Who pays for the environment
It’s a new year and residents in area villages are paying higher rates for sewer service. These higher rates (with more rate increases coming in the next year or two) will help each local village government pay off new wastewater treatment plants. The plants will replace older, barely functioning facilities, while at the same time, meet the state Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) limits for phosphorus discharge into local creeks and rivers.
It’s a good thing. The grandmas, uncles, single moms and little league coaching dads in these villages are paying higher bills to try and keep the environment clean. This is not talk. Actual money is handed over to limit discharges that are meticulously measured and reported to the DNR.
You’d think this environmental stewardship would get a little respect from our state leadership. It gets none.
As proof, we need only to listen to what Gov. Tony Evers told the Dairy Business Association at their “Dairy Strong” winter conference held in Madison on Jan. 20.
The governor said all of the things you’d expect from a Madison politician running for re-election in the fall. He said the dairy industry was a “major part of Wisconsin culture, history and everything else” and what he wants to do is take some of the state’s surplus and “invest” in rural transportation, high speed internet, dairy processing grants and more farmer-led watershed conservation groups.
“We have readily available resources that could be invested to help support our farmers, our families, our dairy and agriculture industries,” Evers said.
We can’t fault the governor for trying to win votes (our bet is that dairy farmers will largely vote Republican in any event) but we have huge problems with Evers trying to grow an industry without first dealing with the environmental problems the current industry burdens the state with.
To do so forgets the people in every municipality within the Wisconsin River Basin, who will be paying more in sewer charges because of poorly regulated agriculture, including the dairy industry.
We get doubly frustrated when Evers would crow about investing in watershed conservation groups and, additionally, county conservation staff, when it is proven that this standard approach does not produce significant, measurable improvements in water quality. Just the opposite.
Local people should be congratulated for their environmental contribution. Instead, Evers will take the state surplus these people helped generate and grow the dairy industry in a way that would erase whatever environmental progress the municipalities will make.
The state’s failure to address environmental problems in Wisconsin is a travesty. Republicans in the legislature, cozy with ag groups, can be blamed but Democrats like Evers, who finds the status quo acceptable, can be faulted, too. The state has to own up to its utter lack of leadership on the environmental front. The DNR has forced every municipal sewer utility in the Wisconsin River Basin to meet new, expensive phosphorus limits in their Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (WPDES) permit, but it has done nothing to adjust phosphorus limits for large dairies, who need to have this same permit to operate. It’s an outrage.
Maybe the U.S. Congress in a new Farm Bill will throw cash at farmers to plant cover crops and graze animals in order to sequester carbon and improve surface water, but maybe not. Build Back Better didn’t pass. Without federal leadership, it is up to the state to deal with ag pollution. It has to end its old approach and concentrate on large dairies which, according to USDA, account for 73 percent of dairy production. The state gives these dairies their license to operate. It is the state’s job to make sure the environment is protected.
Otherwise, it is only the people in cities and villages who are digging deep in their pockets to protect the environment.
Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
