Conspiracy Theory? Never.....

The Rat finds himself feeling a little sorry for Mr. Williams, the president of Gogebic Taconite, the day after the Assembly’s mining bill hit a brick wall in the Senate. Not because he didn’t get changes in the state mining law that would have allowed his company to take the iron and run at the expense of Wisconsin’s water resources, but because it sure seems like poor Mr. Williams became a pawn in a much bigger plan. Sure, he lied to folks in Northern Wisconsin when he said they didn’t need any changes in law to do their mine. Then a few months later he said GTac would stop pursuing a permit until they had “certainty” on a timeline for their permit review. And shortly after that a draft bill came out that set a ridiculous timeline, shut out the public, and exempted mining operations from environmental protections. But it was the business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, that was the tail wagging this dog.

Now Rat is by no means an expert on the economics of mining, but after a few conversations with some of the folks who are, discovered they were just as perplexed about how the GTac mine could actually pencil out. Taconite, the material they want to mine in the Penokee Hills, is by definition a low-quality ore. The percentage of iron in the rock is low, and it takes a lot of time and effort to sort out the good stuff. The Penokee deposit is also very deep, over 1000’ in some locations, and buried at an angle that makes it hard to get. Even with higher prices for iron, it’s hard to figure how the expense of extracting, processing and transporting the iron could be profitable. No doubt being able to go after it without worrying about pesky environmental regulations would help, but even if they were given free rein to dig as they pleased, it hardly seems worth it.

Rat is betting Mr. Williams figured that out for himself, but agreed to stay in the game to help with WMC’s real agenda – use the perfect foil of jobs for the depressed North and factory workers in Milwaukee to topple the first domino in their plan to dismantle environmental laws one industry at a time. Iron mining would be first, even though there was no guarantee GTac would actually proceed, then on to sulfide mining! And after that, sky’s the limit. Too bad the whole jobs screen started to fall apart at the final hour. Even though GTac claimed they would hire Wisconsin workers, they earlier noted no one here had the skills, and there were no provisions for job training. Then, the day before the vote in the Senate, WisBusiness reported that Milwaukee area mining equipment manufacturers could sell lots of stuff if GTac opened a mine, but no new manufacturing jobs would be created. That didn’t stop WMC from pulling out all the stops and getting union workers to lobby Milwaukee-area senators to vote yes. Luckily, they read the paper too and saw the bill for the sham that it was.

posted by the River Rat

Her Bark Is Stronger Than Their Bite

Nemahbin Dam and Mill

Ol’ Rat has not been the chronicler of good water news lately. So it’s extra satisfying to report some good news once in a while. Delafield dam owner and friend of the River Alliance, Margaret Zerwekh, is one step closer to removing her aging dam. Something she's been trying to do for over 10 years.

Margaret Zerwekh giving a tour of the millhouse, 2006.

Margaret, and her late husband Kenneth, have lived in the mill attached to the dam for over 60 years and Margaret has been maintaining it on her own since 1989 (read a great River Alliance profile of this feisty woman here). In the early 1990s, the DNR informed Margaret the dam was undersized to safely manage flows from large rain events and that homes and people downstream were at risk of being harmed if the dam failed in a rainstorm. Given her age (a sprightly 92!), the age of the dam (an even sprightlier 160) and the cost of rebuilding (conservative estimate: $500-700 K), Margaret made the decision to abandon the dam and restore the Bark River to “a nice little stream with bluebirds on the banks.” In 1998, summer rains swelled the Bark River and the DNR ordered the dam permanently drawn down due to concerns about dam failure and the potential to wash out homes downstream.

Neighbors on the pond were not happy. They rarely are in these circumstances. But this set of neighbors was particularly unrelenting. They tried to get the city to condemn her property and take the dam (that failed). They tried to create a lake district to take over the dam (failed). They took her to court four different times. The most recent legal maneuver was to take their sad tale of lost riparian rights and private nuisance before a jury in circuit court. Oh, and to ask for a million dollars in damages from a little old lady living in a mill.

Last week, that jury unanimously rejected the property owners’ claims. Margaret won her case.

For all their dogged determination, here’s something the neighbors did not do: sit down with the dam owner and try to reach a sensible agreement to grant them access to the river. They also squandered the opportunity to work with the dam owner, the City and other partners to make something beautiful happen in their backyard where an algae- and sediment-choked pond used to be. Instead, they dragged a 92-year-old woman into court for a week and tried to bankrupt her because she followed orders from the DNR. It’s hard not to feel a little vindication for the dam owner after all she’s been through. As for Margaret, there’s nothing like 60 years’ of living on a dammed river to bring the project into perspective. She has clearly said that after so many years of service to people, it’s time to let the river be a river again and to restore it to a healthy ecosystem. As she stated to the River Alliance back in 2006, “I don’t think people understand how it can be a great benefit,” she says. “If we do this right in restor­ing the river, people will come from all over the place to see what we’re doing.”

I know I’ll be there to see it happen. I’ll be the rodent in the water, popping the cork.

posted by the River Rat

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

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

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

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

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

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.