pea soup his bar sits next to.
http://www.wisconsinrivers.org/bad-h2o/bad-water-is-bad-for-business