...is here....
http://daviddempsey.typepad.com/
Wisconsin's waters are so basic to life, commerce and culture that they were considered a public trust before statehood.
This careful management of Wisconsin waters for the common good was codified as the Public Trust Doctrine by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and was incorporated into the Wisconsin Constitution in 1848.
In other words, you can trace the "public" foundation of water policy in Wisconsin from 1787 straight through the heavily attended Department of Natural Resources-sponsored meetings in 2004 and 2005, where the public spoke in favor of upgrades to the U.S.-Canada agreement that restricts diversions from the Great Lakes.
That is why a series of closed-door actions by the DNR - at times in coordination with the cities of New Berlin and Waukesha - to create or change water policy in Wisconsin undermines our long history of making water policy publicly and in the public interest.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=510487
It's increasingly likely that leadership, or lack of same, in the fight to prevent needless Great Lakes water exports will come not from Michigan, the Great Lakes state, but Wisconsin, where diversion fights in two communities loom large. The good news is that Wisconsin has an articulate and determined conservation and environmental community that is mobilizing to protect the Great Lakes. A community that seems to understand that "public trust" is not an empty slogan but a legal doctrine that needs respecting for the health of the Lakes and the people who depend on them.
Waukesha officials have a new strategy in their quest for access to Lake Michigan water: find a lake tributary that can safely handle the city's treated wastewater.
That would save Waukesha water customers millions of dollars by shortening the distance needed to return treated sewage via pipeline to the Great Lakes Basin.
The city of New Berlin is twisting itself in regulatory and bureaucratic knots to meet a Dec. 8 federal deadline and supply all its customers with water that has had naturally occuring radium removed. But an August letter from the EPA shows the city first exceeded a federal radium standard 23 years ago, giving it plenty of time to avoid the now-looming deadline.
Though it signed a consent decree in January 2004 to meet a radium-removal deadline within 34 months (by Dec. 8 of this year), New Berlin has said it will miss the deadline in part because it doesn't want to spend about $4 million on the necessary equipment.
Instead, it hired the consulting firm of Ruekert/Mielke to work with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and convince the other seven Great Lakes states to allow a diversion of water from Lake Michigan to that portion of New Berlin that lies outside of the Great Lakes basin.
http://www.wisopinion.com/index.iml?mdl=article.mdl&article=5373
I am disheartened to see that the environment does not make the Star Tribune's list of key issues in the U.S. Senate race. Politicians must be glad the media rarely force them to address it. It is a huge, pressing issue that we should not allow our legislators to ignore.
JENNY WARNER, MINNEAPOLIS
http://www.startribune.com/563/story/726846.html
Way to go, Bay City Times.
Dow Chemical Co.'s interest in a dump on the Saginaw-Bay county line for Saginaw River dredgings spoils threatens to blow the whole project apart.
The Lone Tree Council is trumpeting memos from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the local activists claim is proof that Dow has considered the dredgings dump as a place to put hazardous chemicals if the company is forced to dredge contaminated ''hot spots'' in the river.
True, Dow officials say. In fact, they're making no secret of their interest in the dump.
http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1160147784304320.xml&coll=4
A newly developed environmental group hopes to tackle problems they say plague the Lake Michigan watershed area by specifically targeting instances of pollution and damaged ecosystems.
The Lake Michigan Watershed Ecosystem Partnership hosted its first meeting Thursday in Evanston to vote on members to lead in developing an action plan that could improve the Chicago area shoreline.
http://www.nwitimes.com/articles/2006/10/06/news/illiana/c5c733226d71a618862571fe0083cfc2.txt
On the eastern shores of several Great Lakes tower the world's largest freshwater dunes...another at risk species.
Known as Pigeon Hill, the Lake Michigan dune towered 30 stories high on the south side of Muskegon. Formed over thousands of years, it disappeared in three decades as its sand was mined for industrial use in the mid-20th century.
"You can only see Pigeon Hill in a museum now," said Tanya Cabala, an environmental consultant from Whitehall who has studied its history.
Michigan has regulated sand mining since then, although environmentalists want stronger controls. But Great Lakes dunes also face other threats, from invasive plant species to abuse by all-terrain vehicles, scientists and government officials said Tuesday.
During a conference funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, experts agreed to seek a regionwide strategy for protecting the ecologically unique chain of dunes stretching along many of the lakes' coastlines.
http://www.record-eagle.com/2006/oct/04dunes.htm
EPA: Great Lakes cleanup plan on track
By JOHN FLESHER
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - A comprehensive plan to tackle the Great Lakes' most pressing environmental problems — from invasive species to sewage overflows — is on track despite complaints about inadequate federal funding, an
Environmental Protection Agency official said.
A $20 billion ecosystem restoration blueprint crafted by a public-private coalition is boosting the Great Lakes' national profile and has favorable long-term prospects, said Gary Gulezian, director of the EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office.
"In the 30 years I've been working for the EPA, I've never seen as much national attention paid to the Great Lakes as in the past couple of years," Gulezian said in an interview with The Associated Press at a conference this week on protecting the region's coastal sand dunes.
Recent congressional approval of legislation authorizing $80 million over five years to restore fish and wildlife habitat addresses a primary goal of the restoration initiative, Gulezian said. The total is twice as much as previously authorized.
The money won't be spent unless included in separate appropriations bills. But Congress probably wouldn't have endorsed such a boost in Great Lakes funding without the plan, known as the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration Strategy, Gulezian said.
"I think it's paying off," he said, noting that President Bush's last two budgets had sought a combined $100 million to clean up contaminated Great Lakes sediments. "That's a lot of money to request. I don't think that would have happened if we didn't have this collaboration."
The plan's support from a wide range of interest groups is important because Congress wants the region to "speak with one voice" when seeking money, Gulezian said.
Bush appointed a Cabinet-level task force in 2004 to coordinate Great Lakes cleanup efforts. The task force oversaw the collaboration, which involved officials from federal, local and state governments as well as American Indian tribes, academics and activists.
The group released its strategy in 2005. It outlined a series of threats to the lakes' ecological health and proposed remedies and funding.
Among the proposals: tighter controls on oceangoing ships believed to ferry exotic species into the lakes; habitat restoration; improved drinking and waste water systems; quicker cleanup of heavily polluted sites; reducing toxic discharges and runoff.
While Bush championed Great Lakes cleanup during campaign visits to the region in 2004, critics accused him of backtracking after the election. His 2007 budget proposal called for a 9 percent reduction in lakes funding, including cutbacks in 14 of 22 programs tied to the restoration initiative.
Gulezian said the criticism was unfair.
The water level in Lake Superior is nearing its lowest point in the past century, according to the latest government data.
The water level in the world's second-largest lake dropped in September to within 2.5 inches of the record low for September, which was recorded in 1926, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-10/115988851697200.xml&coll=8
But with experts warning that the Great Lakes, the world’s largest repository of fresh water, could be facing an ecological tipping point from which they may never be able to recover, President Bush cannot ignore a bill sent to his desk late last week. The measure would help to restore fish and wildlife habitats while keeping tabs on the Great Lakes region’s ecosystems with up to $16 million in grant programs. Senate and House appropriators would decide actual spending levels later this year, the Associated Press reported.
...The lack of money in the Bush budget was baffling. But the president still can make a Great Lakes great save by signing the bill now on his desk — and then by continuing to support such efforts.
The bill at issue here is a good thing. It will be a good thing if the Prez signs it. But as the editorial points out, the bill authorizes $80 million -- it appropriates zero dollars. The appropriating part (actual spending) will happen at another time, if at all.
So after 3 years of Bush rhetoric about "the national treasure" that is the Great Lakes we will still have zero new dollars appropriated for them as a result of his efforts. Let's hold the nation's CEO to a slightly higher standrard.
Dioxin is one byproduct of burn barrels...
HURLEY -- Should the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' restriction on burn barrels around Lake Superior be more rigidly enforced?
Rick Schneider, from the Northwest Regional Planning Commission in Spooner, hopes to get an answer to that question from officials of four counties bordering Lake Superior -- Iron, Ashland, Bayfield and Douglas.
Schneider distributed survey questionnaires to the Iron County Board on Tuesday.
The four-county survey is being done through a $12,700 grant from the Great Lakes National Program office.
http://www.ironwooddailyglobe.com/0930burn.htm
As the court case drags on, Nestle is forging ahead with plans to make its Stanton bottling plant the hub of a sprawling water bottling business that is fed by a surrounding network of groundwater wells. The company also bottles water it buys from the city of Evart.
http://www.mlive.com/news/muchronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-10/11596977184010.xml&coll=8
The more Great Lakes Basin water that is containerized and turned into a so-called product without state legislation reaffirming that there is no private ownership of water, the greater the risk that the Great Lakes will be privatized and their fate turned over to water barons.
WAUKESHA - The Waukesha Water Utility hopes to avoid a lengthy process of applying for Lake Michigan water access through a compact needing approval by all the region’s states by arguing its ground water system’s connection to the Great Lakes basin and easterly flow should deem it eligible with or without the new guidelines in place.
This overlooks the fact that Waukesha's groundwater may be linked to Lake Michigan because Waukesha's massive pumping of groundwater has drawn Lake Michigan tributary groundwater toward Waukesha. In other words, the city has been using water unsustainably, and that justifies giving it Lake Michigan water.
http://www.gmtoday.com/news/local_stories/2006/Sept_06/09302006_01.asp
A slightly more nuanced view from today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=506616