Author Archives: samweis

Assembly Mining Committee set to Meet on Wednesday

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The Penokee Hills, Image: Mario Quintana

The Penokee Hills, Image: Mario Quintana

On Wednesday, the Assembly Mining Committee is meeting to discuss the mining bill. While they say they’ll consider changes to the environmentally devastating mining bill, we know that the only way to “fix” this mining bill is to start from scratch.

As written, AB 1/SB 1 (the mining bill) cuts the public out of the process and ties the hands of the DNR in protecting our air and water. It grossly rolls back current protections for wetlands, groundwater and lakes, rivers and streams. In short, it swings the door wide open for environmentally destructive mining in our Northwoods and beyond.

Tell your legislator today: Don’t roll back environmental protections for mining.

We know that just one legislator’s vote can make the difference on this devastating legislation and over the next month or so, we need you to continually remind your legislators of what’s at stake to make the difference on this issue. They need to hear from people like me and you, people who don’t want our Northwoods sold to the highest bidder or our pristine waters turned to a toxic stew. From here on out, every voice, every contact matters.

Tell your legislators we don’t want to sacrifice our health, air, water and special places for mining companies – keep mining legislation strong and protective!

Post contributed by Sam Weis, communications director.

Hearing Scheduled for the Mining Bill

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The Penokee Hills, Image: Mario Quintana

The Penokee Hills, Image: Mario Quintana

We’ve just learned that legislators will hold a hearing on the Open Pit
Mining Bill at the State Capitol on Wednesday, January 23, from 9am to 9pm.

If passed, the Open Pit Mining Bill would let mining companies fill our lake beds, contaminate our drinking water, and dump toxic mine waste in wetlands
and flood plains. Filling hearing rooms with people like you helped defeat
the mining bill last session, and it can happen again.

Please help protect Wisconsin’s waters and the health of our families by attending
the hearing on Wednesday, January 23, and telling legislators NO to the Open
Pit Mining Bill.

Coming to a hearing on a controversial issue like this is not easy and is
time consuming. However, it is the best hope we have of turning legislators
against this bill.

This could be your only chance to have your voice heard on the record in the
fight against the Open-Pit Mining Bill! Join us in room 411 S. at the State
Capitol this Wednesday!

For more information about the hearing, click here.

Planning on attending? Email jlynes@cleanwisconsin.org, so we can keep track of who will be there!

Post contributed by Sam Weis, Communications Director.

Digging Deeper into Focus on Energy

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Focus on Energy is a well-known state-wide program that has helped homeowners and businesses save millions of dollars on energy bills. Clean Wisconsin’s Keith Reopelle joined a panel on WISC’s For the Record this Sunday to discuss this successful program.

Check it out here:

In divisive times, a love of Wisconsin unites

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After months and months of battles in the Capitol, recall elections, and political attack ads, Wisconsin has become known as a state bruised by deep political divides where neighbors and friends are pitted against one another.

Unfortunately, this perception is all too accurate. For more than a year, we have focused on a few things that bitterly divide us as Wisconsinites, while forgetting about the many things that unite us. With the recall election behind us, we now have the opportunity to step back and rediscover those things that bring us together instead of tear us apart.

It is not being a political battleground state that makes Wisconsin special, it is the celebration of cheese, beer, bratwurst and the Green Bay Packers. It is getting out to enjoy a fish fry with friends, and knowing your neighbor is always there to reach out a helping hand. It is a love of all of the things that make our state such a wonderful place to live – the beautiful forests, beaches, state parks, and thousands of lakes, rivers and streams.

At Clean Wisconsin, we have fought for over four decades to protect Wisconsin’s wonderful environment. We do this work so that we can catch fish that are safe to eat, our families can enjoy a day on a beach that’s not closed, we can swim in clean lakes, drink clean water, and breathe clean, fresh air when we step outside or go for a hike.

And these are things that almost all of us can agree are important. A bipartisan poll taken in January of this year found that nearly 9 out of 10 Wisconsin voters want our state to increase investments in solar and wind energy, and 4 out of 5 would like our state to require that 30 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources.

Now is the time to stop focusing on our differences and and let our collective love of Wisconsin unite us. At Clean Wisconsin, that means fighting to protect the wonderful places that are special to all of us, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum.

-Post contributed by Sam Weis, communications director

After voting, chance to witness rare astronomical event

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Venus is seen in front of sun

Image: Nasa

The lead-up to the recall election between Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has caused exhausting struggles for Wisconsin voters, who have been forced to distinguish the correct path among two candidates that tout a variety of fundamental differences. Amid tense campaign rhetoric that will culminate with today’s election, there is still something larger that can put it all in perspective: a once-in-a-lifetime astronomic event — the Venus Transit.

A “transit” happens when a planet, either Mercury or Venus, moves between us and the Sun. To viewers, the planet appears to be a small black dot appearing across the surface of the Sun. These rare events helped the world’s earliest astronomers figure out the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Viewing the transit of Venus would be a fun outdoor activity to do today after voting — and it’s equally historic. An event like this won’t happen again for more than 100 years.

There are more than a few similarities between today’s recall election and the Venus transit, which can be seen in Wisconsin around 4:45 p.m. Only two U.S. governors have ever been successfully recalled, North Dakota governor Lynn Frazier in 1921 and California’s Gray Davis in 2003. As a result, Wisconsin’s governor recall will be the second this decade, but only the third-ever in American history. Weirdly, tonight’s solar-planetary event is also the second this decade (there was another as recently as 2004), yet there have been a mere six other transits since they were first observed in 1631.

Another strange coincidence is that 1631 was also the year when the idea of a recall first cropped up in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the original thirteen colonies on what would become the United States, penned the right to recall elected officials into its early laws.

Easy on the eyes

The Venus transit will undoubtedly be beautiful, but don’t gaze at our sister planet without proper protection. Sunglasses won’t cut it. Three main tips for armchair transit viewers:

1) Buy number 14 welder’s glasses from a local hardware or home improvement store, the number is very important since they must be dark enough to prevent eye damage. Eclipse glasses purchased for the solar eclipse on May 20 will work just as well, too, but do not wear these while also looking through a telescope as this will melt the glasses. Some local planetariums, museums and observatories are hosting events and will be selling glasses: Look below for a list of some viewing opportunities in Wisconsin.

2) If you plan to look through your own home-use telescope, make sure it has a solar filter. Be wary of ones that screw on, because they can crack under the intense heat of a transit.

3) Although making a pinhole or mirror projector will cause you to lose a lot of the quality in viewing the transit, these are safer methods since you do not look directly at the Sun.

Where and when to view in Wisconsin

The 2004 transit was only visible only in the eastern half of the United States, but this year’s will be slightly better. It will begin in late afternoon and end after sundown. West Coast observers will see more than those in the East, so here in Wisconsin it is anybody’s guess how clear viewing will be. The staff of Washburn Observatory in Madison has joked that, in case of rain, the makeup date will be December 10, 2117, the date of the next transit.

Appleton/Menasha: Barlow Planetarium at UW-Fox Valley Appleton
New London: Mosquito Hill Nature Center Belgium
Dodgeville: Governor Dodge State Park
Eau Claire: Epiphany Lutheran Church
Fish Creek: Olde Stone Quarry Park
Franklin: Froemming Park Green Bay
New London: Mosquito Hill Nature Center
Hartford: Pike Lake State Park
Kenosha: Kemper Center at Carthage College
La Crosse: Grandad Bluff
Lake Church/Belgium: Harrington Beach State Park
Lake Geneva: Big Foot Beach State Park
Madison: UW Space Place, Washburn Observatory
Menasha/Appleton: Barlow Planetarium at UW-Fox Valley
Middleton: Keva Sports Center
Milwaukee: Milwaukee Public Library rooftop, Manfred Olson Planetarium, Urban Ecology Center hosting event in Riverside Park
Mount Horeb: Donald Park
New Berlin: Milwaukee Astronomical Society
New London/Green Bay/Appleton: Mosquito Hill Nature Center
Newburg: Riveredge Nature Center
Racine: Modine-Bensted Observatory
Two Rivers: Woodland Dunes Nature Center & Preserve
Williams Bay: Yerkes Observatory Virtual stargazing

These organizations are filming the Venus transit event at locations around the world, and will stream live footage on their websites tonight: Slooh Space Camera, Astronomers Without Borders, and NASA.

Also, an astronaut who is on board the International Space Station, Don Pettit, aims to become the first person ever to capture a transit of Venus on film — from outer space.

So today, make sure to get out and vote in Wisconsin, and don’t miss your opportunity to see an equally rare astronomical event!

Contributed by Sarah Witman – Communications intern

Explore the Iron Hills – Art Exhibit in the Capitol

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The Penokee Hills, Image: Mario Quintana

Residents in and around Madison will have a great opportunity to see exactly what is at stake in the debate to change our mining laws, when an art exhibit called Explore the Iron Hills opens in the Capitol tomorrow (June 2). The exhibit features the work of 18 artists who seek to capture the heart of the Penokee Range in photography, paintings, drawings, poetry and more.

Wisconsin’s eyes turned to Northern Wisconsin’s Penokee Range over a year ago when a mining company called Gogebic Taconite proposed to build a massive open-pit iron mine in this pristine area. The debate stalled after a bill proposed by the company that would have silenced the voice of the public, rolled back environmental protections and eliminated accountability for mining companies failed to pass the Senate and Gogebic Taconite left the state

Despite the departure of Gogebic Taconite, many Wisconsin leaders have indicated they would like to revisit mining legislation in an attempt to lure other mining companies back to the state.

Explore the Iron Hills will give residents the opportunity to better understand the beauty and culture of the Penokee Range, and thus infuse more context into the legislative debate in Madison. An opening reception for the exhibit will take place tomorrow, June 2nd, from 11am to 1pm on the 2nd floor of the Capitol Rotunda, and will be available for viewing through June 9th.

We hope you have the opportunity to check out this great exhibit!

-Post Contributed by Sam Weis, Communications Director

Extreme weather and climate change: Connecting the dots

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credit: Wonder_al via Flickr creative commons

Finally, some good news about public opinion and climate change!

A new poll conducted by Yale and George Mason University shows that a majority of Americans connect extreme weather events with climate change.  Of those surveyed, a 2 to 1 majority agree that our warm winter and record-high summer temperatures were most likely made worse by climate change.

The survey also asked about individual experiences with extreme weather – Midwesterners are most likely to report having experienced extreme high winds, rainstorms, snowstorms, and tornadoes. But the most surprising finding was that 35% of respondents said they’d personally been harmed by extreme weather in the last year.

Overall, the results seem to contrast the drop in concern about climate change over the past few years, but perhaps having direct experience of potential consequences of climate change makes us more likely to connect the dots. What do you think?

For the full report: http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Climate-Preparedness.pdf

- Post contributed by Katy Walter, clean energy specialist.

Digging Up Dirt: Acid Mine Drainage 101

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-Kenyon College’s Microbe Wiki, Acid Mine Drainage

See this? It’s not lava, or blood. Water laden with metal particles turns a bright, rusty color — not unlike an old faucet. It kills living organisms that live in streams, and endangers the drinking water of nearby residents. This phenomenon is happening all over the world, and it’s called acid mine drainage.

With current mining practices, where there is a mine that disrupts sulfide materials, there is also a high potential for Acid Mine Drainage. Acid Mine Drainage is one consequence of mining that has become a major concern for Wisconsin residents during recent debates over mining legislation.

But how does it happen; how does a clear Northwoods stream become a Day-Glo nightmare?

The mining process begins when large amounts of waste rock are removed from above iron ore deposits, then dumped into a nearby basin. Once iron ore is removed, it is mixed with huge volumes of water and separated by magnets. The slushy mixture of water and waste rock (known as tailings) is then also dumped into basins near the mine site.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the end of it. Often, waste rock and tailings contain sulfides disturbed during mining that react with oxygen and water — creating acid. That orange ooze blocks sunlight like a thick, wool blanket, and anything in the ecosystem that can’t handle the higher acidity levels will die. We’re talking plants, fish and other animals — plus acid isn’t the best for humans, either, as you might imagine.

When it comes to sulfides draining into water, here’s the rundown according to the EPA. Cadmium can cause damage to kidneys, which we rely on to filter our blood. Long-term exposure to copper can lead to liver and kidney damage, and upset stomachs with short-term exposure. Lead causes developmental disabilities. Iron in water does not directly cause health problems, the Wisconsin DNR says, but can cause discoloration in drinking water.

Any of these sulfides could turn up in a mine. And whether the acid forms right away or years later, things don’t look good for the environment. This uncertainty of the timeframe is exactly why water quality of the surrounding area must be monitored and treated for decades after a mine has closed.

Wren Falls on the Tyler Forks, Sam Weis

The high risk of acid mine drainage at open-pit mine sites is one of many important reasons Clean Wisconsin fights hard to make sure Wisconsin’s mining laws remain strong and continue to protect our environment and the health of our families. Especially when you consider the beauty of the area just below the proposed mine site.

 

-Digging Up Dirt is a series of blog posts that highlight the environmental dangers of mining. This post was contributed by Sarah Witman and includes research by Laura Green.

 

American Lung Association Quantifies Deaths from Power Plant Pollution

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Yesterday’s announcement from the EPA that it would set carbon standards for new power plants was a breath of fresh air for us, and this map explains why. Wisconsin has a pretty big circle, which means we’re seeing our share of deaths caused by toxic power plant pollution:

 

 

Photo: American Lung Association

It should be noted that the new rules only apply to future power plants, so we won’t be seeing this circle get any smaller until old coal plants are retired or new rules that apply to existing power plants are implemented. Nonetheless, yesterday’s announcement is an important first step!

-Contributed by Katy Walter with content from the American Lung Association and Grist

End of Session Wrap-Up: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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When this Legislature began in January of 2011, we knew we had a challenge in front of us.  The session started out with attacks on our natural resources, which continued into the spring 2011 budget process, and lasted until the official end of the legislative session on March 16, 2012.

Throughout this session, we had faith that bipartisanship and the Wisconsin way of doing business would prevail.  While there were a few important instances of great bipartisanship, the session was mostly marked by a lack of compromise and an attempt to derail our natural resources in the name of economic development. At Clean Wisconsin, we know that a healthy environmental creates jobs.  Throughout this two-year session we have worked tirelessly to bring that perspective to the table.

Because of this approach, and through the hard work of many committed advocates, citizens and legislators, we were able to stop some of the most devastating environmental rollbacks from becoming reality. While there were other bills to impact our natural resources during this two year session, Clean Wisconsin focused the attention of our government relations, science, legal, communications, and energy teams as well as the attention of members like you to focus on the following issues

The Good

Maintaining Protective Mining Laws (Spring 2012) – It took a herculean effort to stop the Assembly open pit mine bill, but in the end we were successful! The bill rolled back environmental protections and cut the public out of the mining process.  While Clean Wisconsin is not against mining, we are against changing our laws for the profits of any company, especially an out-of-state company that clearly had no intention of mining responsibly.

Photo Credit: Mario Quintana

Keeping Phosphorus Out of Our Waters (Spring 2011) – We were able to quickly beat back the Governor’s attempt to delay implementation of Wisconsin’s phosphorus rule in his budget bill. Cooler heads prevailed and  key legislators realized that Wisconsin’s phosphorus rules are an innovative and cost-effective way to improve our water quality and prevent rivers, lakes and streams from being choked by algae largely caused by phosphorus discharges.

Recycling Program Saved (Spring 2011) – One of the more surprising attacks this session was on the popular recycling program.  Governor Walker’s budget last year originally proposed cutting all funding for local recycling programs.  The Legislature ultimately restored 60% of the funding, which will still result in cuts, but keeps Wisconsin’s recycling tradition alive.

Statewide Wind Siting Rules (Spring 2011 & 2012) – A year ago, a legislative committee voted to suspend Wisconsin’s uniform, statewide standards for siting wind energy systems, driving several wind companies out of Wisconsin.  Through a major effort by Clean Wisconsin, other advocates, and businesses to educate legislators, that rule was re-instated.  The rule will help lead our state to more development of clean and renewable wind energy rather than continuing to rely on dirty, out-of-state fossil fuels.

Energy efficiency for State Buildings (Spring 2011) – The budget included $100 million for energy efficiency upgrades at state buildings, including the University system.

Property-Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) (Winter 2012) – This bill will enhance opportunities for homeowners and businesses to borrow money to pay for energy improvements, and repay it via a special property assessment. PACE helps property owners get the upfront money to make energy efficient investments.

The Bad

credit: Wonder_al via Flickr creative commons

Fewer Wetlands = More Flooding (Winter 2012) – Two bills took aim at Wisconsin wetland laws this session and were signed into law.  One of the bills provided a special exemption from wetland protections for a parcel of land in Brown County to attract a Bass Pro Shop.  The Legislature then went on to draft another bill that overhauled Wisconsin’s carefully crafted wetland development laws.  By allowing developers to use mitigation as an option of first resort, rather than trying to avoid destroying the wetland, we will undoubtedly see a loss of high quality wetlands that protect our homes from flooding and provide valuable wildlife habitat.

Waterway Permitting (Winter 2012) -While greatly improved from the original bill which made drastic changes to waterway permitting, the final bill stills contains presumptive approval for waterway permits.  Presumptive approval means that if the timeline runs out on the DNR’s permit review, the permit is automatically approved.  It is a bad idea for natural resources protection.

Water Disinfection (Spring 2011) – This law ends the requirement for disinfection of municipal water supplies for virus protection. Without disinfection viruses can linger in public drinking water supplies undetected.

Allowing Canadian Hydroelectricity (Summer 2011) – This law allows Canadian hydroelectricity to qualify for our Renewable Portfolio Standard, likely reducing the amount of renewable energy produced in Wisconsin.

Cuts to Stewardship Program (Spring 2011)– The Stewardship program protects precious lands and open spaces for future generations, and was cut by $26 million in the budget last year.

Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements (PACE) (Spring 2011) – The budget eliminated the PACE program, which keeps farmland in production and away from development pressure.

The Ugly

Cuts to Focus on Energy (Spring 2011) – The budget cut $320 million from the statewide energy efficiency program that helps residents and businesses lower energy bills. Despite evidence of the program’s success, including a recent audit showing a $2.30 return on each dollar invested, and a push by clean energy businesses, the funding was not restored.

Denying High Speed Rail for Wisconsin (Winter 2011) – Governor Walker turned back $810 million in federal funding to build a high speed rail line between Madison and Milwaukee. This rail line would have helped reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and promote clean transportation options.

Concentrating Rule-Making Power (Winter 2011) – A new law will give the Governor broad authority over agency rule-making, including the ability to stop a rule from moving forward.  Rules provide the detailed regulations and standards for most environmental laws, and the increased gubernatorial power could lead to more political and partisan decisions on these important environmental standards.

Contributed by Amber Meyer Smith, government relations director