Someone please put a lamprey on some congressmen

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.