Desperate to get a handle on rising property insurance costs driven by natural disasters, some state lawmakers are opening up a new line of attack in the effort to force oil companies to bear the cost of climate change effects. 

In three states, Democratic lawmakers introduced bills this session that would allow insurance companies or state attorneys general to take action against oil companies to offset the rising costs of insurance. 

While none of the measures became law this session, they signal the increasing urgency in states where wildfires, floods and other disasters have driven up the cost of insurance premiums and led some insurers to stop writing new policies. 

The proposals follow other state-led efforts to demand payment from fossil fuel producers for the mounting damages caused by climate change. States and municipalities have filed more than three dozen lawsuits over the industry’s role in the climate crisis, claiming companies violated a variety of laws, including consumer protection, public nuisance, failure to warn, fraud and racketeering.

Meanwhile, a handful of states have passed or introduced “climate Superfund” bills that use attribution science — a new field of research — to calculate the cost of disasters and charge fossil fuel companies for their role in causing them. 

Those efforts have drawn fierce opposition and legal challenges from oil companies and conservative groups. 

Now, some Democrats are using a similar premise to try to put large oil companies on the hook for the fast-growing insurance crisis. 

In many states, property insurance costs have skyrocketed as insurance companies have paid out increasing claims for wildfires, hurricanes and floods. Some insurers have stopped writing policies in certain areas. 

California and some other places have seen a surge of new policies on state-backed “last resort” insurance plans after residents failed to find coverage on the private market. California’s program, known as the FAIR Plan, was hit with billions in losses and sought a massive rate hike following the Los Angeles wildfires in 2025. 

A bill in California would empower the state attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover insurance costs. That measure failed to advance out of committee last month, with Republicans and some Democrats expressing concerns about fuel prices among other issues. 

A bill in Hawaii would allow insurance companies to seek damages from fossil fuel companies for their role in causing disasters worsened by climate change. Any proceeds gathered from actions against polluters would be factored into insurance rates. 

The bill passed both the House and Senate, but failed to advance when a conference committee ran out of time before a deadline earlier this month, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. 

“[T]he largest oil and gas corporations, who knowingly contributed to the drought conditions that made the Maui fires worse, pay nothing while continuing to rake in billions of dollars in profit every year,” Democratic state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole wrote in a Honolulu Civil Beat op-ed. “Hawaiʻi taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for Big Oil’s deception.”

Meanwhile, a similar bill in New York, allowing both insurance companies and the state attorney general to take action against oil companies over insurance costs, has been introduced but has not yet had a hearing in committee.

As with all legislation targeting the fossil fuel industry, the insurance bills have encountered fierce opposition and powerful lobbying campaigns. If enacted, the proposals would undoubtedly face lawsuits. Fossil fuel companies have long argued that they extracted and sold their products while following a suite of federal regulations, insulating them from state claims of harm. 

States have countered that the companies knew about the dangers of climate change but lied to the public, noting the successful campaign to hold tobacco companies accountable for deception even though their products were sold legally. 

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

All three members of the Public Service Commission criticized the lack of transparency from Meta and Alliant Energy during a meeting Thursday in which the body approved a contract for the social media giant to obtain power for its planned data center in Beaver Dam. 

Meta is in the process of spending more than $1 billion to construct a hyperscale data center campus that, when completed, would use six to eight times more power than the city of Beaver Dam’s current energy load. 

Like similar massive data center projects across the state, Meta’s Beaver Dam project has drawn opposition from local residents. For months, the project was shrouded in secrecy with Meta operating under the name Degas LLC. Opponents have complained about the lack of openness, the massive use of energy and the impact the construction and operation of the center could have on the community. 

PSC Chair Summer Strand said in her opening remarks she didn’t understand “why it needed to be this difficult” to achieve a transparent process. 

“To me, transparency is not a cliche, feel good, bare minimum, check the box concept,” Strand said. “If there’s one takeaway from our discussion and decisions today I want it to be clear that, whether you’re a large load customer coming into Wisconsin for the first time, or regulated entity familiar with our process, transparency — and by that I mean actual and real transparency — is the foundational expectation and a necessity.”

Commissioner Kristy Nieto said in her opening remarks Thursday morning that the case is one of the “most consequential” decisions the PSC has seen. 

“It bears repeating, existing Wisconsin customers should not pay a single cent to subsidize the service of data centers, not now and not decades from now,” Nieto said. “This means these very large customers must bear the full cost of the infrastructure required to serve them — generation, transmission and distribution — and that those costs must be fully and transparently assigned.” 

The three members of the commission lamented the redactions that had initially been made to the documents submitted in the case — which were later removed after objections from outside parties including members of the public, Clean Wisconsin and the Citizens Utility Board. 

The commissioners also decided that moving forward, hyperscale data centers constructed within Alliant’s territory must pay for and receive energy through a standardized tariff, rather than a one-off contract negotiated without public scrutiny. Late last month, the PSC made a similar ruling for large customers in WE Energies territory. 

Under the PSC order, Alliant will have to develop a tariff that applies for any data centers using more than 100 megawatts of energy. The Meta campus is expected to use 220 megawatts. 

“This is not going to be the last data center contract we see from this utility, and I will say Alliant needs standard guidelines and rules for its data center customers,” Nieto said. “A clear public tariff would create consistent, transparent rates and rules for future data centers, instead of handling each one through separate, confidential negotiations.”

While Alliant was ordered to develop a tariff rate for large customers, the PSC on Thursday approved the contract negotiated between Meta and Alliant with some modifications meant to insulate regular customers from bearing the costs of Meta’s energy use and any related infrastructure upgrades by Alliant. Nieto said denying the agreement while the tariff rate is developed would have allowed Meta to operate for up to a year without any guardrails, an outcome she said didn’t think would benefit anyone.

Brett Korte, a staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said the PSC putting a halt to the development of a case-by-case patchwork of data center energy deals in Alliant’s territory — which covers parts of more than a dozen Wisconsin counties — will protect Wisconsinites.

“Tariffs create a consistent, transparent framework that helps protect the public interest,” Korte said in a statement. “Without them, Wisconsin risks a patchwork system where costs and responsibilities are unclear and potentially shifted onto other utility customers.”

After the meeting, consumer advocacy and environmental groups were complimentary of the PSC’s actions.

“Today, the Public Service Commission highlighted the importance of transparency and oversight: accountability is a must, and it cannot be bypassed,” Britnie Remer, organizing director of climate advocacy group 350 Wisconsin. “The Commission also recognized that protecting Wisconsinites from subsidizing billion-dollar data centers needs to be front and center when it comes to these massive projects. With more data center proposals inevitable, requiring tariff filings in the future will ensure large energy customers pay for their costs, not our families and small businesses.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Early last month, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced a deal to add 100 acres to  Devil’s Lake State Park, expanding recreational opportunities at one of the DNR’s most popular properties. The move also calls attention to the dwindling life of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship grant program that made the acquisition possible. 

The nearly 40-year-old stewardship grant program has long been a bipartisan success story, allowing the purchase and protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of land across the state. 

Growing opposition to the program within a subset of the Republicans in control of both chambers of the state Legislature — stemming from a combination of antagonism toward land conservation and concerns about the property tax base of Northwoods communities — stymied multiple legislative efforts to re-authorize the program beyond its set expiration at the end of June. 

The Devil’s Lake purchase marks what could be one of the last major actions of the stewardship grant program, which has allocated more than $1.2 billion to conserve more than 700,000 acres of Wisconsin land over its lifetime. 

The program had about $5.5 million remaining as of early April, according to DNR spokesperson Molly Meister. That money is divided into a number of categories, with $2.9 million earmarked for acquiring general easements — agreements with landowners that conserve and protect the land without transferring ownership — and $1.3 million set aside for general land acquisitions. Another $666,667 is meant for acquiring easements specifically for the Ice Age Trail, plus $8,333 for Ice Age Trail land acquisitions. An additional $600,000 is set aside for acquiring land for county forests. 

Meister told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that the money set aside for the DNR to acquire land itself is expected to be fully used by the time the program expires, while the money set aside for easements will largely be used, but the exact amount is dependent on the agency finding interested landowners. 

“We are currently negotiating with landowners who have expressed a willing interest in selling their land to the department and anticipate all Stewardship general fee acquisition funds to be encumbered before the end of June,” she said.  Easement acquisitions, Ice Age Trail (both fee and easement), and County Forest acquisition is a similar process, but as you have noted, depends on willing landowners looking to acquire an easement versus an outright purchase in the remaining months. We expect a significant amount, but not all, of these funds will be encumbered before the end of June.”

While the program is set to expire, there are ongoing Knowles-Nelson projects around the state that have already been funded through the grant program yet won’t be completed for a few years. Meister said that program staff will close out those active projects before moving to other jobs within the DNR. The rest of the agency has also faced significant cutbacks in recent decades, due to budget constraints and Republican opposition to environmental protection initiatives. 

“It will take several years to close out currently active projects. Staff will continue to work on finishing up these projects,” Meister said. “After these projects are closed out, DNR staff will continue working on other department priorities. Over the past 20 years, we have lost over 500 FTE positions, so there is always more work to do.”

David Grusznski, the Milwaukee programs director for The Conservation Fund, the land conservation non-profit that facilitated the DNR’s purchase of the Devil’s Lake property, told the Examiner that through the stewardship program, the DNR has often been able to function as the last piece of the funding puzzle for projects that conserve land and provide access to that land for the public. 

“It’s very rare that one pot of money funds an entire acquisition, so money is always being leveraged with other people’s money,” he said. “So without the state stewardship funding being able to bring in a portion of that money, we, a lot of partners, are going to be unable to leverage federal dollars, state, city or county dollars that may be available. And we’re going to have to really rely pretty heavily on private fundraising, which is going to be extremely difficult.”

Now, he said, non-profits and land trusts across the state are coming to terms with the pending loss — which will push planned projects years into the future while putting organizations across the state in direct competition over the same pot of private philanthropy money. 

“I think this is all really just starting to set in with a lot of people across the state,” Grusznski said, “as far as the money is not there — what do we do?”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

A new effort to force states to affirm the Trump administration’s views on DEI, transgender athletes and immigration when signing contracts with the U.S. Forest Service is threatening millions of dollars in wildfire grant funding and fire reduction projects on federal lands.

Some liberal states can’t sign the documents because the policies clash with state law, forestry experts say.

Already, at least one state is reporting that the new rules have stalled work to reduce wildfire risk and assist with projects on national forest lands. Other states say the requirements are so vague that they don’t know how to follow them. And some timber industry leaders believe the standoff could cut into their revenues.

“We’re kind of at an impasse,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “It’s already starting to slow down or shut down work.”

The update to the requirements governing federal partnerships comes even as many Western states brace for a brutal wildfire season, following a winter that brought record high temperatures and a paltry snowpack.

On Dec. 31, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins with little fanfare issued new general terms and conditions governing partnerships for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Spelled out in dozens of pages of fine print are new restrictions that require partner organizations to pledge compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

The new conditions apply to all USDA agencies, but the department hasn’t yet said whether it will enforce them for food assistance programs.

The agency, in a news release announcing the changes, framed the new terms as an effort to streamline regulations, protect national security and “eliminate radical left ideology.”

The Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service did not grant Stateline interview requests.

At the Forest Service, which is housed within USDA, the new policy applies to a wide range of grants and contracts aimed at reducing wildfire risk, restoring forest health and boosting timber production.

Forestry veterans say the new conditions have created an impasse with some Democratic-led states.

“It is significantly disruptive,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “It’s clearly targeted at Democratic states and Democratic partners.”

A coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in March, claiming that the restrictions are unlawful. The lawsuit has largely focused on federal food assistance programs provided by the agency, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program.

In an April court filing, Rollins said the new conditions had not yet been applied to food assistance programs, and that the agency had not made a “final decision” to cut off nutrition funding for states that don’t comply.

Forest Service programs

But the policy is already having an impact on some programs managed by the Forest Service.

Washington state has been unable to issue the latest round of Community Wildfire Defense Grants, a federal program that helps neighborhoods and towns reduce fuels and fortify homes in wildfire-prone areas.

Geissler, the state forester, said roughly 10 communities in Washington were set to receive large grants under the program, but the federal funding has been held up by the state’s refusal to sign the new terms and conditions.

“This is another example of the federal administration cutting off its nose to spite its face,” said David Perk, coordinator of the Washington State Lands Working Group, a coalition that weighs in on state forestry policies. “To add the additional layer of denying wildfire funding, that’s insult to injury.”

The stalemate also threatens work that the U.S. Forest Service increasingly relies on states and other partners to do in national forests. The agency has leaned heavily on tools, such as the Good Neighbor Authority, that enable state agencies to carry out wildfire mitigation, restoration and timber projects on federal lands. Many observers believe the recently announced Forest Service reorganization signals that states will play an even bigger role in the years ahead.

But now those partnerships are in jeopardy. According to Geissler, Washington state can’t sign new Good Neighbor Authority agreements due to the new conditions.

“We’re trying to sign off on agreements for another chunk of work, and we can’t get it signed,” he said. “If you are looking for work to be done by the state on federal lands, we’re not doing it. If we’re not able to sign, both sides lose.”

Washington state has spent millions of dollars on projects to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health on national forest lands. With the new ideology requirements, the feds are essentially turning away free help, said Bonnie, the former natural resources official. That’s especially damaging, he noted, because Trump’s cuts to the Forest Service’s workforce and budget have further diminished what the agency can accomplish on its own.

The Trump administration is “damaging their own constituents,” he said. “There are a lot of conservative voters in rural Washington who want to see partnerships that reduce the probability of extreme wildfire. This will stop that. It makes absolutely no sense.”

Washington state is still working on Forest Service projects signed under previous agreements. But without new agreements, work on the ground could stall in six to eight months, Geissler said.

State responses

Nearly 20 state forestry officials contacted by Stateline did not respond or declined interview requests, citing the ongoing litigation and the need to maintain a working relationship with the Forest Service.

But one timber industry leader said Oregon was facing similar disruptions that prevented the state from signing new agreements with the Forest Service.

“This will lead to reduced revenues for (state forestry agencies),” Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said in an email to Stateline. “As partners, our industry will be impacted if it disrupts or cancels current or future timber sales under these contracts.”

While most state forestry officials have been unwilling to publicly comment about the situation, several have filed legal declarations in support of the multistate lawsuit challenging the new terms and conditions.

Scott Bowen, director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, wrote in a declaration that his agency has more than $87 million from active grants with the Forest Service. Those grants cover wildfire response, forest health, invasive species, urban tree canopy and revegetation, among other issues.

“If these funds were withheld, DNR would have to shut down critical capabilities to assist rural communities with fire preparedness and response,” Bowen wrote.

Bowen added that the Forest Service has already said one program, a grant to protect environmentally important forests from being converted to a nonforest use, will be subject to the new terms and conditions.

In the lawsuit, many state officials said that the new compliance requirements are so vague that they’re nearly impossible to follow. Several of the legal declarations note that the new conditions do not explain what it means to “promote gender ideology,” a practice the Department of Agriculture now seeks to ban.

Many states also objected to the agency’s requirement that no one in the country illegally obtain “taxpayer-funded benefits.” Josh Kurtz, secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, noted in a declaration that it would be impossible to confirm that grants to reduce wildfire risk, expand urban tree canopy and improve forest health do not benefit Marylanders who lack legal immigration status.

Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for public employees, said the new terms are aimed at directing a greater share of federal funding to Trump’s political allies.

“You’re going to see a bifurcation where you’ll have red states getting grants and blue states won’t,” he said.

‘More questions than answers’

In March, the National Association of State Foresters sent a letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz expressing concerns about the new terms and conditions. Jason Hartman, the group’s president and the state forester of Kansas, described a chaotic situation.

“To date, the (Forest Service) has not provided adequate guidance or interpretation of the new (terms and conditions),” he wrote. “National-level meetings between State Foresters and the Forest Service have resulted in more questions than answers. State Foresters around the country have been given differing instructions and interpretations in different geographic locations.”

Hartman noted at least one instance in which a timber sale totaling 80 million board feet was held up by the new conditions. (That’s enough to build roughly 5,000 homes.) He asked the Forest Service to delay the effective date of the new conditions until the agency could provide more clarity.

He also outlined another set of issues causing problems for states. One major complication, he said, is the requirement that states receive federal approval before issuing any subawards or contracts. That has created a massive bureaucratic hassle, he wrote, in “direct conflict” with the Forest Service’s reliance on state partnerships to cut red tape.

The new terms also require environmental reviews for projects to be completed before partnership agreements can be signed. But Hartman noted that states often assist in those very environmental reviews, which they won’t be able to do if they can’t sign the agreements first.

Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris also noted that issue in an email to Stateline, saying she expected the Forest Service to update the environmental review section soon.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

The fate of most of the beagles held at Ridglan Farms took a turn Thursday, when animal welfare groups Center for a Humane Economy and Big Dog Ranch Rescue announced they had reached an agreement with the Dane County dog breeder and research facility to buy 1,500 of the beagles. The dogs will be transferred to the groups  for rehabilitation and adoption. Ridglan Farms, which both breeds beagles for testing and maintains its own biomedical research facility, has been embroiled in controversy following multiple recent attempts by animal rights activists to breach the facility and free the beagles held inside. 

“This is a moment to celebrate that 1,500 dogs will soon know only the kindness of the most caring people and will be treated for the rest of their lives like little kings and queens,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy, at a press conference Thursday. “This life-saving project comes as we also charge ahead with our work to wind down the archaic and inhumane era of animal testing and embrace innovative 21st century strategies that do not harm and deliver more palliatives and cures to people.” 

Amy Good of the Dane County Humane Society said during the press conference that the Humane Society will stage 500 of the dogs. At least 50 of the dogs will be up for adoption in Dane County in the coming weeks, Good said. Another 300 dogs will go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Florida and Alabama. A nationwide network of partner organizations will help take in the remaining dogs.

During the press conference, Pacelle said that “Ridglan, to my vantage point, looks like it’s winding down operations.” In order to comply with a deal with prosecutors to avoid penalties for violations of Wisconsin animal cruelty laws, Ridglan is required to discontinue its beagle breeding program by July 1. The deal was established last year, after a judge found that probable cause existed that animal cruelty violations had occurred at Ridglan, and appointed a special prosecutor to oversee the case. 

Animal rights activists have accused Ridglan of housing the beagles under inhumane conditions, and of subjecting them to painful experiments and procedures — including the removal of eyelids — without anesthesia. In March, a group of activists arrived at Ridglan and, using tools, breached its perimeter fence, and managed to enter one of the buildings housing beagles. The group managed to get 22 beagles out of the facility, eight of which were seized by law enforcement and returned to the farm. The activists argued that because Ridglan was in violation of animal cruelty laws, they had a right to rescue the beagles. 

About a month after the first action, a larger group numbering hundreds of people returned to Ridglan Farms but were confronted by law enforcement using rubber bullets and tear gas. Several people were injured and one man lost teeth during a beating by police, activists said. Activists filed a civil lawsuit over the use of force against the Dane County Sheriff’s Office. A lead organizer of the rescue operation, Wayne Hsiung of California, and three others were arrested and charged with felony burglary stemming from  the first break-in. 

While the recent dramatic actions and clashes with police garnered  national media attention, tensions over Ridglan had been brewing for years. 

Shannon Keith, founder and president of the Beagle Freedom Project, said that negotiations to get the 1,500 beagles out of Ridglan and into safe homes had been in the works for a long time. “We have built the infrastructure to not only rescue these dogs, but to give them full lives beyond the laboratory system,” Keith said in a statement Thursday. “Every one of these dogs will be treated as an individual deserving of care, healing, and a home.”

Eilene Ribbens, executive director of the Wisconsin Puppy Mill Project, and Pam McCloud Smith, executive director of the Dane County Humane Society, praised the deal to rehome the dogs. “We are proud to stand with the national organizations to help bring these dogs to safety,” said Ribbens. 

“This effort reflects the strength of collaboration across the animal welfare community,” said McCloud Smith. “Our focus is on ensuring these dogs receive the care, stability, and support they need to begin their new lives.” 

The dogs being taken from Ridglan have never been outdoors or seen grass, the animal welfare groups said. People who adopt the dogs will need to be patient with them and understand that each dog will need time to adjust. 

Pacelle said that the effectiveness of animal testing for human medicine and products is being increasingly questioned in the scientific community, and said that Ridglan’s practices are outdated. Pacelle said that, “the only way that we’re going to solve this problem is if the United States takes the next set of steps to defund grant-making to research institutions and others that are using beagles, and primates, and other animals.” 

On Wednesday, Congressman Mark Pocan added language to an amendment in the House Appropriations Committee markup of the agricultural funding bill for the 2027 fiscal year. The language would require the U.S. Department of Agriculture to review federal licenses of breeders that have lost their equivalent state-level breeding license, and to take action if it becomes clear that they are no longer eligible for a federal license. The amendment was directly inspired by Ridglan, which maintained a relationship with the federal government despite the controversy surrounding its facility, and its violations of state law. 

“If a breeder is turning in their state license due to code violations, the USDA should at least take a look to see if they should be allowed to continue to have this privilege,” said Pocan. “And this situation is so nonpartisan that even Lara Trump and Laura Loomer have spoken out against what’s happening at Ridglan Farms.”

Lead animal rights organizer appears in court

A day before the announcement that 1,500 of the approximately 2,000 beagles housed at Ridglan would be released, Hsiung appeared in Dane County Circuit Court in Madison. “They have threatened these dogs with violence,” said Hsiung, standing outside the courthouse surrounded by supporters and press on Wednesday. “This should’ve been resolved more than 10 years ago.” 

Hsiung and others who were involved in the actions at Ridglan have repeatedly condemned local and state government in Wisconsin for allowing the facility to operate despite years of reported concerns. “It shouldn’t be private citizens who have to step up,” said Hsiung, who claimed that the families involved in Ridglan’s operation are well connected to local politicians. “It makes a big difference that the story is getting out.”

A judge found enough evidence to continue a criminal case against Hsiung during the  preliminary hearing on charges related to the March break-in. He was represented by attorneys Benjamin Carraway and Kristin Schrank. Prosecutor Mattew Moeser sat at the opposite table, calling only a single Dane County Sheriff detective — Leslie Keith —  to the stand as a witness. Court Commissioner Brian Asmus presided over the hearing. 

Keith recalled that early on the morning of March 15, dispatchers began receiving 911 calls both from Ridglan employees saying people were entering the facility, and from the activists themselves calling to report animal abuse. Officers arrived from Mt. Horeb, not far from Blue Mounds where the beagle breeding facility is located, and began questioning people and telling them to stop. Several activists were walking around the facility, carrying beagles or attempting to get into more of the buildings. 

Moeser played body camera footage from the officers, which Carraway objected to, saying that they’d only been given the video a few seconds before the hearing began and hadn’t been able to review it. The court commissioner allowed the video to be played. “I will put you in handcuffs right now,” an officer yelled at some of the activists. “Everbody stop!” Many of the activists were dressed in white biohazard suits. Hsiung was filmed talking to the officers, describing himself as “a lawyer on site” with a “judicial opinion” regarding Ridglan. “Why are you stopping people from seeing what’s happening?” one person yelled in the body camera footage. 

Moeser also played social media videos posted by Hsiung and drone footage showing the activists entering Ridglan. The prosecutor emphasized that the group was breaking into and burglarizing the facility, and ultimately stole more than 20 dogs worth $2,000 each. 

Carraway’s attempts to question Detective Keith were repeatedly interrupted by objections by Moeser, which were sustained by the court commissioner. Carraway wasn’t allowed to ask whether law enforcement were already aware of animal cruelty reports at Ridglan. His mention of the surgical removal of beagles’ eyelids was struck down. Carraway also wasn’t allowed to ask why the activists chose to wear the biohazard suits, as well as other questions. “Any defense is not relevant at a preliminary hearing,” the commissioner told Carraway from the bench.

The hearing ended in a debate about bail conditions which had been set by the same court commissioner. Among other things, Hsiung is prohibited from contacting other co-defendants who were charged in the March break-in. Carraway argued that this was unreasonable because Hsiung intends to represent himself at some point, and would need to be able to communicate with co-defendants as witnesses. 

Hsiung was also banished from all of Dane County, which Carraway said was a First Amendment violation and could be satisfied with a simple banishment from Blue Mounds and Ridglan. Hsiung is an organizer and is regularly involved in protests and demonstrations in Wisconsin and Dane County, Carraway said. The commissioner opted to keep the no-contact for co-defendants, but loosened the banishment from Dane County, conceding that it was overly broad.

This article has been edited to clarify that Congressman Mark Pocan added language to an  amendment to the agricultural funding bill for the 2027 fiscal year. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Four Republican members of Congress, including gubernatorial frontrunner Tom Tiffany, have introduced a bill that would exempt vehicles in southeast Wisconsin from federally mandated emissions testing. 

The bill was introduced by U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) and co-sponsored by Reps. Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald and Tiffany. Tiffany, the only member whose district does not include the affected area of Milwaukee, Kenosha, Ozaukee, Racine, Sheboygan, Washington and Waukesha counties, also brought the issue up on the campaign trail late last month. 

Seven Wisconsin counties, including Milwaukee, are designated ozone nonattainment areas by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, which subjects vehicle owners in the area to additional regulations such as biennial emissions testing. Federal law allows a state to apply for the waiver if it can prove air pollution originates from out-of-state. 

The bill authors point to a Department of Natural Resources report that showed 10% of the ozone measured in the area comes from Wisconsin while more than a third of it comes across Lake Michigan from Illinois and Indiana. 

“Because of outdated federal rules, hundreds of thousands of Wisconsin drivers in seven counties are forced to complete emissions tests every two years just to renew their registration,” Tiffany said in a statement. “Wisconsin families should not be punished with costly and time-consuming mandates because of pollution drifting in from Illinois and Indiana.”

Studies have shown the highest sources of ozone in the region come from the urban centers of Chicago and Milwaukee.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

A Dane County judge dismissed a lawsuit from 15 Wisconsin children who had challenged laws they argued made climate change worse and violated their constitutional rights. 

The lawsuit was filed in August by the groups Our Children’s Trust and Midwest Environmental Advocates against the state Public Service Commission and Legislature. 

The suit argued that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening. 

The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination. 

Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require.

In a decision issued last week, Judge Julie Genovese said she’s sympathetic to the children’s argument but that the lawsuit was asking her to weigh in on a fundamentally political, not legal, question. 

“While the court is sympathetic to the youths and admires their willingness to access the courts in their quest to protect the planet, I conclude that the case must be dismissed because environmental policy is a nonjusticiable political question,” she wrote. 

Attorneys for the Legislature had also argued that the children didn’t have standing to bring the case, pointing to a federal court decision in a similar case in California. 

But in other states similar cases have had more success. A group of Montana children successfully sued to protect their right to a clean environment in 2024. 

Tony Wilkin Gibart, MEA’s executive director, told Wisconsin Public Radio he believes there’s a strong case for the ruling to be appealed. 

“Youth plaintiffs are frustrated,” he said. “They’re also incredibly determined and have expressed a lot of resolve to continue this fight.”

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The Trump administration’s recently announced plans to radically restructure the U.S. Forest Service have raised concerns among advocates that forest land across Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest could suffer. 

The plan, announced late last month, will relocate the agency’s head office from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City while closing regional offices and research stations across the country. In Wisconsin, the changes are expected to affect about 250 employees across the agency’s offices in Madison and Milwaukee and smaller stations spread across the state. 

Research stations in Prairie du Chien and Wisconsin Rapids are being evaluated for closure while the Madison office has been selected to serve as the state office covering Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. 

These proposed changes come to an agency that has already seen staff attrition over the past year due to the Trump administration’s efforts to severely reduce the size of the federal government. Last year, Wisconsin saw a 19% attrition rate in its U.S. Department of Agriculture staffing level, which includes the forest service. 

Proponents of the reorganization say that moving the headquarters out west will bring decision-makers closer to the majority of the public lands managed by the agency. However, through a combination of logging activity in the Upper Midwest, New England and southeastern states, more timber is harvested each year in states east of the Mississippi River. 

But opponents have pointed out that Salt Lake City is the epicenter of the growing anti-public lands movement within the Republican Party. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has worked to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land while the state of Utah has sued the federal government over its ownership of millions of acres of land in the state. 

The advocacy infrastructure surrounding the anti-public lands movement has at times worked to influence environmental policy in Wisconsin. 

In the large scope of the Forest Service’s public lands portfolio, Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is just a drop in the bucket. But the existence of the national forest in the Northwoods makes the federal government the largest landowner in Wisconsin. 

The Trump administration has explicitly worked to make it easier for extractive industries such as logging and mining to work on public lands. Green Light Metals, a Canadian company, has conducted exploratory drilling on national forest land in Taylor County. Last week, Congress voted to allow mining in the Superior National Forest on the edge of  Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Environmental advocates and union representatives of Forest Service employees say that sweeping changes to the agency could have dramatic repercussions for the rural communities where agency employees often work and could do irreparable damage to the forests themselves and the scientific research conducted at Forest Service stations. 

Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said the plan was clearly an effort to undermine the Forest Service’s ability to conduct research while supercharging the extraction of resources from the country’s public forests. 

“The Trump administration’s effort to take apart, as an effective matter, the U.S. Forest Service is deplorable,” Learner said. “The U.S. Forest Service needs to do a job making sure that its forests, the vast lands across our country that are our national forests, are protected and managed.” 

He noted that the agency is currently proposing one of its largest timber sales ever in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which ELPC is working to stop, and that it’s much harder for regulators to protect the country’s forests if they’re based in a far-away office.

Several people from the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents many forest service staff members, said the changes were coming to an already demoralized group of staff members while noting that the biggest harm would be felt by the rural areas where the national forests are located.

“Most Forest Service offices are in very rural, poor communities, so if these people are forced to move to Salt Lake, that could be two or three, good paying, middle-class jobs taken out of Rhinelander or wherever they may be sitting,” said Warner Vanderheul, president of union’s Forest Service council.

Steven Gutierrez, a business representative in the federal workers union’s  land management division, said that staff members will be divided between those who can’t take any more meddling from the White House and those who stick it out in an effort to do what they can to defend the forests. 

“There’s a lot that are standing strong in solidarity right now, and saying ‘I’m going to hold the line to protect democracy,’” Gutierrez said. “And that just by being a civil servant and being a Forest Service employee, that’s their way of standing up against this tyranny that’s happening from this administration.” 

But, he said, others will leave and the risk from those departures is the end to all sorts of research projects. 

“Now programs get shut down because there’s no one there anymore,” he said. “That research, that institutional knowledge, gets lost because now nobody’s there to do it. Nobody knows what anybody was working on.” 

Jenny Van Sickle, a spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, said she’s concerned about the drain of expertise from Wisconsin. 

“Moving these regional models to state-based models really complicates and piecemeals out decision-making with these arbitrary borders,” she said. “All of these waterways are connected. All of these forests are connected. So a comprehensive approach to management is vital.” 

She said that an organization such as the fish and wildlife commission can help supplement the research done by the Forest Service, but not fully replace it. She noted that the commission has recently worked with the agency to study American marten habitat, wild rice and tribal climate adaptation. Vanderheul said that Forest Service research conducted in Wisconsin has helped produce recyclable glue on U.S. postage stamps and less breakable bats used by Major League Baseball teams. 

“A massive reduction in the workforce and professionals that have dedicated their lives to research and protecting these ecological systems is concerning,” Van Sickle said.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

Nearly one-fifth of Americans relied on drinking water systems with elevated and potentially dangerous levels of nitrate in recent years, according to a new study released Thursday.

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group examined test data collected by water systems across the country between 2021 and 2023, the most recent data available. 

Water systems serving more than 3 million people exceeded the federal safety limit of 10 milligrams per liter over the three years, the research and advocacy organization found.

The analysis also found that thousands of water systems serving more than 62 million people reported nitrate levels above 3 milligrams per liter at least once during those years, which indicates human-caused drinking-water contamination. 

Researchers are increasingly questioning whether the federal threshold should be lowered as more studies find links between even low levels of nitrate consumption and cancer and birth defects. Federal law limits nitrate levels in drinking water because of its association with blue-baby syndrome. 

Nitrate is a natural component of soil, but has become a growing problem for drinking water systems because of crop farming’s use of nitrogen fertilizers and runoff of nitrogen-rich manure from livestock operations.

States with big agricultural industries recorded more reports of elevated nitrate levels. In fact, the report found that 64% of all water systems that recorded nitrate levels at or above the legal limit were in just five states: California, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. 

But Anne Schechinger, the organization’s senior director of agriculture and climate research who authored the report, said the issue affects urban and rural areas alike.

“A lot of people have this idea that this issue is just a rural issue for small towns near farms. But we found with this analysis that that is not just the case,” she told Stateline. “Based on how watersheds work, you can live very far from a farm and still be drinking water contaminated with nitrate.”

The analysis relies on public records obtained from public drinking water systems in every state except New Hampshire, where data was not provided, she said. In addition to its report, the Environmental Working Group created a map showing community water systems with elevated nitrate levels across the country.

Elevated nitrate levels have befuddled water providers across the country for years. Not only are they expensive to remove from drinking water supplies, but nitrate levels can fluctuate with the seasons as heavy rains can quickly push remnants of fertilizer or manure into streams and rivers. 

Iowa’s largest water provider last year asked residents to refrain from watering lawns, filling pools and washing cars as its nitrate removal system struggled to keep up with elevated levels. 

Des Moines is home to one of the largest nitrate removal systems in the world, which costs about $16,000 per day to operate, officials said. Smaller communities that rely on groundwater have been forced to dig deeper wells, Schechinger said.

Climate change is further fueling the problem: Agriculture is a major driver of greenhouse gas emission. The heavy rainfalls and prolonged droughts from more extreme weather worsen nitrate runoff into lakes, rivers and groundwater. 

“We know those climate conditions are going to make this problem worse,” Schechinger said. “And that’s likely to cost us all more and also (raise) more concerns for our health.”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) held a public information hearing on four permit applications by Enbridge for streambank erosion control on the 41-mile reroute of Line 5, a light crude oil and natural gas pipeline. The 16 people who spoke all voiced opposition, either specifically to the permits or to the reroute itself, and many cast aspersions on the Canadian pipeline corporation.

In addition to ongoing legal challenges, the four permits are among the last hurdles in Wisconsin that Enbridge needs to clear to reroute its pipeline around the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians Reservation, which borders Lake Superior.

Enbridge is under a court order that has been stayed in a federal appeals court to remove the existing Line 5 pipeline from the reservation by June. The Bad River Band has rejected several offers from Enbridge to keep the line on the reservation, and after Enbridge was ordered to remove the line from the reservation, the Band redirected its opposition to the reroute, arguing that it poses an environmental threat to its watershed.

Enbridge is seeking four streambank erosion-control permits for four waterways in Ashland County: an unnamed tributary to the Brunsweiler River, Beartrap Creek, Bay City Creek, and Little Beartrap Creek.

Joe McGaver of Enbridge Environment Projects detailed the work proposed for each of the four sites. He noted that Lake Superior Consulting identified the erosion issues, and the measures to address them are intended to “stabilize the streambanks and prevent continued erosion” below the ordinary high-water marks.

He also noted that Enbridge and the riparian landowners — those owning the land along the waterways — are “co-applicants” and also “co-permittees.”

At a recent Bayfield County Court hearing on April 16 requesting a stay of ongoing work on the reroute, pending a judicial review of approved permits, lawyers representing Bad River and environmental groups contended that under state statute only the riparian owner can seek a permit for modification of the shoreline. But the legal counsel for the DNR responded that it was its practice to use “co-applicants” in similar projects.

Comments

Ashley Guardado of Hempstead, New York, representing Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, urged the DNR to deny the four permits because they would jeopardize the waterways and the “pristine ecosystems that depend on them.”

“Approving these permits would also enable construction activities that pose long-term risks to water quality, habitat, and the broader watershed,” she said, and noted beyond the local creeks and river, the larger concern is the Great Lakes, which hold 20% of the world’s fresh water.

“So I urge you to consider what it really means to jeopardize these waterways and the ecosystems at both a local and a global level, be it encroaching on the tribal sovereignty and the rights of Indigenous nations that are within this territory to exacerbating the climate crisis and deepening our dependence on fossil fuels that move us only further away from the just transition that Wisconsin, the United States and the world very urgently need,” she said.

Gracie Waukechon, a Wisconsin resident, said the DNR shouldn’t approve the permits out of concern for the environment, and also because Enbridge isn’t legally qualified to seek the permits regarding riparian ownership and Enbridge’s history of environmental damage, including the 2010 crude oil spill of nearly 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Skylar Harris, representing Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), said her organization would submit detailed written objections to the specific permit application, but addressed the DNR’s interpretation of Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine.

“Riparian ownership language in Section 30.12 of the Wisconsin statutes was created in 1949 pursuant to the public trust doctrine to give landowners the ability to live along navigable waters and engage in limited construction activity that would improve navigation or protect the property from erosion and other hazards,” she said. “Because the Legislature was trying to limit the types of construction that could occur in navigable waters, non-riparians were explicitly excluded from permit eligibility. Enbridge has filed these applications for project permits, which is a non-riparian claiming that easements and co-applicant agreements with landowners are sufficient to get around the clear statutory prohibition against construction by non-riparians.”

She said the DNR supports Enbridge’s position and had “tentatively” made the determination to grant the permits, which, she said, would be “a blatant violation of explicit statutory mandates and a violation of the public’s constitutional right to use and enjoy Wisconsin’s navigable waters,” and would set a precedent for other commercial development and environmental damage.

Jadine Sonoda of Madison said Enbridge had raised concerns for Wisconsin because of issues during its Line 3 construction in Minnesota, where it had pierced an aquifer in Northern Minnesota and had agreed to a $2.8 million legal settlement.

Matthew Bourke of Michigan wondered if the DNR investigated any concerns raised in prior hearings, and he questioned why Enbridge had been allowed to pursue permits when it had been found to be trespassing on the Bad River reservations, and a court case in Michigan is challenging the closing of a section of the pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac.

Patricia Hale, an attorney from Antigo also argued Enbridge didn’t have a right for the permits.  

“This is not their (Enbridge) property,” she said of the waterway banks, adding that Enbridge shouldn’t be allowed to request permits based on the easement, because the public has voiced its opposition to Enbridge’s latest permit application for a Line 5 reroute.

Joe Bates, a Bad River tribal elder from Odanah, said Enbridge is endangering Wisconsin waterways by operating a pipeline originally built in 1953.

“This reroute also violates our treaty of 1854,” said Bates. “It (1854 treaty) guarantees us a permanent homeland.”

Bates said the reroute would surround the reservation, requiring members to seek permission from Enbridge to cross it to gather, hunt, or fish in the ceded territories, lands off the reservation where tribal members have rights to pursue resources. At the April 16 court hearing, legal counsel for Enbridge said the corporation would allow permission to tribal members to cross its pipeline for those who have a legal reason to do so. 

“I urge you to please deny permits to Enbridge,” said Bates.

Jennifer Boulley, a Bad River member living in Washburn, also noted that just that morning the US Supreme Court ruled the case in Michigan regarding Line 5 under the Straits of Mackinac will stay in a state of Michigan court and not a federal court as Enbridge had requested.

“Were just hoping that the DNR will continue to listen to the people and not the money, so we can save this water for future generations,” she said.

RJ Claire of Ashland County said the focus of the hearing is on specific technical issues, but she encouraged the DNR to consider a broader perspective on potential harm and environmental impact, and she accused the DNR of being complicit in enabling Enbridge to commit “violence” against the environment.

“Again and again and again and again, tribal members have been expressing to the rest of us that what’s happening right now is an act of violence,” she said. “The DNR is participating in enabling the violence of Enbridge. Who among you is willing to start breaking that pattern? Again, I know this is a technical hearing, but I think it’s really, really, really, really important and crucial that we are looking at this in a holistic way. Because I would argue that from when we focus on the technical parts, that’s a form of just dismissing the violence that is occurring.”

Melanie Conners, a Bad Rivers member who said she lived near Bad River and the Kakagon Sloughs, a wetland that has received international recognition due to its environmental niche and wild rice bed for the band, read a definition from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of “environmental justice” as “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of people, regardless of color, race, national origin or income, with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement and environmental law, regulations and policies.”

She questioned why Bad River members had to “bear the weight” of potential oil contamination.

“It’s Bad River tribal members who will be directly impacted,” she said, and added, “I harvest rice every year to sustain my family. How are you allowing this? This is environmental racism. Enbridge cannot guarantee that it will not contaminate our waters, our Kakagon Slough.”

Additional comments will be accepted until  May 2. Comments should be either emailed to macaulay.haller@wisconsin.gov or left via voice message at (608) 347-0240 or sent by mail to Macaulay Haller, 101 S. Webster Street, Madison,  53707-7921.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with States Newsroom. It is  part of the Grist series Vital Signs, exploring the ways climate change affects your health. This reporting initiative is made possible thanks to support from the Wellcome Trust.

Bailey Magers and Sunil Kumar cut strange figures on Pensacola Beach. Bags of disinfectant solution surrounded them on the white sand; their gloved hands juggled test tubes while layers of rubber and plastic shielded their skin from the elements. As the two organized their seawater samples on the popular Florida beach last August, an older woman wearing a swimsuit walked over to ask what they were doing.

“We’re just actively monitoring water quality,” they told her, but she pressed on.

“Are you looking for that flesh-eating bacteria?”

“We’re looking into it,” they replied, hoping not to frighten her. The woman turned back toward the ocean, her curiosity satisfied. As she walked away, Kumar noticed that she had scrapes and bruises on her body. A few minutes later, he watched her step into the waves. He shook off a chill and returned to the task at hand. 

Magers and Kumar study a bacteria called Vibrio, part of a lineage of ancient marine species that likely emerged sometime around the Paleozoic Era. Enormous, shallow seas flooded the massive, interconnected supercontinents that constituted the Earth’s landmass at the time, and complex marine ecosystems developed that thrived in these temperate, freshly-formed bodies of water. Researchers think there are more than 70 Vibrio species in the environment today, hundreds of millions of years later. The organisms float in warm, brackish water, attaching themselves to plankton and algae and accumulating in prolific water-filtering species like clams and oysters. 

A small number of Vibrio species can sicken and even kill. In worst-case scenarios, a person who has been exposed to the most dangerous of them — by swimming in brackish water with an open wound or ingesting a piece of raw shellfish that is contaminated with the tasteless and odorless toxin — may find themselves with only hours before the flesh on one or more extremities starts to bruise, swell, and decay. Without the quick aid of powerful antibiotics, septic shock can set in and lead to death. Anyone can get infected, though it is much more likely in people who have liver disease or are immunocompromised, elderly, or diabetic.

Climate change is making the world’s oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, more hospitable to Vibrio. Research shows that temperature and salinity are the largest predictors of how widespread Vibrio bacteria are. As water temperatures rise, so does the concentration of Vibrio in seawater — boosting the risk of infection for beachgoers and shellfish consumers. The bacteria start getting active in water temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and multiply rapidly as coastal waters warm throughout the summer. In recent years, scientists have documented Vibrio expanding into places that were once too cold to support the bacteria, pushing as far north along the U.S. East Coast as Maine and appearing with more prevalence in temperate seas around the world. 

Vibriosis infections in general are the leading cause of shellfish-related illness in the U.S. They have increased “more than any other illness caused by a pathogen in the U.S. food supply” since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, started keeping tabs on such illnesses in 1996, according to a 2019 analysis by the International Association for Food Protection. The report attributed the precipitous rise to a “perfect storm” of factors that include climate change, food handling practices, expanding globalization, a patchwork of regulatory oversight, and improved diagnosis. 

On their conspicuous expeditions to Pensacola and other Sunshine State beaches, Magers and Kumar are trying to understand where, and when, harmful Vibrio species are present across the state. The research they’re doing is part of an ongoing effort by a laboratory at the University of Florida to create a Vibrio early warning system for the eastern United States — a program that can alert public health departments to high Vibrio concentrations in any given area a month in advance. How many limbs would be saved, Magers wonders, if doctors and nurses could be warned ahead of time that their emergency rooms would soon see an uptick in these chronically underdiagnosed infections? 

The work serves more than one purpose: As Vibrio bacteria spread north into cooler waters, they serve as a first warning signal of changing marine conditions — giving researchers a heads-up that the familiar composition of marine species in their local waters may be starting to shift. In Europe’s Baltic Sea, for example, a spike in Vibrio infections in July 2014 closely mirrored a heatwave that rapidly warmed the shallow sea. The incident showed researchers that Vibrio spikes herald unusually warm marine conditions — and they have since been utilized as barometers for ocean heatwaves and sea-surface warming patterns, not just food safety.

“We see Vibrio as the indicator for climate change,” said Kyle Brumfield, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland who has been studying the bacteria for a decade. “We can use the presence of Vibrio and Vibrio cases as a proxy for water health in general.”

The CDC estimates that about 80,000 cases of vibriosis occur in the U.S. every year, resulting in about 100 deaths. Of those 80,000 cases, most are caused by a Vibrio called parahaemolyticus, which most commonly results in gastroenteritis, or food poisoning. The vast majority of the deaths, however, are caused by a type of Vibrio called vulnificus — the Latin word for “wound-making.”

Vulnificus is so potent it can squeeze through a pinhole-sized cut in the skin and lead to death in just 24 hours. In the last five years, the CDC registered 429 such vulnificus cases, plus 136 foodborne cases. But even though foodborne cases are less numerous, the patients that contract vulnificus by eating contaminated shellfish are more likely to die than those infected via open wounds. Thirteen percent of those nonfoodborne cases died, compared to 32 percent of people who got the infection from eating seafood. Most cases occur in the Gulf and Atlantic coastal regions.

As far as infectious diseases go, vulnificus is exceedingly rare: The CDC reports between 150 and 200 cases a year. The sexually-transmitted disease chlamydia, by comparison, one of the most common bacterial infections in the U.S., infects northward of 1.5 million Americans annually. But vulnificus’ astonishing speed and high fatality rate — 15 to 50 percent, depending on the health of the person exposed and the route of infection — makes it a unique public health threat, particularly as climate change grows its pathways of exposure. 

Vulnificus is not the kind of pathogen you’d want behaving erratically, but that’s exactly what it’s been doing since the late 2010s. Across the Eastern Seaboard, local and federal health officials have been reporting “unusual increases” in vulnificus prevalence — jagged spikes in infections that appear to correspond to extreme weather events like hurricanes and marine heatwaves.

In 2022 and 2024, years when the brackish water that Vibrio bacteria thrive in was pushed inland by major hurricanes, Florida’s public health department reported 17 and 19 deaths, respectively, linked to vulnificus exposure via open wounds. North Carolina, New York, and Connecticut also saw small clusters of infections during a record-breaking heatwave in the summer of 2023. “As coastal water temperatures increase,” the CDC warned in its investigation of those outbreaks, “V. vulnificus infections are expected to become more common.”

A 2023 study that analyzed a 30-year database of confirmed vulnificus infections from outdoor recreation along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts found the northern boundary of infections has moved north by a rate of 30 miles per year since 1998. The study noted that “V. vulnificus infections may expand their current range to encompass major population centers around New York,” and that annual case numbers may double as temperatures rise and America’s elderly population grows. 

“In the 1980s, Vibrio abundance would increase in the late spring and stay high through the summer and drop in the middle of October,” Brumfield, who conducts research on Vibrio in Maryland, said. “Now … we can pretty much find them almost year-round.”

Two ways to get infected

Just how worried we should be about the changing dynamics of Vibrio bacteria depends on who you ask and what you read. The gruesome and fast-acting nature of the vulnificus infection makes it enticing fodder for local and national news media, fueling a spree of terrifying reports every time a new severe infection or death surfaces. “Virginia dad wades in calf-high water, dies 2 weeks later of flesh-eating bacteria that ‘ravaged’ his legs,” read a recent headline in People magazine. “2 dead after eating oysters, contracting flesh-eating bacteria, officials say,” per a 2025 web story about two deaths linked to oyster consumption in Louisiana and Florida. Like many others in their mold, neither story mentions how rare the bacteria are. 

The press is bad news for some in the seafood industry, which does not welcome a national conversation about the rise in vibriosis cases, vulnificus in particular. Shellfish farmers and industry representatives that Grist spoke to in Florida and New York argued media attention on the safety of their products is unwarranted. “‘Flesh-eating bacteria,’” said Leslie Sturmer, a researcher who works for the University of Florida’s shellfish aquaculture extension program and consults with the shellfish industry on research and regulation — “the media loves it.”

Paul McCormick, an oyster farmer in Long Island who sells 750,000 oysters a year, thinks all press is bad press. “Even if the title of your article says ‘New York oysters are the safest oysters in the universe,’” he told me on the phone from his office in East Moriches in January, “you’ve already created a problem.”

In unrefrigerated oysters left out in warm conditions, Vibrio bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes. But in 2010, states began deploying strict protocols known as “Vibrio control plans,” which require harvesters to rapidly cool their catch onboard and then refrigerate it at a shellfish processing facility within a set number of hours. The measures have proven effective at stopping the growth of Vibrio in harvested shellfish and preventing disease.  

The fact that infections can happen in one of two ways — shellfish consumption and seawater exposure — makes it easy to shift blame and point fingers. Consumers have more control over how much exposure they have to Vibrio than they have with E. coli, for example. A person with a kidney condition can choose not to eat oysters on the half shell. E. Coli, often found in raw vegetables, is far tricker to avoid. Likewise, someone with an open wound can opt not to bathe in brackish waters if they are aware of the risks lurking in the surf.

For shellfish industry representatives, personal responsibility is the primary way to bring caseloads down. “The person is the risk,” said Sturmer. “Not the climate, not the water, not the bacteria.” Implicitly, this appears to be the government’s position as well: There is currently no numerical threshold at which state public health agencies will “shut down” a beach for outdoor recreation, though states will issue public advisories and, very rarely, close beaches if they happen to find high levels of Vibrio in the water.

But that perspective doesn’t account for the rapid marine changes brought on by climate change, the patchiness of vibriosis awareness, and the fact that Americans often make personal decisions that are at odds with their own health and safety.

The shellfishers Grist spoke to fully acknowledged the research underpinning Vibrio’s spread. McCormick studied environmental science in college, and Sturmer is running her own climate experiments in a laboratory in the fishing town of Cedar Key, Florida, putting different kinds of clams and oysters through heat stress tests to determine which species are best equipped to weather the decades ahead. Marine mollusks are uniquely threatened by rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and sea level rise, issues that can lead to thin shells, low crop yields, and mass die-offs on farms. A detailed understanding of climate science, in other words, is good business for those who make their living fishing.

The problem, according to Sturmer, is that shellfishers have been unfairly singled out for a health issue that doesn’t affect most consumers and is more often contracted by ocean bathing rather than raw oyster consumption. While beaches stay open even when Vibrio bacteria are present in the water and lead to infections, a small number of foodborne vibriosis cases can trigger state closures of shellfish harvesting areas and product recalls. The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science noted that these precautions “erode consumer confidence and likely decrease sales.” 

The panic that ensues after media reports of Vibrio infections has a similar effect: A 2024 study asked more than 350 shellfish consumers in Rhode Island — a state that relies heavily on its shellfish industry, particularly in summer months when people vacation along the coastline — to bid on entrees of raw oysters and clams. After showing study participants a real newspaper article about a 2015 Vibrio outbreak linked to an oyster farm in Massachusetts, the researchers reported that the news had a “significant negative impact” on participants’ willingness to bid on oysters. It had a depressive effect on clam sales, too.

“You should really be out there beating the drum on botulism or salmonella or E. Coli,” Sturmer told me on a recent visit to her lab in Cedar Key. “Why worry about [vulnificus] when the number of cases are so minimal?” Sturmer is quick to point out that even the term “flesh-eating bacteria” is a misnomer. She’s right, in a sense: The bacteria doesn’t “eat” tissue; it destroys it. But it’s hard to say whether someone who has survived a bout of necrotizing fasciitis, the medical term for what vulnificus does to the flesh, would care to dispute the difference.

Protecting consumers from being sickened by the deadly bacteria isn’t as simple as trusting people with underlying medical conditions not to eat shellfish. Americans consume 2.5 billion oysters every year, half of which are eaten raw. Vibrio infections, which most often resemble food poisoning, are still underreported and underrecognized, even among individuals who are most at risk of developing a severe infection. Vulnificus infections are also underreported, but much less so than other Vibrio-related infections because they often require a hospital or emergency room visit. 

“I’ve cared for many people with salmonella infections and water-borne infectious processes, but this is the one that is likely the most serious,” said Norman Beatty, an associate professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine who is also a practicing infectious disease doctor in Gainesville, and has seen limbs and lives lost to vulnificus. 

Identifying coastal areas most at risk

When it comes to preventing Vibrio infections, the work Magers and Kumar are doing could take some of the onus off of individual responsibility. The researchers are identifying which parts of the eastern U.S. coastline will be most risky for overall vibriosis infections, and vulnificus specifically, as waters warm. Alongside a group of microbiologists from the University of Maryland, including Brumfield, the scientists have developed a computer model that can predict how high the vibriosis risk will be in any given coastal county on the Gulf or East coasts a month in advance. The team trained their model by pairing the CDC’s count of Vibrio-related foodborne and waterborne illnesses from 1997 to 2019 with satellite data that measures the conditions that fuel Vibrio growth, such as water temperature and salinity. 

The system is far from perfect. When the model was first trained and evaluated, it was only 23 percent precise in pinpointing high-risk counties, meaning just one in four of the counties the program labeled as high-risk actually ended up seeing a vibriosis case in a given month. But it was very good at determining which counties were low-risk, capturing those regions with 99 percent precision. And it improved over time as the quality of the data they fed it got better. When they had the model do a test run on data collected by the Florida Department of Public Health from 2020 to 2024, 72 percent of total cases occurred in counties the tool flagged as high-risk for vibriosis. 

Perhaps most significantly, the model was especially adept at predicting high-risk counties ahead of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 — more than 80 percent of the vibriosis cases that occurred in Florida in the aftermath of those hurricanes were reported in counties the model had already flagged as high-risk. 

The tool is geared toward predicting water-borne infections, but it may also provide useful information to the shellfishing industry, though the system isn’t a replacement for the established protocols farmers already use — protocols that have proven to be effective, particularly in states that are aggressive about enforcing them. What the new tool could do, however, is supplement those Vibrio control plans, especially when an upcoming weather pattern deviates from the historical norm — something that has been happening a lot lately.

States currently use a rolling five-year average illness rate to calculate how many minutes or hours harvested shellfish can stay on a boat before moving into indoor refrigeration. In February, for example, Florida shellfishers have to get their oysters into refrigeration by 5 p.m. on the day of harvest. In July, they have no more than two hours, or they have to cool their catch in ice slurries on board. But these timetables don’t account for sudden temperature anomalies.

“It’s going to be 80 degrees this week in Alabama,” Andy DePaola, a Gulf Coast oyster farmer, told me in February. “Yet I can keep my oysters out for, like, 14 hours, because the rolling five-year average is 20 degrees less than that anomaly.” (DePaola is also a microbiologist who worked on Vibrio at the FDA for the better part of 40 years, and is the author of the 2019 analysis that diagnosed the “perfect storm” for Vibrio spread.)

But the shellfish industry doesn’t appear enthusiastic about the idea of assigning counties a risk category based on Vibrio prevalence. Vibrio researchers, by their own admission, haven’t done a good job of reaching out to shellfishers to find out how such a tool would work best for them. At an August meeting of the Delaware Bay Section of the ​​New Jersey Shellfisheries Council last year, the director of a shellfish research laboratory brought up the idea of using Vibrio predictive models to “determine optimal days to harvest to reduce the transfer of infection to humans.” A lengthy discussion ensued. The consensus, ultimately, was that the model was a bad idea, and could be “used against the industry.”

Not all shellfishers are dead set against the kind of work Magers and Kumar are doing. “If Vibrio is an indicator of global warming, then that’s just an unfortunate bad luck scene for us,” McCormick, the Long Island oysterman, said. But it’s hard for him to see what relevance that research has to an industry that already has its own methods of controlling Vibrio. “In my mind that exists in one realm and the safety of our oysters is a whole different thing.”

As we move deeper into the 21st century, however, those two realms will have more overlap. If countries keep up their current pace of greenhouse gas emissions, most coastal communities along the East Coast will be environmentally primed for vibriosis outbreaks during peak summer months by midcentury. It won’t be a question of if there will be more vibriosis cases — it will be a matter of how to manage them. That’s the scenario Magers and Kumar are preparing for.

“In 30, 40, 100 years, these models won’t even matter because the risk is so high,” said Magers, the lead author of the predictive modeling study. “When it gets to that point, it would probably be a different kind of modeling strategy where we’d be modeling case numbers instead of infection risk.” 

---

Know the facts about Vibrio, a bacteria found in coastal waters and raw oysters

Stay informed about your risk level as you enjoy fresh shellfish and beach trips this summer. 

By Lyndsey Gilpin

This story was produced by Grist and co-published with States Newsroom.

What is Vibrio? 

Vibrio is a type of bacteria that has been around for hundreds of millions of years; researchers have identified more than 70 species. These species are mostly harmless, but some can cause infection. The bacteria thrive in warm, brackish (slightly salty) water such as estuaries and bays, attaching themselves to plankton and algae and accumulating in prolific water-filtering species like clams and oysters. Serious infections typically happen either through exposure to an open wound in saltwater or, more rarely, ingestion of raw shellfish that contain the bacteria. 

The concentration of Vibrio in coastal waterways is higher from May through October, when temperatures are warmer. Most U.S. cases are in the Gulf and Atlantic coastal regions. Vibrio is tasteless and odorless. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, estimates that about 80,000 cases of vibriosis (an infection caused by the Vibrio bacteria) occur in the U.S. every year, resulting in about 100 deaths. Florida has the highest number of cases, with about 20 percent reported from the Indian River Lagoon region, a popular recreation destination on the Atlantic Coast. 

What happens if you come into contact with Vibrio?

Most people are not at risk of developing illness, or they may have only mild symptoms. However, those with compromised immune systems can develop life-threatening infections. 

The majority of the 80,000 annual U.S. cases are caused by a Vibrio called parahaemolyticus, which most often infects people via the raw seafood they eat and usually leads to gastroenteritis, or food poisoning. The symptoms may include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, fever and chills, weakness, fatigue, and headache. 

A different type of Vibrio, vulnificus, is much less common, but can cause severe illness. The infected wound may be red, swollen, and painful, or you may develop mild gastrointestinal issues such as watery diarrhea, stomach cramps, or vomiting. Symptoms typically appear within 12 to 24 hours and can last up to seven days. Healthy people tend to fight off the infection on their own. But if flesh on one or more extremities to bruise, swell, and decay, or symptoms of sepsis occur, it is a medical emergency. Vulnificus can squeeze through a pinhole-sized cut in the skin and lead to death in just 24 hours. This severe infection is rare, but it has a 15 to 50 percent fatality rate; the vast majority of the 100 annual deaths are from this strain. A severe vulnificus infection is much more likely in people who have liver disease or are immunocompromised, elderly, or diabetic.

How concerned should I be — and how do I stay safe? 

You don’t necessarily need to avoid oyster bars or cancel your beach trip, but you should know how to stay informed and take precautions. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Be aware that there are many fearmongering headlines about flesh-eating bacteria, despite vulnificus being one of the rarest forms of Vibrio exposure. Vibrio doesn’t attack random healthy flesh — there must be exposure through an open wound (a break in the skin) or it must be ingested, most often through raw shellfish. People who get sick often have underlying health conditions. 
• If you don’t feel well after eating raw seafood or swimming in brackish water, don’t wait — go to the doctor. Some medical professionals, particularly those in areas where the bacteria hasn’t historically infected people, don’t know what vibriosis is. Advocate for yourself — ask for a test. 
• If you have liver disease, your risk is much higher than the general population’s. Keep an eye out for public health advisories from state and local health officials and avoid swimming in ocean water with an open wound or consuming raw shellfish in warm months. Note that ocean temperatures, especially along the lower Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, have been elevated outside the typical seasonal range in some recent years.
• Be aware when eating raw shellfish, particularly raw oysters. It’s best to be confident that the shellfish was refrigerated and stored in compliance with government standards. The vast majority of foodborne Vibrio cases lead to food poisoning. (Food poisoning from bacteria is always a risk when eating uncooked shellfish and many other foods like salads or deli meat.)

How is climate change affecting Vibrio?

Climate change is making the world’s oceans, which have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions, more hospitable to Vibrio. The bacteria start getting active in temperatures above 60 degrees Fahrenheit and multiply rapidly as waters warm throughout the summer. Vibrio is expanding into places that were once too cold to support it, farther north on the U.S. East coast and in other temperate seas around the world. As it spreads, it serves as a first warning signal of changing marine conditions.

What’s being done to address Vibrio?

There’s a lot of research happening to better understand the risks these bacteria pose under changing environmental conditions: A group of microbiologists at the University of Maryland, alongside other scientists, have developed a computer model that can predict how high the risk of vibriosis will be in any given coastal county in the eastern U.S. a month in advance. The team trained its model, which is still under development, by pairing the CDC’s count of Vibrio-related foodborne and waterborne illnesses from 1997 to 2019 with satellite data that measures the conditions that fuel Vibrio growth, such as water temperature and salinity. It’s far from perfect, but it’s improving. And it was especially adept at predicting high-risk counties ahead of hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024 — more than 80 percent of the vibriosis cases that occurred in Florida in the aftermath of those hurricanes were reported in counties the model had already flagged as high-risk. 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday handed Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel a victory, offering a unanimous decision that laid to rest a yearslong debate over whether her case to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline should be heard in state or federal court. 

In an 14-page opinion penned by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court held that Enbridge had missed its 30-day window to have the case removed to federal court, with the Canadian energy company making its request 887 days after receiving Nessel’s initial complaint. 

The company’s Line 5 pipeline has been a long-running concern for tribal nations and environmentalists in the region, with Nessel calling it a “ticking time bomb” for the Great Lakes.

Running from northwestern Wisconsin into Sarnia, Ontario, the 645-mile long pipeline passes through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a four-mile segment of dual pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. The pipeline carries up to 23 million gallons of crude oil and natural gas liquids through the straits each day.

“Today’s decision honors the truth that the Straits of Mackinac are not a bargaining chip and reaffirms what Tribal Nations have always known – we have the right and the responsibility to protect the Great Lakes,” Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle said in a statement. “The Supreme Court saw through Enbridge’s delay tactics and upheld the rule of law. This is a victory for our waters, our treaty rights, and the next seven generations who depend on the Great Lakes for life itself.”

In an emailed statement, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy noted that Nessel’s case has been stayed, awaiting the results of an appeal in another court case, which Enbridge filed against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources after they revoked the company’s easement to operate Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac.

The United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan in December ruled that the move was unenforceable, with the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992 preempting states from placing safety regulations on interstate pipelines. Whitmer has appealed the decision.

“Setting aside the procedural decision, the fact remains that the safety of Line 5 is regulated exclusively by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration,” Duffy said, noting that the agency has not identified any safety issues that would warrant its shutdown.

Earth Day 2026 arrives less than a week after Wisconsin was battered by a succession of unseasonably severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes. A lack of snow in the West this winter has raised fears of an especially difficult wildfire season — raising air quality concerns across the Upper Midwest this summer. The administration of President Donald Trump has made drastic changes to the budget and structure of agencies such as the EPA and U.S. Forest Service, reducing staff at agencies that manage air and water quality and protect public lands. 

Nearly 60 years after Earth Day was founded by Wisconsin Gov. Gaylord Nelson, environmental advocates and elected officials celebrated the holiday noting the state, often labeled a “climate haven” for its easy access to fresh water and northern location, is not immune from the damaging effects of climate change. Still, they said, there are small victories happening every day across the state. 

Gov. Tony Evers spent the week on a statewide tour touting efforts to plant more trees, conserve more land and use more sustainable sources of energy. 

In 2021, Evers signed a pledge that Wisconsin would plant 75 million trees and conserve 125,000 acres of forestland by the end of 2030. In a Tuesday news release, Evers’ office announced that in 2025 the state planted nearly 12 million trees and conserved more than 7,800 acres of forestland in the state in 2025 — bringing the total to more than 54 million trees planted in five years. 

“Conservation and protecting our natural resources are core to who we are as a people and as a state — it’s in our DNA, and here in Wisconsin, our work to conserve and protect our lands, waters, and air and respond to an ever-changing climate has never been more important,” Evers said in a statement. “From flooding and severe weather events to unseasonable snow droughts and everything in between, it’s clear that climate change is an imminent threat to our state, economy, and our kids’ future. That’s why, since Day One, my administration and I have been working to conserve our natural resources and tackle the climate crisis head-on, but there’s always more we can do.” 

While Evers touts the work his administration has done to protect the state’s environment, the main tool the state has used to conserve public land for the last four decades — the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program — is set to expire this summer due to Republican opposition to land conservation and the Legislature’s inability to reach a deal to reauthorize the program before adjourning for the year. 

Howard Lerner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said at an online news conference Tuesday that there are still wins happening for the climate. 

“We are getting things done in the Midwest, even while the Trump administration maintains its assault on core environmental values and rolls back years and years of federal progress,” he said. 

He noted that a variety of groups across the Midwest worked together to protect the funding in the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. He  added, however, that more work will have to be done to protect Great Lakes shoreline communities from the effects of an increasingly fluctuating water level. 

“When all is said and done, the impacts of climate change are leading to much greater fluctuations in Great Lakes water levels, and they’re leading to more intensive storms, high winds, heavy waves that batter the shoreline,” he said. “That puts a heavy impact and burden on our shoreline communities and on the shoreline infrastructure, and that’s infrastructure that we’ve got to protect and find ways of doing that.”

But the Great Lakes are also struggling with water quality, he said, largely in the form of contamination from factory farms that can lead to toxic events such as algae blooms. He said that in the wake of the federal government stepping back from its role protecting wetlands and waterways from runoff, Midwest states need to do more. 

“We need to get policies in the states that reduce the amount of phosphorus, nitrates that flow into the water supply,” he said. “I think you’re going to see that [concentrated animal feeding operations] are going to be a bigger story going forward. Communities don’t want them, and E. coli and local water supplies and more toxic algae blooms in the Great Lakes is something that the public, I just don’t think is willing to tolerate.”

The darkened sky in the early afternoon, the tornado sirens wailing as baseball-sized hail shattered windows and dented car roofs, sounding like a series of explosions as drivers hurried home at 4 p.m. last week — all of it felt like the eerie first scene in an apocalyptic movie. 

This is not a drill, I thought, watching the clouds tumbling and boiling overhead as my car radio and my phone began shrieking in unison and a robotic voice informed me that I should take shelter immediately from a tornado that was moving at 20 miles per hour directly toward my neighborhood. 

We’ve all grown accustomed to the low background hum of climate anxiety. Suddenly it’s as loud and immediate as the crack of a giant hailstone on the windshield. 

The changes to the planet we’ve been warned about for decades are suddenly hitting too close to home to ignore. Over the last year in Wisconsin we’ve endured smoke-filled skies from summer forest fires, massive floods, wild temperature swings and scarier, more serious storms. 

This should be a wakeup call. But instead of accelerating efforts to head off climate catastrophe, our federal government is canceling renewable energy contracts and pushing for more coal plants, more oil drilling, more toxic mining on public lands, undoing protections for clean air and water, and accelerating the destruction of our shared environment in order to extract resources and build more wealth for a handful of people in the short term. 

The price of this heedlessness is so enormous it hurts just to think about it. 

Two days after the hail storm and tornado warnings sent me and my neighbors scrambling for cover, the U.S. Senate passed a bill to allow sulfide mining in the Superior National Forest, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — an inexpressibly beautiful place that is precious to my family, the scene of some of the most formative experiences of our girls’ childhood, and the most visited wilderness area in the U.S. The Forest Service spent years studying how acid mine drainage — the toxic byproduct of sulfide-ore mining — could contaminate the interconnected lakes and streams that make up the Boundary Waters. Once that contamination starts, there is no way to reverse it, which is why an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans weighed in against the mine, and the federal government blocked it. Until that protection was overturned last week.

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith took a heroic stand on the Senate floor last Wednesday, arguing late into the night, trying to persuade her colleagues not just to hold off on destroying this pristine place, but to forgo using an obscure maneuver that, in a 50-49 vote, redefined land management and knocked down longstanding protections for every piece of national forest in the country. 

My colleague J. Patrick Coolican, editor of the Minnesota Reformer, described Smith pleading to an empty chamber, “I dearly hope the members of this body will think about their legacy in protecting the great places in this country.”

No future president can reinstate the mining ban that protected the Boundary Waters now that Congress used the obscure Congressional Review Act to strike it down. And it’s bigger than that. With their vote to open up mining near the Boundary Waters, “lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades,” Alex Brown of Stateline reports. “That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation.” As Smith warned her Republican colleagues who want to protect the public lands they cherish in their home states, their vote means it’s now open season on those lands, too.

I couldn’t bear to talk with my daughters, who have spent every summer they can remember in the Boundary Waters, about the vote last week. 

But this week, Earth Week, it’s time to confront it. All is not lost. Just as they stood up to the masked federal agents who descended on Minneapolis to tear immigrant families apart, Minnesotans are organizing to fight Twin Metals, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chilean mining company Antofagasta, as it seeks state permits to open up its toxic mine. While mining proponents tout the mine as a job creator (ignoring the economic costs of destroying the nation’s most-visited wilderness), the Senate’s action mostly benefits a foreign mining company, which has a history of flouting environmental regulations and creating toxic spills in other countries, and which will likely sell the copper it extracts from Minnesota to China.

The least we Wisconsinites can do is to help our neighbors as they try to repel this deadly invasion and seizure of a priceless natural resource.

Friends of the Boundary Waters, based in Minnesota, is filing a lawsuit arguing that the congressional maneuver that opened up the mine is illegal. The group and its allies are also urging the Minnesota DNR to cancel Twin Metals’ leases for the mine, and pushing the Minnesota state legislature to ban mining in this sensitive area.

As Wisconsin Sen. Gaylor Nelson, the founder of Earth Day put it in his 1970 speech kicking off the modern environmental movement, protecting the environment is “not just an issue of survival, but an issue of how we survive.” 

“Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” he said. “….Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures. An environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war.”

We need to protect that vision of life from the forces of greed and destruction that are engulfing us. We can’t let them write the end of the story.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The U.S. Forest Service’s plan to close scores of research stations could threaten the nation’s wildfire readiness, many foresters fear, and erode decades of work to understand timber production, soil health, pests and diseases, watersheds and wildlife.

Late last month, the Forest Service announced plans to close 57 of its 77 research stations, located across 31 states, merging them into a single organization in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The agency described the move as a way to consolidate, not cut, the agency’s scientific work, and “unify research priorities.”

It’s unclear how many scientists will be affected by the transition, but it comes as part of a larger agency reorganization that is expected to move roughly 5,000 employees to new outposts. Forest Service leaders have framed the closures as a way to reduce the agency’s real estate footprint, citing a facilities budget Congress has shrunk, as opposed to curtailing its scientific work.

But many longtime foresters fear the closures will threaten vital research that has been the backbone of forest management for state agencies, timber companies and tribes. Many of the research stations slated for closure study fire behavior, forecast smoke dispersal and help inform evacuation decisions.

“The research arm of the Forest Service is one of the unsung heroes in forest management around the world,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President Bill Clinton and remains a vocal conservation advocate. “It is the premier forest research entity in the world, on everything from invasive species to wildland fire risk, watershed protection, basic silviculture and harvest methods.”

The Forest Service’s revamp also will relocate the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and restructure its regional management system.

The Forest Service did not grant a Stateline interview request. The agency has not said how much money it expects to save by closing the research stations.

Many Western leaders are skeptical that the consolidated operation will be able to replicate the work of the existing research stations. State officials said they’ve been given few details about how the transition will play out and whether existing research will continue.

In Washington state, the Forest Service plans to close research stations in Seattle and Wenatchee, while maintaining a facility in Olympia.

“The station in Seattle does some of the most practical-based research that we use for fire and forest management,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “We don’t want to lose that work. They’ve said they’ll keep Olympia open, but we don’t know what that looks like. Are they making sure we don’t lose the ongoing research?”

Forestry veterans say it’s important for the agency to continue its scientific work across a wide variety of forests and climates.

“This is research that’s been going on for decades or even a century or more,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for agency workers. “They’re able to see how climate change impacts are playing out in a dry ponderosa forest or a humid hardwood forest. There are research plots and experimental forests that have been diligently studied for decades. This could be a loss of a lot of knowledge.”

The Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, for instance, plays a crucial role in issuing wildfire smoke forecasts that are relied on throughout the Northwest. After a hot, dry winter, that work could be critical as a dangerous wildfire season approaches.

In Vermont, the Burlington research station slated for closure studied maple syrup production and the effects of acid rain on different tree species, according to VTDigger.

And in Mississippi, the Southern Institute of Forest Genetics, also on the chopping block, has guided tree improvement programs that improved growth and pest resistance in Southern timber forests.

Some conservation advocates are concerned that the research station closures are aimed at suppressing studies that might show the environmental harms of logging or mining. President Donald Trump has pledged to increase timber production on federal lands. He has moved to limit environmental reviews and protections for endangered species to speed up logging projects.

In an interview with the Deseret News, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said that the move was designed to ensure that the Forest Service’s research “will better align with the priorities of the administration” — minerals, recreation, fire management and “active management” of forests, which can include timber harvests and thinning projects. He said the research would support not just forests but also private landowners.

“It’s not streamlining, it’s dismantling,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends whistleblowers in the federal service. “It’s going to really impact how the Forest Service makes decisions on the ground. The way the Trump administration is trying to make a lot of decisions is gut feelings.”

In a webpage set up to respond to news coverage of the move, the Forest Service said it is a “myth” that the station closures will eliminate scientific positions or cancel research programs. But many forestry veterans said that attrition is inevitable, as researchers are asked to move their families across the country to work under a new model with few details.

“There’s concern that we’re going to see a lot of really good individuals who cannot uproot their families that we’ll lose,” said Geissler, the Washington state forester. “It’s taken a long time to develop that kind of expertise. It’s scary.”

Foresters in both conservative and liberal states said they rely heavily on the research the Forest Service provides. Most were unwilling to comment extensively about the closures without seeing more details.

“That work is absolutely important, and I sure hope it continues,” said Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris. “I don’t think research should stop. It may need to look a little different.”

Some leaders said there may be opportunities for states, through forestry agencies and universities, to pick up the slack and ensure research continues, even if the Forest Service is no longer playing a lead role.

“This is still a little bit of an unknown area, but we’ll have to make sure that if there’s a gap there, that we’re working with our universities and (state) research centers to make sure that is still being provided,” said Utah State Forester Jamie Barnes.

Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, expressed support for the agency’s effort to consolidate its work, saying he’d had “limited interaction” with the research stations.

While some of the Forest Service’s work is controversial, agency veterans say its research program is valued by loggers and tree-huggers alike.

“Nobody was asking for this,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “There was no call to do anything like this.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

Congress’ move to allow mining in a national forest near a wilderness area may have broad ramifications across the country.

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to overturn a mining ban in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

By using an obscure tool known as the Congressional Review Act to open the national forest for mining, lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades. That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation. 

Over the past year, Congress for the first time has used the Congressional Review Act to revoke management plans for regions managed by the Bureau of Land Management, seeking to allow more mining and drilling. Such plans had not previously been considered “rules” subject to lawmakers’ review. 

Under the act, federal agencies must submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Because management plans, which function as high-level guidance documents, were never considered rules, federal agencies did not submit them to Congress for review. 

Using a new legal theory, Republicans in Congress have opened reviews and revoked several specific plans that limited resource extraction in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. But those actions call into question whether more than 100 other such plans are legally in effect, since they are now considered rules that were not sent to Congress as the law requires.

Public lands experts say the new interpretation could create legal jeopardy across hundreds of millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management, threatening any permit issued under a management plan drafted after the passage of the Congressional Review Act in 1996.

Now, for the first time, Congress has used the review tool to overturn a management decision on Forest Service land. 

“There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place,” Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration, told Stateline earlier this year. “This could bring things to a screeching halt.”

Longtime outdoors writer Wes Siler, who has written extensively about the Boundary Waters review battle, said in a post Thursday that the vote will “destroy the Forest Service’s ability to conduct regular business for the foreseeable future.” If the agency’s management plans suddenly become invalid, he wrote, “not only could this grind industrial operations on (Forest Service) land to a halt as all of this winds its way through federal court, but it could also set (the Forest Service) the task of re-doing 30 years of work.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-49 to revoke a Biden-era plan that banned mining on land in the Superior National Forest. The resolution will now go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

A Chilean mining company has proposed to mine for copper, nickel and cobalt along Birch Lake in Minnesota. The planned mine would sit at the headwaters of the wilderness area’s watershed. The Boundary Waters is the most popular wilderness in the country, and advocates say the water is so pristine that many visitors fill their bottles straight from the surface of its lakes.

Wilderness proponents say such mines have a long track record of pollution, and leaks from the proposed site would flow downstream and irreversibly contaminate the treasured Boundary Waters.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, the Minnesota Republican who sponsored the review action, has said the mine would bring jobs to the region. Opponents have argued that the tourism economy centered on the Boundary Waters is a larger economic driver, and noted that the mine will be run by a foreign company that will likely export the copper to China. 

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, led the effort to uphold the mining ban on the Senate floor. Following the vote, she said that supporters of the Boundary Waters would likely mount a legal challenge, questioning the use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke a public land order from the Forest Service. 

“I question the legality of what Congress did,” Smith said, according to the Minnesota Reformer.  

Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also voted against the measure. Tillus also questioned the use of the Congressional Review Act.

“It’s a precedent that I think our Republican colleagues are going to regret,” he told The Minnesota Star Tribune. 

The Forest Service oversees nearly 200 million acres of land, managed for multiple uses, including timber harvests, grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. Some legal experts fear the management plans governing those activities are now in legal jeopardy. 

“That right there is chaos,” Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC, told Stateline earlier this year. 

“Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation,” he added. “There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended the Trump administration’s approach to energy production Monday, as Democrats on a U.S. House Appropriations panel accused the department of kowtowing to oil and gas interests at the expense of renewable energy.

Burgum said President Donald Trump’s administration aimed to ease regulatory burdens on oil and gas producers, and said former President Joe Biden sought to shut out those industries in a misguided attempt to boost renewable energy sources. 

Burgum indicated at several points that what Democrats called a pro-oil-and-gas bias was a correction to Biden’s “over-rotation” toward wind and solar.

“The last administration said ‘all of the above’ and then there were a set of rules that were completely punitive against the stuff that we needed to actually, you know, have baseload power in this country,” he said about Biden’s oil and gas policy. “It was just too early. It was too premature to say we’re going to shut all that down and we’re going to transition.”

But Democrats on the House Appropriations Interior-Environment Subcommittee said the Interior Department under Burgum was doing exactly the opposite: subsidizing fossil fuels while discouraging solar and wind power.

“Shortly after taking office, the White House moved quickly to halt offshore wind development and took steps to rein in solar and wind projects,” Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said. “Why? Why are we kneecapping industries that create jobs, expand our energy supply and help address the climate crisis? Because this administration’s energy policy is based on political grievance, ideological hostility and, of course, propping up big oil and gas.”

California Democrat Josh Harder called for an overhaul of permitting regulations to enable faster construction of renewable energy infrastructure. Some of that responsibility fell to Congress, he said, but he complained that Trump was making it even harder for wind and solar projects to get off the ground.

“There is, again, one standard for one type of energy and another standard for another type,” he said. “I hear the complaints about previous administrations putting their thumb on the scale. What I see now is secretary-level approval required for one type of project, but not for another. And again, I don’t think that’s sustainable or good policy.”

Burgum responded that the administration was pro-hydro power and pro-nuclear, but was wary of “weather-dependent, intermittent” solar and wind power because those sources can be more expensive for ratepayers.

Cutbacks in parks, Bureau of Indian Education 

The topic of Monday’s hearing was Trump’s $16 billion budget request for the Interior Department for the next fiscal year. The request would keep the department’s funding roughly even with the current fiscal year, which was a nearly 12% cut from fiscal 2025.

Democrats voiced their disapproval of that new baseline, including a $757 million cut to National Park Service operations.

“The department is on a dangerous course,” Pingree said. “This budget would only make the damage worse, and as the ranking member of the subcommittee, I will do everything in my power to oppose these reckless cuts and fight the administration’s destructive policies.”

Members of both parties raised questions about proposed cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education budget after the Department of Education offloaded part of its responsibility in that area to Interior. 

The BIE would receive about $437 million less under the proposed budget, a roughly 32% cut.

“While your agency begins to manage these new programs, I would strongly recommend — I’m sure you will — carrying out thorough tribal consultations to ensure that there are no funding award delays or program disruptions that would potentially harm,” full Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole told Burgum.

Cole, an Oklahoma Republican and enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation, is the first Native American to lead the Appropriations Committee.

Full committee ranking Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who is also the top Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees Education Department funding, said she was concerned about the shift.

“I worry about transferring the programs from Education,” she said. “Quite honestly, (BIE) doesn’t have a great track record, and I don’t know whether or not the funding that goes along with those programs is going to come over.”

Burgum said 16 full-time staffers in four Education Department programs would transfer to the BIE, along with all the funding for the programs.

Local issues

Members also raised a host of specific concerns.

Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum criticized the U.S. Senate vote last week to undo restrictions on mining in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota.

Rep. Jake Ellzey, a Texas Republican, focused much of his time on poor conditions at Maryland’s Fort Washington, a unit of the National Park Service a short drive from Washington, D.C.

Ellzey pointed to photos of buildings in need of repair and noted that a longtime park ranger retired last year and her role has not been filled, leaving only two rangers across almost 350 acres.

And subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, joked that the Bureau of Land Management’s $144 million wild horses and burros program was his top priority.

“If you can solve that problem, I don’t care what happens to the rest of the budget,” Simpson said. “We’ve been trying to deal with that for so long that it’s crazy.”

Clouds of tear gas engulfed the Ridglan Farms Biomedical research facility, as police repelled hundreds of animal rights activists attempting to breach the facility to carry away  thousands of beagles bred and housed inside. The activists gathered at Ridglan in the Dane County village of Blue Mounds on Saturday, a day ahead of the date  they’d publicly announced for the planned rescue action. 

Wayne Hsiung, a lawyer and animal rights activist from California who was one of the lead organizers of the action, was reportedly among the first people arrested. The Dane County Sheriff’s Office said on social media that he was arrested “within minutes” for conspiracy to commit burglary. As the activists attempted to enter the Ridglan facility for the second time in a little over a month, they were met with tear gas and rubber bullets. Activists  said some people  were severely beaten by law enforcement. One participant, Nicholas Dickman, lost multiple teeth after officers beat him after Dickman crawled through a hole activists made in the  fence around the facility, according to a press release prepared by the Coalition to Save the Ridglan Dogs. 

The conflict comes after weeks of escalating tensions around the controversial facility. Ridglan keeps thousands of beagle dogs bred specifically to be used in biomedical research. Ridglan maintains its own research wing, but also sells the dogs to other facilities for use in experiments. Critics of Ridglan have long accused the facility of subjecting the dogs to cruel and inhumane conditions. Last year, a special prosecutor appointed by a Dane County judge found that violations of Wisconsin’s animal cruelty laws had occurred at Ridglan. Instead of filing charges, the special prosecutor reached a settlement deal with Ridglan that gave the company until July to shut down its breeding operation. 

Animal rights advocates denounced the decision to let the beagles remain at Ridglan until July. This prompted a first attempted rescue by dozens of activists in March. More than 20 beagles were taken from the facility and  some were adopted. A few of the dogs were intercepted by police and returned to Ridglan. The group forced its way into the buildings housing the dogs, breaching fences and breaking locks. Some of the activists reported that the dogs they pulled from gated enclosures were living in cramped and unsanitary conditions. Although 27 people were arrested, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett didn’t refer charges to the district attorney’s office until last Thursday, after the activists announced their plans to return to try to get more beagles out. Barrett called the activists “outside groups” who used violence to breach the buildings and “stole dogs from the facility.”

On Saturday, at least 25 people were arrested, a coalition spokesperson said in an email statement to the Wisconsin Examiner. Two people have been charged with tresspassing, one with reckless driving, and four with felony burglary. Hsiung reportedly said in a call from jail that “only a deeply corrupt system will use tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful activists saving dogs. We are seeing the worst in humanity today. But in the courage of the rescuers, also the best.” The coalition  said in a statement that Hsiung was questioned by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. The FBI refused to comment for this article. 

The Dane County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media that a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) had been used to warn people that they’d be arrested. The statement said  that hundreds of people attempted to breach the gate, while others “blocked roadways to slow the response of law enforcement and other emergency vehicles.” It also said that one of the activists reckless drove a vehicle around the property before “law enforcement stopped it and arrested the driver.” 

The sheriff’s office also said  that some protesters were peaceful while others ignored warnings and attempted to break into the facility, and that 40mm munitions (tear gas) and pepper balls were used. Dane County deputies were assisted by other law enforcement agencies, though the sheriff’s office  did not name them in its statement. 

Sheriff Barrett said that “it was clear from the beginning that this was not going to be a peaceful protest.” Barrett said the use of force was “appropriate and proportionate to the behaviors observed” and that “resorting to crime, chaos, and violence is not the solution.”

The sheriff’s post included pictures of activists dressed in white biohazard suits, carrying equipment like sledgehammers and power saws to breach the facility. 

Lisa Castagnozzi, a resident of Milwaukee County who participated in the action, told the Examiner that she’d been concerned about Ridglan for at least eight years, ever since she read about the facility’s 311 animal cruelty violations cited by the state, “and yet, they just keep reporting these violations and nothing ever happens.” 

“So everyone — myself included — have tried over eight or nine years now, for me eight, all of the legal channels. You know?” Castagnozzi said. “All the advocacy channels. Going to hearings. Signing petitions. Calling our Congress people. Going to Madison to talk to people at [the state Department of Agriculture and Trade], U.S.D.A., meeting with legislators, being part of Dane4Dogs…I mean literally trying to get any of the four major authorities in Wisconsin to take action. Like we know that there’s cruelty there. Why is no one taking action?”

In frustration, Castagnozzi said she and many others decided to go to Ridglan on Saturday. Originally, the second action was announced for Sunday, and Castagnozzi said that she, like many others, was surprised that the action was moved up a day to Saturday. When they arrived at Ridglan, Castagnozzi said she saw what she thought was smoke in the air as the police fired tear gas and people tried  to get through the gates. Castagnozzi’s team decided to keep their distance, and then people started coming down the hill towards them with injuries. 

One man, she said, “had been pepper-sprayed in the eyes, like brutally. And then from that moment on, for the rest of the day, for me…my team was scattered and there’s so many people and chaos. …  people were shot with rubber bullets. People went to the hospital. Knee injuries. A professor from Sheboygan I know, she was shot in the chest and she had to go to the hospital and make sure it wasn’t a broken rib. A lot of injuries, and tons of people with serious chemical, you know, in the eyes, in the face, in the skin, in their lungs, I mean people were just passing out.”

Castagnozzi also said that she saw people who identified themselves as neighbors and supporters of Ridglan blocking roads with their vehicles and not allowing people to pass. 

On Sunday, sheriff’s deputies were still in the area blocking a road to Ridglan and monitoring passing cars. A planned vigil was not held at the farm. Instead, dozens of activists gathered at the Capitol, saying they would not give up on freeing Ridglan’s beagles.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

During a nearly four-hour hearing Thursday at the Bayfield County Courthouse in the city of Washburn, Wisconsin, Bayfield County Circuit Judge John Anderson consistently pressed lawyers petitioning for and against a stay or stoppage of work to reroute the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in northern Wisconsin on the standard he should use in determining the likelihood of success of a judicial review.

Environmental groups and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians have applied for a stay of the Enbridge project based on their petition for review of an administrative court judge’s decision in February to approve permits to go forward with a 41-mile pipeline project. The plan is to reroute the pipeline around the Bad River reservation, after a court finding that the existing pipeline is illegally trespassing on tribal land.

Pipeline opponents argued that the judicial review would ultimately be successful, in part because the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) had inappropriately applied a state statute governing navigable waterways, and that ongoing pipeline work before the review is completed would result in irreversible harm. Even though the new route does not cross the reservation, it endangers water that the tribe depends on, Bad River representatives and environmental groups argue.

The legal counsel for the DNR and Enbridge pushed back, noting that there had been extensive work and public scrutiny of Enbridge’s permit application, and that there wasn’t a high likelihood of the judicial review succeeding.

Judge Anderson said after he received briefs from all parties by April 27, he will decide on the stay, depending on whether he is “convinced” the judicial review would “not go further.”

He framed his future decision on the negative chances of the review.

Arguments for the stay

“The Band has a significant interest,” said John Petoskey, an Earthjustice attorney representing Bad River. “It has an interdependent relationship, and it’s the only homeland it has ever had. The natural landscape is far more than a resource. It’s a way of life. That way of life requires a sustainable environment. It’s undisputed that the project will cause an impact.”

Judge Anderson questioned how to determine “irreparable” or “irreversible” damage.

Petoskey responded that destroying a wetland that has not been damaged in 100 years would mean the area will never be the same.

“When wetlands are destroyed, they don’t clean water or control floods and no longer provide services that help the tribe,” he said.

Petoskey also said the reroute will create a “belt” of restricted area around the reservation, where if tribal members go, they could be charged with a felony. However, later, Enbridge lawyer Eric Maassen, said Enbridge would recognize the rights of all tribal members who had a legal right to be on the land.

Robert Lee, representing the Sierra Club, League of Women Voters and 350 Wisconsin, expressed concern about at least 72 waterways the pipeline is supposed to cross.

He argued that under statute 30.12, only the riparian owners (landowners whose property adjoins or contains a natural waterway, and who therefore have the right to reasonable use of the water) can apply for permits for the waterways, and noted that Enbridge is not the riparian owner but a “co-applicant” with the riparian owners.

“Enbridge has the ability to acquire land,” he said, adding that all the company had obtained were easements with property owners.

“Under our view, that is unlawful if they are not the riparian owner,” he said.

Lee also noted that Enbridge had not been specific about what and where it would remove substances from navigable waters, and said under statute 30.20 the DNR had to know specifically what is to be removed to make a decision on a permit. He also noted that Enbridge said some bedrock would be destroyed but wasn’t specific where that would occur.

“If they don’t know the waters where blasting is to take place then public interest is not met,” he said.

Representing Clean Wisconsin, Evan Feinauer said, “They can’t build a pipeline and not do irreparable harm.”

Judge Anderson responded, “Can’t you say that about any project? Where is the line?

Feinauer responded, “Environmental resources will never be the same, even under the best-case scenario.”

Feinauer claimed the DNR didn’t have all the information in front of it when it issued permits, and Judge Anderson asked, “Whose fault was that?” Feinauer said Enbridge didn’t provide needed information on all the potential waterway crossings, including wetlands Enbridge had failed to include in its project proposal.

“I can’t think of a more important question than which wetlands,” said Feinauer.

Arguments against the stay

DNR counsel Gabe Johnson-Karp  said the factors Judge Anderson should consider in issuing a stay are “irrevocable harm” and “success on the merits” of winning the judicial review.  

“I have to consider the likelihood of success,” said Judge Anderson. “How do I do that if I don’t have the record yet?”  Anderson added that he does not intend to read all 113,000 pages of submitted documents.

Johnson-Karp also said the petitioners had failed to provide a “factual showing” of harm and had only addressed a “generalized harm.”

Anderson asked why the parties were even in court if four major waterway permits had not yet been issued. Johnson-Karp acknowledged a lot more work on the pipeline could be done before the four permits are issued.

Regarding the right to cross a navigable waterway and whether the application is solely the riparian owner’s responsibility, Johnson-Karp said the DNR has had a consistent practice of using a “co-applicant approach,” such as Enbridge is using, where Enbridge has an easement with owners.

Maassen also noted there were only four permits being pursued on the project, and he anticipated that they would be opposed.

Maassen said Enbridge has a “high confidence” it could lawfully work on the permit sites, and added, “Just because there are wetlands and forest doesn’t mean you don’t do infrastructure.”

If a three-month stay were issued, Maassen said, in actuality, it would be more likely to delay the project by six months as workers who had been assigned to the project would have left and more time would be needed to hire others.

Maassen also argued that Enbridge didn’t need to be the riparian owner on property it would only be working on in some cases for 24-48 hours.

And he contested the characterization that the blasting of bedrock is not in the public interest as a “woeful miscategorization.”

“If they can’t convince me there is a likelihood on the merits, does it end there?” Judge Anderson asked Maassen about the success of the judicial review and the request for a stay, and Maassen responded, “It does.”

Maassen added that if the pipeline didn’t proceed, it would increase the “threat to energy security” and place up to 700 union jobs at risk.

He also noted that there is a stay of a judgment in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit for Enbridge to stop using the existing Line 5 on the reservation by June 16. If  that judgement does not remain stayed, he said, it could negatively impact 10 refineries and cut off most of the propane supply for Michigan.

“There are no alternatives to this line,” said Maassen. “Some refineries will have to shut down, resulting in hundreds of millions of losses.

Lastly, Maassen said Enbridge is also requesting that the petitioners post a $49 million bond if a stay is ordered and Enbridge incurs a loss from the delay.

Petoskey, the Bad River lawyer, said the court did not have to consider economic factors when making decisions about wetlands, and he also noted courts have rejected requests for a bond when the litigants are seeking to protect environmental resources.

Lee, arguing for the Sierra Club, said the court has a responsibility to follow the “letter of the law to have riparian ownership,” and challenged the DNR’s use of “co-applicants” as a “made-up” application of the statute.

Asked by Anderson on the standard of success to be used in issuing a stay, Lee responded, “50-50 probability of success; that is sufficient.”

“I don’t think there is a reasonable likelihood of success,” countered Johnson-Karp on the chance the judicial appeal would succeed.

Anderson asked why Enbridge shouldn’t be the riparian owner or require Enbridge to buy the land? Maassen responded, “The whole notion that being a co-applicant is inappropriate I think is a bad argument.”

Anderson asked all the lawyers to submit briefs within 10 days, with specific attention on the issues he had raised during the hearing.

This report has been updated to reflect that Anderson is a Bayfield County circuit judge.

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

The U.S. Senate voted 50-49 Thursday to allow sulfide mining in areas near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

The vote ends President Joe Biden’s 20-year moratorium on mining leases across more than 225,000 acres of Superior National Forest near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which was visited by nearly 150,000 people in 2024. 

Northeast Minnesota sits atop the Duluth Complex, a significant deposit of copper and nickel. Twin Metals, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, wants to extract both minerals — along with cobalt and other precious metals — from underground veins near Ely and Babbitt, about a dozen miles from the wilderness area.

The resolution already passed the U.S. House, shepherded by U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican who represents the 8th District, which includes the protected wilderness. The resolution is headed to the desk of President Donald Trump. He’ll sign it, having already initiated the push to end the mining ban. 

Ingrid Lyons, executive director of Save the Boundary Waters, issued a statement: “Today is a dark day for America’s most beloved Wilderness area, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and a stark warning call for public lands nationwide.”

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith was raw with emotion on the Senate floor late Wednesday as she argued against the resolution. 

“You may be wondering why I am standing here at nearly midnight keeping everyone up. Here’s why: Because I know people in Minnesota are wondering whether anybody in this building cares about what they think,” she said. 

She’d been reading letters from constituents arguing against threatening the pristine waters along the border between Minnesota and Canada.

“I dearly hope the members of this body will think about their legacy in protecting the great places in this country,” Smith pleaded to an empty chamber. 

Environmental protection groups say mining for copper and other heavy metals inevitably leaches sulfuric acid, toxic metals and other pollutants into surrounding water systems, harming the natural environment and imperiling tourism.

Smith and her allies say they’ll fight on. “We’ll continue our important job of protecting the Boundary Waters,” she said in a press call Thursday. “We have more work to do now.” She previewed potential litigation from outside groups, who could sue over whether the congressional process for undoing the ban was legal. “I question the legality of what Congress did,” she said.

Michael Fairbanks, the chairman of White Earth Nation, said, “We’re going to try to figure out how we’re going to combat this. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this.”

The industry and the building trades argue the new territory would reduce Northeast Minnesota’s economic dependence on volatile global markets for iron and steel. Its rich deposits of higher-value metals, along with gases like helium and possibly hydrogen, could offer a lifeline.

Opponents argue environmental degradation would lead to economic disaster for a region with a growing tourism economy, which relies on waters so pure that some people drink right out of the lakes, known as “dipping.” 

Protection for the Boundary Waters — and its removal — has swung metronomically in the past decade depending on which party has controlled the White House, with the administration of President Barack Obama denying mining leases, followed by Trump pushing for mining and then the Biden 20-year moratorium. Given the congressional vote, however, a future president couldn’t enact a substantially similar mining ban. A future Congress could, however. 

Despite the new federal regulatory relief, Twin Metals still faces major obstacles before it can begin. 

The company has not won the necessary state or federal permits, and a Democratic trifecta next year could stymie the project by passing a law protecting state lands in the same area and banning hard-rock mine permitting in the region. 

Even if they win the necessary permits and win in court in the face of inevitable litigation against the project, Twin Metal would face a hostile Minnesota public. 

Polls have long shown heavy majorities oppose mining near the Boundary Waters.