Thursday, February 1, 2018

GOP in WI 'improves' wetland-filling bill by weakening it

Scott Walker's 'chamber of commerce' driven-Wisconsin is fast becoming PollutionLand, a province in a GOP-led Bizarro World.

Only in Wisconsin - - where the Department of Natural Resources basically stopped enforcing clean water rules, and where documented waterway pollution is on the rise statewide, and wetlands are being filled while more are threatened and the biggest private sector developer in state history has been granted unprecedented exemptions from environmental preservation policy and law - - would GOP legislators in control of the process claim that they improved [Sic] their latest developer-friendly wetland-filling bill by weakening requirements to repair an existing wetland or otherwise "mitigate" the losses. 

Wisconsin Republicans moved closer Tuesday toward relaxing wetland development regulations, passing a bill out of committee that would allow developers to fill state wetlands without permits and scale back mitigation requirements...  
[Jim] Steineke, R-Kaukauna, said Thursday the new iteration was designed to address opponents' concerns and preserves quality wetlands and duck habitats.
All this while the State Constitution says that the waters of the state belong to everyone and the DNR is supposed to be people's water steward:
Wisconsin's water belong to everyone
Wisconsin lakes and rivers are public resources, owned in common by all Wisconsin citizens under the state's Public Trust Doctrine.  
...the Wisconsin State Supreme Court has ruled that when conflicts occur between the rights of riparian owners and public rights, the public's rights are primary and the riparian owner's secondary.

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