By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor
The first water pollution control act in Wisconsin was the 1862 Slaughterhouse Offal Act, which banned the dumping of slaughterhouse waste in surface waters.
Run that image around in your mind for a while. Once you have thought about that, fast-forward to the 1970s, when paper mills were identified as the highest polluters in the state. One company discharged 21,558,000 gallons of pulp and paper processing wastes into the Fox River each day.
In 1959, the state board of health was given the authority to order a city, village, or town sanitary district to construct wastewater treatment facilities. Wisconsin was the first state passing a law banning non-degradable detergents in 1963.
Brad Steinmetz of La Farge recalls canoeing as a boy in the Kickapoo near La Farge. As he canoed, the contents of toilets from upstream floated past. It was good motivation to stay in the canoe.
You would think clean water wouldn’t be a partisan issue. And, in fact, it was not. The formation of the EPA had bipartisan support when President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Act into law in 1970.
Though many in the private sector were opposed to the new legislation, the conventional wisdom was that it was a fad.
Ah, never trust a hippie in sandals. Instead of going away, the environmental movement gave us Earth Day, now celebrated in 193 countries.
Most federal agencies generate some controversy but the EPA spends a lot of time in the crossfire. Controversy will likely be in high gear with the appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the agency. A large rollback of employees and programs is likely under Pruitt, who sued the EPA numerous times as Oklahoma’s attorney general. A climate-change skeptic, Pruitt strikes fear into environmentalists.
As bad as it sounds, we’ve been here before. Perhaps even worse.
Wikipedia reports this on the mother of the most recent Supreme Court appointment:
“EPA director Anne M. Gorsuch, appointed by Ronald Reagan, resigned under fire in 1983 during a scandal over mismanagement of a $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste dumps. Gorsuch based her administration of the EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states. She believed that the EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22 percent, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating. Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the agency.
“In 1982 Congress charged that the EPA had mishandled the $1.6 billion toxic waste Superfund and demanded records from Gorsuch. Gorsuch refused and became the first agency director in U.S. history to be cited for contempt of Congress.”
As you might expect, an agency with more than 15,000 employees has its share of blunders. Most tragic was the fumbling of the EPA in the Flint, Mich., water supply.
Congress intended the EPA to supply enforcement when states failed to perform their duties. Some would argue they overreached, while others asset that the states have “under” reached.
Wisconsin has been steadily rolling back environmental regulations, and the once-feared DNR appears to have far fewer teeth than once.
One-third of Kewaunee County wells are polluted, a condition resulting from what a jury called “massive regulatory failure” by the DNR.
The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism reports that mercury taints our fish, nitrates, pesticides and endocrine disruptors are seeping into private well water, and trout streams are running dry.
In December, the center reported on high levels of lead in Wisconsin schools and day care centers. There is a lack of testing for lead in drinking water consumed by children while away from home. Federal regulations enforced by the state of Wisconsin do not require most schools orday care centers to test at all. A 2016 USA Today investigation found that an estimated 90 percent of schools nationally are not required to test their water.
There has been confusion over proper lead testing procedures at some schools, day care centers and public water systems in Wisconsin, as the center has reported. This year, the state Department of Natural Resources waited nine months to send an official notice to public water system operators that the EPA had updated its testing recommendations in response to flaws uncovered by Flint.
If there is a bright note, it’s that citizens are expressing their frustration with government’s failure to enforce safe water regulations. On Wednesday busloads of citizens plan to storm the capitol and demand legislators address these issues.
If Citizens Water Lobby Day does nothing, it may remind our elected representatives that they are shirking their responsibility and it is time restore Wisconsin’s reputation as one of the most environmentally friendly states in the country.