The Swamp Stomp
Volume 15, Issue 44
Sixteen Wisconsin residents filed a petition on October 20th that could strip away the state’s authority over its waters, according to the Lacrosse Tribune. The 87-page petition accused the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources of not following the federal standards set out in the Clean Water Act.
The main force behind the petition was Midwest Environmental Advocates, based out of Madison, Wisconsin, according to the Lacrosse Tribune. Midwest Environmental Advocates is a nonprofit environmental law center that specializes in Clean Water Act enforcement, according to their website. They have represented several groups with environmental interests in the past few years, including a group that fought against Richland Center Renewable Energy to reduce pollution into waterways around the lower Wisconsin River.
“Our petition for corrective action is important and justified because it has been over four years now and in many instances and much longer that both the DNR and the EPA have known that Wisconsin does not issue water pollution permits that are fully compliant with the Clean Water Act,” Tressie Kamp, staff attorney for MEA, said.
The petition against the Wisconsin DNR goes back to a letter from 2011 to the DNR that listed 75 omissions and deviations from federal requirements, according to the Lacrosse Tribune. An EPA spokesman said that 40 of those errors have been resolved.
“Is the state being held accountable or not?” MEA director Kimberlee Wright said. “Without effective government, we are compounding what our children and grandchildren will face in a world increasingly short of drinking water.”
Former DNR secretary George Meyer, who looked over the petition, was surprised by the scope of the allegations against the Wisconsin DNR, according to the Lacrosse Tribune.
“When it’s all put together like this, it’s hard to fathom how this could happen,” he said.
However, Adrian Stocks, the DNR section chief for wastewater permitting, explained how the charges may not be as serious as they seem at first.
“Many of these end up being cases where we are rectifying our language to match federal language. A lot of them aren’t real substantial changes,” he said.
The petition itself refers to a much deeper problem, though. It claims that the governor of Wisconsin and the state legislature have limited the DNR’s ability to the point where they can no longer make informed decisions on water pollution issues.
If the petition does catch the attention of the EPA, it may take some time before we see any of the effects, however. Stocks said that changing a rule takes a minimum of 27 months if “everything falls into the right place,” according to the Lacrosse Tribune. The alternate route would be an emergency rule-making process that was previously implemented for making changes to air pollution laws in Wisconsin. Stocks said that no emergency measures have been taken on water pollution yet.
Wright said, “[The petitioners are] asking the DNR to do a better job issuing their water pollution permits. If that can’t happen and if that can’t happen quickly, petitioners are asking EPA to start the process of taking back DNR’s authority to issue permits.”
Sources:
http://www.wkow.com/story/30310980/2015/10/20/petition-filed-with-epa-seeks-cleaner-water-in-wisconsin
http://midwestadvocates.org/news-events/news/petition-to-epa-wisconsins-fails-to-comply-with-clean-water-act/
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/state-and-regional/petition-urges-epa-to-force-wisconsin-to-obey-water-law/article_80578cd2-99e3-52e3-9020-3b2e0010d187.html