The secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said the agency is preparing to set up grant programs to address PFAS contamination with some work beginning this summer or fall.

The post DNR Secretary says work ongoing to set up programs to address PFAS in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.

The Line 5 reroute has generated years of debate, protests, tens of thousands of comments and challenges to state permits that prompted a weekslong contested case hearing. The fight over Line 5 is one front in a larger battle over pipeline projects that often pit energy security and jobs against potential harms to the environment and tribal treaty rights. 

The post Work on Enbridge’s Line 5 reroute underway as legal challenges aim to halt construction appeared first on WPR.

University of Illinois researchers analyzed traces of DNA in rivers and streams to learn how strips of trees near water — called riparian buffers — impact land species.

The post This conservation practice boosts wildlife species on farmland, new research finds appeared first on WPR.

Cleanup is ongoing after a Jefferson County egg farm spilled thousands of gallons of wastewater amid an outbreak of bird flu.

The post Cleanup of spill ongoing at Jefferson County egg farm amid bird flu outbreak appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. government will pay a French energy firm nearly $1 billion to cancel its plans to build a pair of wind farms off the East Coast, the Trump administration announced Monday in its latest move to stymie offshore wind. 

The French firm TotalEnergies will forfeit its leases for projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, with the United States paying $928 million to reimburse what the company initially spent on the leases.

Under the deal, TotalEnergies will reinvest that money into oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas. 

President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to block the development of offshore wind projects, which many East Coast states have been counting on to meet their energy needs in the coming years. The projects canceled under the deal announced Monday would have provided power to more than 1 million homes. 

Late last year, the Trump administration invoked classified national security threats to stop work on five wind farms that were under construction, but courts have ruled that the projects can proceed. But for dozens of other projects still in the planning and permitting stages, industry experts expect little progress while Trump remains in office. 

The administration claimed in a statement that the projects were “unreliable and costly.” But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, condemned the agreement.

“Using a pay-not-to-play scheme to pressure a company to not build offshore wind is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Hochul said in a statement to The New York Times.

Environmental groups also blasted the deal, with some noting that it comes as Trump’s war with Iran has caused chaos for global oil markets.

“This deal is an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it most,” Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. 

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

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Microsoft announced last week it would stop signing nondisclosure agreements that keep its data center proposals secret, a move that received praise from open government advocates.

Less attention was paid to the other party to those NDAs: local governments.

“Hopefully, the industry follows,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, where the city signed an NDA, then put a proposed data center on hold. Microsoft “just realized that it’s not a successful formula when you come into a community under darkness.”

Moses said a bill he introduced to ban data center NDAs, which stalled in the Legislature, is still needed to prevent local governments from signing the agreements. If local officials sign them, “hopefully voters will remember it and hold them accountable,” he said.

Microsoft did not sign NDAs in the Racine County communities of Mount Pleasant, where a multibillion-dollar data center complex is under construction, or in Caledonia, where it withdrew a data center proposal amid community opposition. But its announcement comes at a time of public backlash against data centers proposed in Wisconsin.

The company said its new position on NDAs is an effort toward transparency “as we continue to build trust with the communities around the world in which we operate” and that it would work with local governments to terminate current NDAs. Microsoft has one in Kenosha, where a data center is proposed.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for further comment.

Its move won qualified praise from data center NDA critics, such as Midwest Environmental Advocates. “Companies typically don’t make announcements about building community trust unless those communities are already pushing back pretty hard,” the group said in a statement.

Sheboygan Falls Mayor Randy Meyer, board president of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said municipalities feel pressure to sign NDAs because they need new development to increase tax revenue. It can be difficult to know when in the planning process a development proposal should be disclosed to the public, he added.

But “if the companies that are building data centers say there’s nothing wrong with them, they don’t hurt the environment, all that stuff, well, then there’s no real reason to be secretive about it,” Meyer said.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, also praised Microsoft’s move, which happened during Sunshine Week, which promotes public access to government meetings and records. 

But Lueders encouraged local government officials to be more transparent.

“There’s nothing the public hates more than the idea that their public officials are doing things behind their back,” he said. “That’s like the most offensive thing that you could do as a public official is hide information that affects the people you represent.”

Wisconsin Watch has reported that at least five Wisconsin communities signed data center NDAs. In one of them, Beaver Dam — where an NDA was signed more than a year before the proposal was announced — a $1 billion Meta data center is under construction.

Meta declined to comment on Microsoft’s announcement.

Vantage Data Centers, which is building a $15 billion data center in Port Washington with Oracle and OpenAI, did not reply to a request for comment.

The push to build data centers nationwide has meant more than $1 billion in business for Wisconsin suppliers, even before any of the hyperscale data centers in Wisconsin begin operation.

The data centers proposed or under construction in Wisconsin typically cost billions of dollars and cover hundreds of acres. 

Some communities that have not signed NDAs have taken other steps to keep data center proposals quiet.

The Madison suburb of DeForest dropped a proposed $12 billion data center in January, the day after Wisconsin Watch reported that village staff worked for at least seven months with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers before the proposal was publicly announced in October. 

Wisconsin Watch also found that in Port Washington, when citizens requested emails about the data center, the city turned over emails but withheld documents that were attached to the emails — something a judge found did not follow the state open records law.

Blaine Halverson, a leading opponent of the proposed data center in Menomonie, said Microsoft’s announcement is a step, but he remains skeptical.

“I think that committing to not doing NDAs does not mean they’re not committed to still being secretive,” he said. 

“What the pledge needs to be (is) that we’re going to not just not use NDAs. We’re going to be up front. We’re going to encourage and allow free communication from the beginning with communities. And we’re going to insist on being available to answer the public’s questions from the front end. That’s what needs to happen.”

Local data center critics praise Microsoft’s pledge to stop using NDAs, but remain skeptical is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Conservation groups say Wisconsin will lose out on opportunities to set aside public lands and struggle to find funds to pursue that work as the state’s land purchase program is likely to expire in June.

The post Stewardship program likely to expire after Wisconsin Senate fails to take up bills appeared first on WPR.

In an unprecedented use of federal authority, President Donald Trump’s administration has invoked emergency powers to force a series of retiring coal plants to stay open.

Utilities, states and grid operators have said the aging plants are expensive, in bad repair and no longer needed to meet regional energy needs. But Trump’s efforts to save the dwindling coal industry have forced plant operators to continue investing in the facilities — a move that some consumer advocates fear could mean billions of dollars in added costs for customers in dozens of states.

Trump has long positioned himself as a champion of coal, making it a centerpiece of his “energy dominance” agenda. The emergency orders issued by his administration claim that the grid is at risk of energy shortfalls, and the coal plants are needed to ensure a reliable power supply.

But state officials in many places affected by the orders say that’s not true.

“Rather than allowing the realities on the ground, the regulators and the utilities to make rational decisions about how to meet energy needs, we have the Trump administration trying to do Soviet-style central planning to push an ideological agenda that will drive costs to customers,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Energy has issued emergency orders to block the retirements of coal plants in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and Washington state. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has claimed that the power demands in various regions require the plants to stay operational.

Observers expect similar orders to be issued for most, if not all, of the dozens of coal-fired units slated for retirement during the remainder of Trump’s term. Utilities subject to the orders have said they will increase costs for ratepayers, and argue those costs should be borne by the multistate region to which they provide power, rather than just their local customers.

Despite their costs, three of the five plants being blocked from retirement haven’t produced electricity since the emergency orders went into effect, either because they need extensive repairs or because power demands have been met without them.

Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act gives the secretary broad authority to take temporary control of the U.S. electricity system during emergency situations. Until now, that authority had only been invoked during wartime or natural disasters. All of the Trump administration’s orders were issued before the war with Iran. Consumer advocates say Trump’s use of the act to overturn long-planned facility retirements is unprecedented, and likely illegal.

State officials, utilities and environmental groups have challenged all of the orders.

While such emergency orders can be issued only for 90-day periods, Wright has repeatedly renewed the orders before they expire.

The Department of Energy did not respond to a Stateline interview request.

Keeping coal online

Last May, Wright issued the first emergency order to prevent the shutdown of the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant in Michigan, just days before it was scheduled to retire. The plant has remained open since then, accruing $135 million in net costs through December. Consumers Energy, the utility operating the plant, is seeking to charge ratepayers in 11 states to recoup those costs.

Michigan Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel has appealed the order, while a coalition of environmental groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn it, arguing that the feds have failed to demonstrate a true emergency. That case is currently in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals awaiting oral arguments, which may take place in May.

State leaders in Colorado have appealed an order to keep a plant there open, while Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, has sued the federal agency. Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the order in Indiana. Energy analysts say the Michigan case will likely be resolved first, and is expected to have major implications for the emergency orders elsewhere.

Douglas Jester, a former state energy official in Michigan, noted that Consumers Energy has had to pay extra to bring back staff, establish new delivery contracts for coal and catch up on maintenance. Jester now serves as managing partner at 5 Lakes Energy, a clean energy consulting group.

In his emergency order, Wright said the plant was needed to ensure energy reliability and reduce the risk of blackouts. His agency, in a statement issued last month, said the coal plants kept open by the emergency orders helped keep the power system online during Winter Storm Fern.

Coal industry leaders have made a similar argument, saying that growing energy demands require more baseload power, as opposed to intermittent renewables such as wind and solar.

The emergency orders are “very much needed,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group, “so that we can continue to have the energy just for our day-to-day lives,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group. “Coal plants, baseload plants, are critical to the well-being of our grid. Coal is needed at critical moments for energy.”

Some labor unions have also praised the orders as beneficial to their workforce.

But state leaders and consumer advocates argue that utilities and regulators have already completed detailed plans to replace the power the aging coal plants provided, through a mix of renewables, natural gas plants and battery storage.

“If you were to believe the Department of Energy, you would believe that more than half the country is experiencing an emergency around the clock,” said Michael Lenoff, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental group that is suing the Trump administration to overturn the orders. “It costs a lot of money to make sure that an old, decrepit coal plant is available to operate.”

Lenoff and other environmental advocates have said the coal plants ran during the winter storm because the government forced them to, not because the grid needed them to meet power demands.

Even as his administration has declared an energy shortage emergency, Trump has tried to block new renewable projects from being built, including several offshore wind farms that East Coast states are relying on to meet their power demands.

Meanwhile, the administration has also authorized power generators to export electricity to Mexico and Canada, which may happen only when regulators have determined the U.S. has sufficient energy supply to meet its own needs.

“How can you authorize the export of energy to Canada from a Western market that you just declared is in an emergency status with shortages?” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit. “It’s complete incoherence.”

Aging plants

Three of the five plants being blocked from retirement have yet to even produce electricity since the emergency orders went into effect.

The plant in Colorado suffered a failure in a steam valve that was not repaired because it was on the verge of retiring. The federal order has forced the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to invest in repairing the plant, and the costs to keep the plant operational could reach $80 million a year even if it never produces power, said Toor, with the Colorado Energy Office.

“It’s very unlikely to actually operate even with this order,” he said.

Tri-State and the other utilities that own the plant have requested a rehearing of the emergency order, saying that keeping the plant open will be costly for their ratepayers.

In Indiana, one of the two plants targeted by the feds has suffered mechanical failures that would require extensive repairs.

“(The order) doesn’t even make sense because it’s not even really open,” said Ben Inskeep, program director at the Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana-based consumer advocacy group. “You don’t want to throw good money after a plant you’re about to retire.”

Unlike the Democratic-led states subject to the other orders, Indiana’s leaders have welcomed the federal intervention. Republican Gov. Mike Braun issued his own executive order soon after the Department of Energy announcement directing state officials to evaluate ways to extend the life of the state’s remaining coal plants.

Meanwhile, the TransAlta Centralia coal plant in Washington state, while remaining in operational mode, has not supplied power to the grid since January, as the state’s energy needs have been met by more affordable sources elsewhere.

Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias sponsored a bill, signed into law earlier this month, that rolls back tax and regulatory exemptions that were granted to TransAlta under a 2011 agreement to gradually phase out the plant. The compliance burden will make it economically infeasible for the plant to operate again, he said.

“It’s crystal clear to the market that we’re not going backwards, we’re slamming the door and nailing it shut,” Liias said.

Consumer costs

While some states have pushed to close coal plants due to climate goals and pollution concerns, market forces have largely driven the coal industry’s decline. According to a 2025 analysis by the financial advisory firm Lazard, electricity from coal-fired power plants costs an average of $122 per megawatt-hour. That same amount of power can be produced for $78 from natural gas plants, $61 from onshore wind and $58 from utility-scale solar.

Some energy analysts say Trump’s efforts to keep fossil fuel-powered plants open could become very costly to ratepayers. A report published by Grid Strategies LLC, a consulting firm, found that as many as 90 aging plants could be subject to similar emergency orders during the remainder of Trump’s term. The analysis found that keeping those plants open could cost ratepayers anywhere from $3 billion to $6 billion a year.

“What the Department of Energy is doing is picking losers, the uneconomical plants that the utilities, the regulators, everybody involved agreed need to retire and be replaced with something cheaper and more efficient,” said Michael Goggin, who authored the report, which was commissioned on behalf of Earthjustice and other environmental groups.

Meanwhile, some consumer advocates say the orders have created chaos for utilities and energy planners. The operators of plants scheduled for retirement in the coming years no longer know if it’s safe to cancel their coal contracts, transition their workforce or defer maintenance on their facilities. And financiers may be wary of investing in new, cheaper energy projects that could be sidelined by orders to keep coal online.

“The administration has made clear that they’re not going to allow a coal-fired power plant to retire, regardless of whether or not it’s absurdly expensive to operate, whether it’s contaminating soil, air and water in that community, they literally don’t care,” said Slocum, of Public Citizen.

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

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul joined a coalition of two dozen states over the EPA's decision to repeal the scientific basis for controlling pollution that’s heating up the planet.

The post Wisconsin joins states suing EPA for abandoning power to fight climate change appeared first on WPR.

Former poet laureate of Wisconsin Kimberly Blaeser received a National Book Foundation prize for her most recent poetry collection, Ancient Light, that gives voice to urgent ecological and social issues.

The post Former Wisconsin poet laureate receives National Book Foundation prize for ‘Ancient Light’ appeared first on WPR.

After years of gridlock, the Wisconsin Senate passed two bills that set the framework for spending $133 million to address PFAS contamination.

The post After years of gridlock, Wisconsin Senate passes bills addressing PFAS appeared first on WPR.

Communities are recovering after a major weekend blizzard, dropping record-breaking amounts of snow in some parts of Wisconsin. From the Northwoods to Milwaukee, snowfall shut down roads, caused power outages and challenged plow trucks and public services.

The National Weather Service, calling the snowstorm “historic,” said that in central Wisconsin, snow fell at a rate of 4 inches per hour. “Near-blizzard conditions developed Sunday afternoon, fueled by northeast winds gusting between 35 and 50 mph,” the weather service stated in an update. Windspeeds reached 59 miles per hour  at the Green Bay Airport, and 60 miles per hour in De Pere. “This combination of heavy falling snow and high winds created whiteout conditions and massive drifting,” the National Weather Service stated.

Historic amounts of snow reached approximately 30 inches in communities from Wausau to Marinette and Door County. In Green Bay, where 26.1 inches of snow fell as of Monday, the storm was the area’s largest in 136 years. By Sunday Green Bay had seen 17.1 inches accumulate, making it the city’s third-snowiest day and its heaviest day of snowfall since 1889. Over 11,000 people were reported to have lost power as well.

A “No Travel Advised” notice was posted on the Department of Transportation’s webpage as the storm loomed. “The heavy snow load and high winds caused widespread power outages, most notably in Door and Marinette Counties, and building collapses were reported in Sturgeon Bay and Kewaunee County,” the National Weather Services noted. “Many schools and businesses remained closed through Monday.” The snow was so overwhelming that snow plow operations halted in Marinette County, forcing the sheriff’s office to warn that emergency responses might also slow. That was an acute concern for people stranded in cars along the roadways.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sturgeon Bay in Dane County saw 33 inches of snow blanketing roads and neighborhoods over three days. The city of Madison recorded 5.6 inches on Monday. The state capital’s previous record was set in 2006 when 3.5 inches of snow fell. In western Wisconsin, the town of Montana received 26.5 inches of snow, more than any other area in the region. The city of Mondovi also may have broken a record with 16.5 inches the city’s unofficial record was 16 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Over the three-day snowfall event, Madison was covered in nearly eight inches. Some residents reported they were unable to open their front doors. 

Fallen trees and other damage was also reported as far south as Racine.

Waukesha County also struggled with the storm, after strong winds uprooted trees as early as Friday. The winds heralded an all-day rain storm which then turned into a blizzard. The shifting weather patterns meant that the county had to adapt rapidly. About seven inches of snow fell in Waukesha from Sunday to Monday. Crews with the Waukesha County Department of Public Works pulled 16-hour shifts. 

“In severe weather government services matter most,” Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow said in a statement. “Waukesha County’s teams were out early, stayed out late, and worked around the clock so residents could reach essential services safely. Thank you to our crews and to the public for slowing down and giving plows the space they needed to do their jobs.” 

From 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Waukesha County’s 911 communications center received 47 calls for disabled vehicles, 25 for vehicles in ditches, nine reports of property damage, and three for traffic hazards. In many areas people struggled to dig their cars out, with Wausau residents reporting having literally not seen their cars for days until they were uncovered from the snow. Although temperatures were below freezing on Tuesday, the weather is expected to warm as the week continues. By the weekend, temperatures are expected to reach 70 degrees before tapering off again.

Researchers have long warned that extreme weather events would become more common due to climate change. Some of the communities recovering from the blizzard have yet to fully recover from record-breaking floods that occurred in August. In January 2025, extreme arctic cold enveloped the region, challenging communities with large numbers of people living unhoused on the street. This most recent snowstorm came as other parts of the United States dealt with rashes of tornadoes, heatwaves, and flooding. 

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The Wisconsin Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that, once signed, will release $125 million set aside nearly three years ago to address PFAS contamination in the state’s water supplies. 

The vote, on the last day the Senate was scheduled to be in session for the year, was the culmination of a multi-year legislative saga involving negotiations between legislative Republicans, Gov. Tony Evers, the state Department of Natural Resources and a number of outside interest groups. 

A similar bill passed the Legislature during the last legislative session but was vetoed by Evers over objections from Democrats and environmental groups that the bill was too lenient to polluters responsible for PFAS contamination. 

The “innocent landowner” exemptions at issue in the first version of the bill were more narrowly constructed this time after a negotiation process with the DNR. Those changes drew the ire of the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and groups representing the state’s paper industry over concerns that industrial manufacturers such as paper mills were being singled out. 

The two-bill package passed unanimously in both legislative chambers despite the opposition from WMC, which is usually one of the largest supporters of Wisconsin Republicans. 

The bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) noted on the floor Tuesday how “meticulously drafted” the final version was to make sure all the parties were on board. 

“The result is a bill that helps people who need to be helped and stops the government from going after people who are genuinely innocent of causing a hazardous discharge,” he said.

Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he was looking forward to signing the bill so the money could get out the door. 

“While I wish it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the Legislature to join me in this important work, I’m thrilled that these bills will soon be on the way to my desk so that we can get these critical and long-overdue investments out the door to the folks and families who need them,” Evers said. “Whether it’s kids in the classroom, families at home, or our farmers and agricultural industries, folks should be able to trust that the water coming from their tap is clean and safe. I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right.”

Under the bill, landowners who spread PFAS contaminated materials on farm fields under a DNR-authorized permit, local governments and airports that used PFAS-containing firefighting foams, solid waste disposal facilities and anyone who had PFAS move onto their property through shifting groundwater will not be held responsible for PFAS pollution under the state’s toxic spills law. 

The spills law allows the DNR to require property owners responsible for pollution to pay for testing and cleanup of that pollution. The risk that the PFAS legislation could undermine the spills law was the largest objection from environmental groups to the first version of the bill introduced in the last session. 

The second bill in the package creates the programs through which the $125 million will be spent. Those programs include grants to municipal water systems and private well owners, as well as expanding the state’s testing capabilities and studying the long-term effects of PFAS.

The $125 million was first set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Throughout that time, communities across the state have continued to be affected by PFAS contamination of their water supplies. Places including Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse have been managing the pollution, which has been tied to birth defects and cancer, for years. 

Save Our Water, an advocacy group made up of residents of PFAS-affected communities, frequently complained throughout the long negotiations that the Legislature wasn’t working to enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS pollution in the state’s groundwater. The state has established standards for PFAS in municipal drinking water and surface water, but not groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for residents across the state with private wells. 

In a statement, the organization celebrated the bill’s passage while noting they’ll continue to push for the creation of a groundwater standard. 

“This legislation will help impacted communities and innocent landowners who are forced to deal with PFAS contamination which they didn’t cause and don’t have the resources to clean up,” the group said. “[We] will continue to push forward to achieve a meaningful groundwater standard for PFAS and look toward using the bipartisan approach taken with this legislation as a model for future PFAS legislation.” 

Erik Kanter, the government affairs director of Clean Wisconsin, said this bill is only the first step as the state continues to manage the effects of widespread PFAS contamination, including the likelihood that even more money will need to be spent on the effort and the need for a groundwater standard. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 32 months ago, and since then, people in Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the Town of Stella, and communities throughout the state have waited and waited for our state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. Now, an end to that waiting is finally in sight,” Kanter said in a statement. “The long, difficult work toward compromise on what should have been a straightforward spending bill is a telling sign that toxic PFAS contamination is evolving into a widespread, costly public health and environmental crisis — one that touches everyone from consumers to farmers and manufacturers. It’s a crisis our state cannot ignore. This must be the first of many actions from Wisconsin lawmakers to take real, meaningful action that protects all of us from these pervasive, harmful chemicals. The state must now establish PFAS groundwater standards to provide clean water protection for rural Wisconsinites on private wells.”

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President Donald Trump said this week that he’s working to save the Great Lakes from invasive carp, but critics say his administration is holding up money for a billion-dollar project to keep the invasive fish at bay.

The post Trump wants to ‘save’ Great Lakes from invasive carp as administration stalls funding for it appeared first on WPR.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

It’s midmorning in late February, and Bruce Smith is regaling two ice fishing buddies when a tug on his line interrupts the story.

“There we go!” he shouts as a shimmering 23-inch whitefish appears through a hole in the ice. “That’ll make a nice filet.”

No sooner has Smith tossed it into a cooler than his buddy Terry Gross reels in another one. Five minutes later came another bite, then another, until by 10:30 a.m. the trio had hauled in 15 fish — halfway to their daily limit, even after putting several back. 

Welcome to southern Green Bay. Or as Smith likes to call it, “Whitefish Town, USA.”

Once written off as too polluted to support many whitefish, the shallow, narrow bay in northwest Lake Michigan has produced an unlikely population boom in recent years, even as the iconic species vanishes from most of the lower Great Lakes. The collapse has dealt a blow to Michigan’s environment, culture, economy and dinner plates.

Oddly enough, nutrient pollution from farms and factories may help bolster the bay’s whitefish population, spawning a world-class recreational fishing scene while helping a handful of commercial fisheries in Michigan and Wisconsin stay afloat despite the collapse in the wider lake.

“This is a paradise,” Smith said. “The best fishing I can ever remember, for the species I want to catch.”

As scientists work to understand what makes Green Bay unique, their findings could aid whitefish recovery efforts throughout the Great Lakes. Michigan biologists, for example, have drawn inspiration from Green Bay’s sheltered, nutrient-rich waters as they attempt to transplant the state’s whitefish into areas with similar characteristics.

“Having places they (whitefish) are doing well … gives us context for the places that they aren’t doing well,” said Matt Herbert, a senior conservation scientist with the Nature Conservancy in Michigan. “It helps us to figure out, how can we intervene?”

But lately, sophisticated population models have shown fewer baby fish making their way into the Green Bay population, prompting worries that Lake Michigan’s last whitefish stronghold may be weakening.

A Great Lakes miracle

Not long ago, it seemed impossible that a fishery like this could ever exist in Green Bay.

Before the Clean Water Act of 1972 and subsequent cleanup efforts, paper mills along the lower Fox River — the bay’s largest tributary — dumped toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the water without restraint while silty, fertilizer-soaked runoff poured off upstream farms.

Southern Green Bay was no place for “a self-respecting whitefish,” said Scott Hansen, senior fisheries biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Lake Michigan’s much larger main basin, meanwhile, was full of them. 

Commercial fisherman Todd Stuth’s business got 80% of its catch from the open waters of Lake Michigan before the turn of the millenium. Now, 90% comes from Green Bay.

How did things change so dramatically?

First, invasive filter-feeding zebra and quagga mussels arrived in the Great Lakes from Eastern Europe and multiplied over decades, eventually monopolizing the nutrients and plankton that fish need to survive. Whitefish populations in lakes Michigan and Huron have tanked as a result.

Fortunately for Wisconsin and a sliver of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Hansen said, “Southern Green Bay kept building.”

In the late 1990s, scientists began spotting the fish in Green Bay area rivers where they hadn’t been seen in a century. Soon the species started showing up during surveys of lower Green Bay. By the early 2010s, models show the bay was teeming with tens of millions of them.

It’s not entirely clear what caused the whitefish revival, but most see cleaner water as part of the equation.

A decades-long restoration project has cleared away more than 6 million yards of sediment laced with PCBs and nutrient-laced farm runoff from the Fox River and lower Green Bay. Phosphorus concentrations near the river mouth have declined by a third over 40 years — though they’re still considered too high.

“Pelicans are back, and the bird population seems to be thriving,” said Sarah Bartlett, a water resources specialist with the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, which monitors the bay’s water quality. “And now we have this world-class fishery.”

Hansen’s theory is that back when whitefish were still abundant in Lake Michigan, some wanderers strayed into the newly hospitable bay and decided to stay. Or maybe they were here all along, waiting for the right conditions to multiply.

Either way, the bay has become a lifeline for whitefish and the humans that eat them.

“I feel very fortunate that the bay is doing as well as it is,” said Stuth, who chairs the state commercial fishing board. 

As commercial harvests in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan plummeted from more than 1.6 million pounds in 2000 to less than 200,000 pounds in 2024, harvests in Green Bay skyrocketed from less than 100,000 pounds to more than 800,000.

The bay has also become more important to fishers in Michigan, which has jurisdiction over a portion of its waters.

While the state’s total commercial harvests from Lake Michigan have plummeted 70% since 2009 to just 1.2 million pounds annually, the decline would be steeper were it not for stable stocks in the bay. Once accounting for just a sliver of the catch, the bay now makes up more than half.

A recreational ice fishing scene has sprung up too, with thousands of anglers taking to the ice each winter, contributing tens of millions to the local economy.

Ironically, the bay’s lingering nutrient pollution may be helping to some extent – a dynamic also seen in Michigan’s Saginaw Bay. 

Nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen are the building blocks of life, fueling the growth of aquatic plants and algae at the base of the food web. Plankton eat the algae, small fish eat the plankton, and big fish eat the small fish.

Unlike the main basins, where mussels have hogged nutrients and starved out whitefish, polluted runoff leaves the shallow bays with more than enough for the mussels and everything else. 

Some have even suggested Michigan and its neighbors should start fertilizing the big lakes in hopes of giving whitefish a boost, Herbert said, but “there’s the question of feasibility.” 

First, because the lakes are far deeper and wider than the bays, it would take vast quantities to make an impact. And while excess nutrients may help feed fish, they could also cause oxygen-deprived dead zones, harmful algae blooms and other serious problems.

Green Bay is already offering other lessons for Michigan, though. 

Inspired by whitefish’s return to the bay’s rivers, biologists including Herbert are trying to coax Michigan whitefish to spawn in rivers that connect to nutrient-rich river mouths like Lake Charlevoix. 

The hope is that if hatchlings can spend a few months fattening up before migrating into the mussel-infested big lake, they’ll stand a better chance of surviving.

Scientists in Green Bay are also tracking whitefish movements, hoping to figure out where they spawn and what makes those habitats special. That kind of information could prove useful to recovery efforts throughout the Great Lakes, said Dan Isermann, a fish biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Living in ‘the good old days’

“We’re really lucky to have what we have here,” said JJ Malvitz, a commercial fishing guide who owes his career to Green Bay’s whitefish resurgence. 

But he lives with fear that “the good old days are now.”

Stocks have shrunk by half since the mid-2010s, according to population models fed with data from DNR surveys and commercial and recreational harvests. The adult whitefish seem to be fat and healthy. But for reasons unknown, fewer of their offspring have been making it to adulthood.  

It’s possible the bay’s population is just leveling off after a period of strong recruitment, Hansen said, “but we want to be vigilant.”

A recent string of lackluster winters adds to the concern. Whitefish lay their eggs on ice-covered reefs. When that protective layer fails to form or melts off early, the eggs can be battered by waves or enticed to hatch early, out of sync with the spring plankton bloom that serves as their main food source.

While this winter was icier than most, climate change is making low-ice winters more frequent.

“Whitefish are a cold-water species, and we know that’s not where the trends are going,” Hansen said.

Time to cut back?

So far, Wisconsin officials haven’t lowered Green Bay’s annual whitefish quota of 2.28 million pounds, evenly split between the commercial and sport fisheries. Commercial boats are limited to fish bigger than 17 inches, while recreational anglers are limited to 10 fish a day of any size.

But during a recent presentation to the state’s Natural Resources Board, Hansen said it’s time to start keeping closer tabs on the population. 

“If these trends continue,” he said, “we need to have some more serious discussions amongst ourselves about lowering the exploitation rates.”

Malvitz, the guide, believes it’s time for commercial and recreational anglers to collectively agree to harvest fewer fish. He would be satisfied with a five-fish limit for recreational anglers along with smaller quotas for the commercial fishery, which harvests far more fish. 

The bay’s whitefish reappeared quickly and unexpectedly, he said. Who’s to say they couldn’t disappear just as fast?

“I don’t want to be standing on the shore in five years saying ‘remember when,’” he said. 

Stuth, the commercial fishing board chair, isn’t ready to accept tighter quotas in the bay, but said population models should be closely watched. If the declines continue, he said, cuts may be on the table.

“A very conservative approach is going to be necessary,” he said. “Because it’s our last stronghold. If that goes away, what do we have?”

This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Wisconsin whitefish refuge offers lessons for Michigan. But will it last? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Cities and states are filing lawsuits and scrambling for alternative sources of money as the Trump administration seeks to shut off the federal funding spigot for biking and walking trails.

Since the early 1990s, there has been fairly consistent — and largely bipartisan — federal support for bicycle and pedestrian projects. Federal funding for such projects reached new heights during the Biden administration, as major spending measures in 2021 and 2022 included billions in new money for them.

But in his efforts to eliminate what he perceives as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — and to roll back anything associated with his predecessor — President Donald Trump has targeted hundreds of millions in federal grants for biking and pedestrian projects. And further cuts could be coming.

The broad tax and spending measure Trump signed last summer rescinded $2.4 billion from the Biden administration’s Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, money included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act to address long-standing safety issues stemming from past infrastructure projects, including interstate highways that split minority communities.

Of that total, at least $750 million was specifically earmarked for trails, walking paths and bike lane projects, according to data on grant recipients collected by Rails to Trails Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for trails and the construction of multiuse paths in abandoned railroad corridors.

Mark Treskon, a principal research associate at the nonprofit Urban Institute, said the administration seems to view bike and pedestrian trails as “a policy thing that people on the left like,” and is cutting funding as a “knee-jerk reaction” to former President Joe Biden’s policy priorities.

But Nate Sizemore, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said the Trump administration is simply “getting back to basics” by “building the essential infrastructure needed to safely move people and commerce.”

“As grant programs become available for applicants, we will ensure that every taxpayer dollar is reinvested into rebuilding the roads and bridges our economy demands. … This decision reflects a significant shift away from the previous administration’s costly social and climate initiatives that deprioritized the needs of American drivers and increased congestion risks,” Sizemore wrote in an email.

Already reeling from the $750 million in cuts included in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, cities and states that are counting on federal money for biking and pedestrian projects are worried about further cuts when Congress reauthorizes a broad transportation funding law that expires on Sept. 30. Biden’s 2021 infrastructure measure boosted the amount of money available for bike and pedestrian projects under that law.

“Everything is on the table, and there’s lots of risks to not only some of these grants that have been given under the last transportation bill … but it also implicates programs that are like the bread and butter of building trails, walking and biking infrastructure that have been around for many decades,” said Kevin Mills, vice president of policy at Rails to Trails Conservancy.

“We’ve heard warning signs from the administration, from leaders in Congress and from the heads of state transportation departments that they are looking to focus more on cars and less on active transportation, and sometimes less on transit as well.”

Seeking alternatives

In the aftermath of last year’s cuts and uncertainty over the future of federal funding, some states and cities have seen their projects completely stall, while others have found ways to move forward while decreasing their reliance on federal support.

In Connecticut, Rick Dunne, the executive director of the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments, the federal metropolitan planning organization in that area of Connecticut, said the Trump administration pulled $5.7 million in funding to build around 9 miles on a 42-mile trail project known as the Naugatuck River Greenway Trail last September.

“It would have leveraged a whole bunch of state money and local dollars to build these sections,” Dunne said, noting that the council was hoping to use the federal funds to get matching dollars locally. “It would have advanced all of the activities on the trail and built major sections using other state, federal and local funding for construction.”

Dunne said Connecticut is limited in how it raises transportation funds because it doesn’t have counties.

“It’s either paid for by those small local towns, 10,000 to 20,000 people, or it’s paid for by the state,” Dunne said. “But once we lose the federal funding, then we start losing some of the state funding and local funding that would have matched it.”

Dunne said the council has not received any further communication from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Terry Brunner, director of the city’s Metropolitan Redevelopment Agency, said the Trump administration last September pulled an $11.5 million grant to build part of a 7.5-mile pedestrian and bike lane around the city’s downtown.

The city decided to sue the administration in November to get those funds back, and the case is still wrapped up in court.

“We’re hoping we get a positive outcome on the lawsuit,” Brunner said. “We’ve also got a backup plan to ask for another federal funding source, or try to get funding from the state of New Mexico to the city of Albuquerque to complete the section, because we were about 90% done with the design of this trail.”

Brunner said Albuquerque has one of the highest pedestrian and cyclist death rates in the country, so getting people off the streets onto a safe trail is a priority for the city.

“I don’t think they’re going to stop us, but they’ll delay us,” he said, noting that the city is lucky because the state is offering funding and that the city budget may have some flexibility.

“Historically, we’ve always had a good partnership in Albuquerque with the federal government, and this is taking away a little bit of that shine and making us feel as if the federal government just really doesn’t care about Albuquerque.”

Projects in Republican-led states

The Trump administration also rescinded a $147 million grant for Jacksonville, Florida, to complete the 30-mile urban Emerald Trail.

Kay Ehas, CEO of Groundwork Jacksonville, the city’s nonprofit partner in building the Emerald Trail and restoring Hogans and McCoys creeks, says the group is continuing to work with the city “to identify funding to replace the federal grant that was rescinded last year.”

“We are enlisting the support of corporate and private donors to fund design, which keeps the project moving while we seek government dollars for construction,” Ehas told Stateline.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Atlanta Regional Commission is continuing to plan and develop Flint River Gateway Trails, said Josh Phillipson, principal program specialist at ARC. The 31-mile network of bike and pedestrian paths would connect communities along the Flint River in the southern portion of the metro Atlanta area. The commission tapped into the area’s annual allocation of federal transportation funding to cover the cost of the $1.5 million master planning effort, which includes a 20% local match from ARC, despite losing a $65 million federal grant.

“We are not doing anything on the construction because we don’t have those dollars at this point,” Phillipson said. “We’re stepping back a little bit more into our traditional role of doing the long-range planning, but we’re going to be sticking with this project, committed for the next few years.”

Mills, of Rails to Trails Conservancy, lamented the loss of the Neighborhood Access and Equity grants, which would have helped areas “where historic transportation investments had split communities in two,” cutting off residents from economic opportunities and their neighbors.

In Atlanta, for example, Phillipson said the trails project was meant to “bridge over core infrastructure decisions of the last century that were overwhelmingly impacting more diverse communities,” making it “difficult now to walk or ride a bike between two adjacent communities.”

Treskon, of the Urban Institute, said cities and states will be hard-pressed to replace all the federal money they lost.

“It’s a pretty big hit across the board for the places that had built that into their financial plans,” he said.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

A DNR senior fisheries biologist says whitefish populations have been sharply declining in the lake for the last 20 years.

The post New reduced Lake Michigan whitefish quota goes into effect for commercial fishers appeared first on WPR.

A Republican bill would allow the sale of public lands near a commercial egg farm as one of the country’s largest egg producers in Wisconsin has been forced to cull millions of birds due to avian flu.

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A Wausau company must pay $250,000 for nearly two dozen alleged violations of the state’s air pollution control laws under a settlement announced Monday by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul.

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Outdoor enthusiasts provided a record-breaking $12 billion boost to Wisconsin’s economy, marking the state’s third record year in a row for outdoor recreation.

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