Dairyland Power Cooperative announced a collaboration with Applied Atomics, a company that builds and operates small modular nuclear reactors.

The post Dairyland Power considers bringing nuclear back to former Genoa site appeared first on WPR.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Since launching their campaigns for Wisconsin governor, both Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley have touted the concept of local control.

Each argues that communities deserve “a seat at the table” in matters of commercial and industrial land use, but their records as public servants illustrate contrasts about when competing local and state interests should carry the day.

The issue is worth considering in this year’s midterm election as Wisconsinites face mounting energy costs and a queue of construction proposals for new transmission lines, power plants and data centers.

“I want to get Madison out of the way where it makes sense,” Tiffany told attendees of the annual Wisconsin Counties Association conference in September. “Local officials understand their communities, and state government should be working with them rather than creating additional obstacles.”

Yet Tiffany is an architect of some of the most consequential environmental regulatory rewriting of the past 15 years, stripping municipalities of several powers to regulate shoreland development and mining in their own backyards.

Crowley has worked with the state to address Milwaukee County’s budget issues. Just a few years ago, Milwaukee County was heading for a “fiscal cliff,” the culmination of a decades-long pension scandal. 

Without state intervention and the “tools to raise additional revenue and fund local priorities,” the county would face “tough decisions,” Crowley wrote in 2022. The following year, the Legislature authorized Milwaukee County to increase its local sales tax rate by almost half a percentage point.

Neither candidate has offered many specifics in their campaign pitches, and neither campaign responded to requests for comment.

But their policymaking records offer some clues.

During Tiffany’s time in the Wisconsin Legislature and Congress, he has conveyed a general desire to get the state and federal government “out of the way” of local decision-making. Crowley’s time as a county executive and state Assembly member highlights his support for public spending on property development and the creation of minimum environmental standards to protect public health.

Local control and mining operations

Crowley has argued for “a case-by-case” treatment of mining projects without staking a claim over the industry’s merits.

Still, he continues to push for amassing consensus and would not rule out allowing new mining permits before consulting with local communities. 

In January, when a PBS reporter asked him to explain how he would respond to new mining permit requests, Crowley said he would convene a work group of experts to obtain the best information possible.

“It’s about working with the local municipalities, working with the groups and the stakeholders that are on the ground,” he said.

Comparatively, Tiffany’s time in the Wisconsin Senate from 2013 through 2020 saw him take up the mantle of getting the miner, emblazoned on the Great Seal of the State of Wisconsin, back to work. He ushered in several bills intended to loosen restrictions that businesses said stymied economic growth.

The first of several successful proposals started with the 2013 reworking of the state’s iron mining law, which instructed regulators to start the mining permitting process on the presumption that some environmental damage to wetlands is a necessary operating condition of the industry. 

Supporters maintained the reforms assured developers they could expect regulatory certainty and expeditious review of new projects.

A few years later, prompted by a bill Tiffany co-authored, the Legislature lifted the state’s moratorium on sulfide mining, which can release toxins, and stopped requiring companies to prove they could successfully operate and close sulfide mines elsewhere in the United States or Canada without polluting the environment.

Tiffany also sought to curb local authority too when regulations posed risks to obstructing economic development.

Two 2013 bills proposed restricting local governments’ ability to regulate nonmetallic mining, including frac sand operations, and would have prohibited them from creating water quality and air quality standards, permits, restrictions and monitoring requirements.

Tiffany told Wisconsin Watch at the time that some local units of government are “trying to establish mini-DNRs,” by conducting their own air and water testing. “That’s the purview of the state,” he said. 

The contentious proposal didn’t make it to the chamber floor for a vote.

Local control and land acquisition

In 2015, Tiffany co-sponsored legislation that took the opposite view on local control in the context of land acquisition.

Republicans and Democrats have long clashed on how to finance the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program. The fund enables the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to purchase private land and easements for habitat preservation and recreation or issue grants to organizations or municipalities to do the same. 

Both Tiffany and Crowley say they support allocating money for the program, but Tiffany has long expressed reservations about its focus on purchasing new property.

In 2015, Tiffany sought to curb state authority by requiring the Wisconsin DNR to obtain approval from every municipality and the county in which the property is located before acquiring new properties. The bill didn’t advance to a vote. Tiffany now says he would fund the program so long as the dollars maintain existing public lands.

Crowley has said repeatedly he supports strengthening the program, drawing parallels to his support for county lands. 

In the last five Milwaukee County budget cycles, he recommended county leaders spend tens of millions of dollars on parks and trails, drainage infrastructure and waterfront protection.

In other environmental areas, Crowley also has reined in local control by creating baseline standards. As a state legislator, he backed bills that would have imposed statewide requirements for mandatory lead testing and inspections and restricted the ability of municipalities to privatize their public water or sewer utilities.

Wisconsin governor candidates talk about supporting local control, but their records are mixed depending on the issue 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.

SPRINGDALE, Pa. — Residents in a small southwestern Pennsylvania town are facing the prospect of a 47-acre data center facility on their doorstep.

“Right here behind this fence is where they want to put up the data center, and as you can see, there’s houses right across the street, roughly 100 feet,” said lifelong Springdale borough resident Cathy Mager, stretching her arms to show the distance from the development site’s perimeter to a line of houses across Porter Street. 

“We don’t want it,” she told States Newsroom on Oct. 19

The scenario is playing out around the United States. Both Democratic and Republican candidates during the heated midterm election cycle have had to navigate deep voter resentment of the massive advanced computer server farm developments that will power artificial intelligence.

“The issue has blown up over the last year,” said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology. “It wasn’t that long ago politicians were fighting to bring data centers to their communities. Now these facilities are completely controversial, and many people don’t want them in their neighborhood. So public opinion has changed very rapidly on this issue.”

53 years with a power plant

Mager is among a few dozen residents in Springdale, in northeastern Allegheny County, who formed the group Save Allegheny Valley Environment to protest the proposed data center development on the community’s riverfront site of a coal-fired power plant that went offline in 2022.

“We’ve already lived for 53 years under that power plant,” said Vicki Wanamaker, 66, a lifelong Springdale resident who lives about a 10th of a mile from the fencing around the site.

She’s worried now about the noise a data center would bring to the neighborhood, with its water coolers running and back-up diesel generators on site, and whether she would experience electricity shortages. 

Springdale’s council voted 5-2 in December to approve a conditional use permit for the project by Dynamo DC, a company with a Springdale-based address that “builds AI data centers on environmentally remediated brownfield sites,” according to its website. Residents are now asking Allegheny County to stop further land use plans.

Dynamo DC spokesperson Brian Regli said the developers will use “acoustical shielding” to keep noise well below ordinance levels.

The hyperscale data center will recycle 500,000 gallons of water in a closed-loop system to cool the servers, he told States Newsroom during an interview in late October. The facility is planned to handle up to 240 megawatts, which it will pull from a regional electricity grid, Regli said. 

Dynamo DC has not yet identified which company or contractors will actually use the data center. The company plans for the data center to go online by 2029.

Regli said the company is exploring “environmentally conscious” fuels for the diesel back-up generators. The amount of back-up power needed for the site will ultimately depend on how the data center is used.

Some uses “may need a fraction of the backup power that we put forward,” he said. “But you know, if this is a critical facility, let’s say it is being used by the military — which I doubt that the center would become that, but let’s use that as an example — you’re going to want to have as robust of a backup infrastructure as you can,” Regli said.

Amie Downs, of Caveat Communications, which is providing communications for Springdale, said the borough “was able to negotiate a number of other provisions that benefit the community and its taxpayers that relate to noise, lighting, traffic, landscaping, and other requirements, imposing stricter standards than the borough’s ordinances otherwise required.” 

Thousands of data centers planned

Data centers are a linchpin of the modern internet, but the scale needed for advanced computing is new.

There are 1,394 data centers already operating around the United States, and they carry a combined capacity of 64,764 megawatts. 

As of October, 2,841 more data centers are planned and would add 413,152 megawatts of additional capacity, according to the energy market firm Cleanview’s data center project tracker.

“What we’re seeing now is huge facilities that are being built. These are data centers that occupy the size of several football fields,” said West, who also publishes the progressive organization’s TechTank and is a senior fellow on governance studies. “They require a lot of energy. Some of them require water as well. So the size of the data centers creates public anxiety and worry.”

Sixty-three percent of American adults say they don’t want a data center built in their community, according to a late August poll published by YouGov and The Economist.

A CNN poll conducted in mid-September found nearly two-thirds of registered voters surveyed said AI and data center development will be an extremely or very important factor in their vote this midterm election. The poll also found a partisan divide: Democrats are 26 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say they’re very concerned about data centers, according to the results.

From Trump on down

The issue is permeating politics and races at the federal, state and local levels.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday wrote on his Truth Social platform that data centers “are mandated by me to make their own electricity.”  

“If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a ‘dividend.’ … MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!” he wrote.

The statement is a pivot from his late August post, when he called opponents of data center developments “backwards and poor.” 

 

Everyone is talking about data centers ahead of the midterm elections. I heard from residents in a Pennsylvania neighborhood where a hyperscale data center is proposed for just outside their doorsteps. Read more: www.newsfromthestates.com/article/we-d…

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— Ashley Murray (@ashleymurray.bsky.social) October 26, 2026 at 5:02 PM

 

Resentment against the large-scale projects has become a dominant issue in hotly contested U.S. Senate races that will determine party control for the closely divided upper chamber.

A Democratic-backed political action committee poured $2.5 million in late October into ad campaigns depicting incumbent Republican U.S. Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and John Husted of Ohio as friends of the tech industry and AI developers. 

States Newsroom did not immediately receive a response for comment about the new ads from Husted’s and Marshall’s reelection campaigns. 

Marshall told the publication Semafor in July that he was supportive of data center moratoriums. Husted blamed Senate Democrats for blocking a procedural vote in late September on a House-passed bill that aimed to regulate electricity costs associated with large-scale data center projects. 

Not all Democrats voted against the measure. Democratic senators who voted for it included Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, where Osoff is seeking reelection; Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, who is running for governor; and New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, who is not seeking another term. 

West said anxiety about data centers exists on both sides of the aisle, but that it’s become a “partisan issue in the election because Republicans historically have been more pro-business.”

“Democrats are now using that past support for tax breaks against Republican officials,” he said, pointing to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s pause on data center development after rapid growth. Abbott is seeking reelection this November.

But party lines on the issue blur, West noted.

Pennsylvania politics

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who is seeking reelection, has touted the commonwealth’s infrastructure and workforce as ripe for hyperscale data center and AI development, and until recently provided a fast-track permitting path. 

In June 2025, he joined state leaders from both sides of the aisle to announce a $20 billion investment by Amazon Web Services for two development sites, including a 1,200-acre site in northeast Pennsylvania that would reportedly consume as much energy as 900,000 homes and require millions of gallons of cooling water each day. 

The technologies, he said, “should be developed by the hands of a Pennsylvania worker…not in communist China,” according to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star. 

Under pressure from grassroots opposition and from his Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, Shapiro signed an executive order in August 2026 mandating energy usage and transparency requirements on “greedy” data center developers.

In Pennsylvania state politics, Hadley Haas, a Democrat vying to unseat Republican state Rep. Valerie Gaydos in the 44th House District, said data center regulations have become a main issue in her campaign. 

“There’s just a generalized anxiety, I would say, about AI and data centers, especially around the cost of utilities,” Haas told States Newsroom. “Sometimes people will bring up water consumption or noise and that kind of thing. But mostly, they’re concerned about the cost implications.” 

Haas said her platform includes “guardrails” on data center development. She accused her opponent of flip-flopping on the issue — voting “no” in March on a data center regulation bill in the Democratic-led Statehouse, but then announcing support for a 180-day pause proposal in July.

“People started to see actual data that this was an issue that was a concern for people, and that’s when we saw more of the Republicans starting to chime in,” she said.

States Newsroom reached out to Gaydos’ campaign for comment but did not receive a reply.

Pennsylvania’s 44th House District occupies the west side of Allegheny County, where the 15-member countywide council voted unanimously in September to ban the development of data centers over 25 megawatts on any county-owned land, including vast tracts of park land.

Council member Kathleen Madonna-Emmerling, who represents a portion of the county’s western side, said ,“It’s important we do this proactively because it gives us the strong legal foundation to deny those permits without discriminating against a certain type of business.”

States Newsroom reached out to all members of the Springdale borough council for comment but did not hear back.

West said he expects “this issue is going to stay on the political scene for several years as people debate how we should handle these facilities.” 

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Milwaukee faces a big challenge: replacing tens of thousands of lead water pipes that pose a potential health risk to residents — all by a 2037 deadline imposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

At the end of 2025, Milwaukee Water Works still had over 55,000 residential homes or properties with lead water lines on the utility-owned side, customer-owned side or both. The utility had yet to identify the makeup of pipelines serving another 27,000 properties. 

But Milwaukee can’t replace all the pipelines at once — and some neighborhoods face greater risks from lead exposure than others.

So which areas should officials prioritize? 

Part of the answer lies in a surprising place: a tool University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers originally developed to study the connection between neighborhood disadvantage and human health.

Lead does not impact neighborhoods equally

Milwaukee’s pipeline problem dates back to 1872, when the city mandated the use of lead in service lines. Although the city abolished the mandate in 1962, older lead pipelines remained in many older residential buildings.

Downtown Milwaukee includes a scattering of homes with non-lead service lines — many due to having already been replaced by the city.

Milwaukee has replaced nearly 15,000 pipelines since beginning its broader efforts in 2017, said Milwaukee Water Works Superintendent Patrick Pauly. When federal funding became available under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the utility expanded its effort, increasing the pace from about 1,000 lines a year to 5,000. 

The expansion included a priority program launched in 2024, which focuses on equity and offers free replacements to eligible residents. 

But scaling up the effort required more than funds and construction crews. The city also needed a systematic way to decide where to work — one that recognizes disproportionate risks across the city.

“We needed to expand the lead service line replacement program, and we needed to develop a, for lack of a better word, defensible method to expand that program,” Pauly said.

What Milwaukee’s priority system looks like

The resulting system assigned each property a score based on three factors: 

• 70% comes from the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a measure of relative socioeconomic disadvantage developed by UW-Madison researchers. 
• 25% comes from the percentage of local children who tested positive for lead poisoning. 
• 5% comes from lead service line density in the area.

Together, these measures help the utility determine where replacement will yield the highest benefits. 

The city updates each property’s score every other year as new information becomes available, Pauly said. 

The scoring weights heavily toward neighborhood disadvantage as broader challenges residents face can compound risks posed by lead exposure. 

Nationwide, communities burdened by economic disadvantages and racial inequalities can face greater risks of lead exposure, according to a Montclair State University study of New Jersey. Such neighborhoods often contain older housing and sit near former industrial sites.

The ADI relies on attempts to quantify disadvantages in Milwaukee, and its origins have little to do with water infrastructure.

A tool developed to understand health disparities

The ADI measures neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage or adverse social exposure using 17 U.S. Census American Community Survey measures. They include factors related to income, education, housing, and employment.

The index assigns scores to census block groups — small geographic areas that generally contain several hundred to a few thousand people.

Block groups receive a national percentile ranking from 1 to 100 or a statewide decile ranking from 1 to 10. Higher rankings indicate greater socioeconomic disadvantage relative to other areas.

Researchers have long recognized that people’s health depends on far more than the medical care they receive. But measuring the influence of social and economic conditions on health isn’t easy.

Dr. Amy Kind has spent much of her career trying to figure that out.

Kind, a professor of geriatrics and gerontology at UW-Madison and founding director of its Center for Health Disparities Research, grew up in Niagara, Wisconsin, before training as a physician. 

During her residency in Boston, she saw that the medicine she prescribed could do only so much when patients returned to homes without healthy food, stable housing or access to other basic resources. Those experiences helped shape her interest in finding ways to measure such disadvantages. 

Researchers have used indexes like ADI since the 1980s. In 2014, Kind led a group of University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health researchers in updating ADI using modern census data, refined it to the census block level and validated its usefulness across several scientific studies. 

“(Like any marker), it may not be the thing that ultimately drives the risk,” Kind said. “But it has been an extremely strong marker that something going on in that area is increasing risk, whatever it might be.”

An unexpected use for health research

“When we first developed the metric, we thought that perhaps it would be used primarily by health systems, primarily in the research community,” Kind said. 

Instead, Kind and her colleagues heard from many community groups and local governments that were interested in using index data to guide their public health work.

Since 2014, the University of Wisconsin has tracked over 3,500 academic papers citing the index and more than 400 examples of its use across different fields. That includes a recent Kind study linking environmental factors to the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Meanwhile, the index helped officials in Puerto Rico decide where to send nurses to combat dengue fever and the mosquitoes that carry it.

That wide interest prompted Kind to develop the Neighborhood Atlas in 2018, making the data more accessible. 

Kind said she enjoys seeing the index be used in sometimes unexpected ways to address local challenges. That includes Milwaukee’s effort to protect children from lead exposure, where officials are using it as one component of their model. 

Thousands of pipelines replaced, thousands more to go 

Milwaukee Water Works has replaced lead pipes at more than 6,000 properties under its priority program, which launched less than three years ago.

The work has been largely concentrated on the city’s North Side but has also expanded into near South Side neighborhoods. 

Pauly expects the utility to reach a milestone next year of 20,000 lead lines replaced.

But officials will soon face a difficult question: how to pay for replacements after  Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding runs out in 2028.  

One possibility is returning to a funding system that required homeowners to pay part of the cost of replacing the privately owned portion of their service lines. 

“I don’t believe the city has the financial capacity to take on fully funding the private side replacement costs,” Pauly said.

That could present another challenge for a program designed to prioritize neighborhoods where residents already face financial disadvantages.

For now, residents living in homes with lead service lines that are not yet scheduled for replacement can take steps to better understand their own risk. 

Julie LaRose, lead and nutrition program coordinator at the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, runs one of the many programs in the city where residents can submit samples of their tap water for free lead testing.

LaRose recognizes residents’ concerns about their tap water. But she also emphasizes that Milwaukee water is highly regulated, and she has not seen any samples tested through her program exceed one part per billion (ppb) of lead. 

That’s far below the FDA limit for lead in bottled water (5 ppb) and the EPA’s threshold for utility action (15 ppb). 

“If you’re nervous about this, let’s test it,” LaRose said.

How a UW tool helps Milwaukee decide which lead pipes to replace first 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.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Marinette resident Andi Rich occasionally shows her anger over how elected officials don’t always seem to grasp the significance of PFAS-contaminated groundwater.

For years, Rich has kept up with the latest PFAS research and advocated for clean water in northeast Wisconsin. 

“It is a complicated issue, but it’s frustrating that the people who were put in charge to figure it out … are failing to even understand the issue well enough to know how to do anything about it,” said Rich, a former candidate for the state Assembly.

Perfluoroalkyl- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or so-called “forever chemicals,” have been linked to health issues, such as certain types of cancer, liver damage, thyroid issues and developmental effects or delays in children. The chemicals are used in a variety of manufactured goods, such as firefighting foam, nonstick coatings, textiles, carpeting and personal care products. 

Sign up for Northeast News, our free email newsletter focused on northeast Wisconsin.

In Marinette County, PFAS thought to stem from Johnson Controls’ and its subsidiary Tyco Fire Products’ Marinette Fire Training Facility have contaminated groundwater used for drinking water.

This election season, candidates in state and national races on both sides of the political aisle are confronting voters’ growing concerns about the quality of their drinking water – in part because people like Rich have kept the heat on.

Widespread contamination

Throughout Wisconsin, PFAS contaminations have caught the attention of elected officials who say clean, safe drinking water is a critically important issue. A Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources study found 71% of 450 shallow, private potable-water wells sampled in 2022 contained at least one detectable PFAS. However, the authors note that “low percentages of samples” surpassed state (1% of samples) or federal (4% of samples) health limits for PFAS.

All of the state candidates who responded to the Northeast Wisconsin News Lab’s general election questionnaire in September said PFAS is a serious issue in Wisconsin. 

Bipartisan support for PFAS-free drinking water motivated state Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Gillett, to rewrite PFAS legislation in 2024 and 2025 to garner Democrats’ support. Assembly Rep. Jeff Mursau, R-Crivitz, co-authored the 2025 bill. 

Gov. Tony Evers signed into law two new PFAS statutes in April. The measures, which aim to hold polluters accountable, created a state PFAS trust fund with about $133 million in grants for PFAS remediation. 

However, observers say it’s just the beginning of what’s needed.

Rich and other local clean water activists continue to push for state groundwater limits for PFAS and ways to prevent contamination, such as banning products containing the substances.

Marinette County’s contaminated area has expanded as biosolids containing PFAS were spread on lands, with the forever chemicals seeping into groundwater, Rich said. The contamination migrated with the groundwater’s flow into new areas, including into waterways that feed into the bay of Green Bay. 

The DNR verified that the contaminated area has expanded, and agency experts discussed the size of the Expanded Site Investigation Area in Marinette County during a July listening session. 

“The groundwater impacted by PFAS is extensive in this area and actions available to clean up PFAS will take a long time to achieve results,” said Alyssa Sellwood, DNR project manager for remediation and redevelopment.

While progress has occurred, including construction of new deep wells on private properties in a limited area, complaints about the new wells also are flowing as residents say water quality is an issue. The new wells are over 500 feet deep, Sellwood said. 

“The water from that depth in this area can be very hard and contain naturally occurring contaminants like radium and strontium, which require treatment to lower the concentrations to levels that are safe to drink,” she said.

Piping in Lake Michigan water

The threat of PFAS making its way into other communities in northeast Wisconsin has encouraged some to connect to larger water systems. Officials in the city of Green Bay and Central Brown County Water Authority are selling their treated water, pulled from Lake Michigan, to nearby communities that have been using deep wells.

Making the move to a new system is costly, as residents of Pulaski learned. The village of Pulaski Board agreed to purchase its drinking water from the city of Green Bay, after years of relying on deep wells that produced water heavy in iron and other minerals, said Board Chair Keith Chambers. Water rates in the village could rise by as much as 230%, according to the village’s website.

In need of more water capacity, the board considered constructing two new deep wells and adding treatment facilities to two other wells to filter PFAS and other contaminants. Doing so would have been expensive and without a guarantee of high-quality water, Chambers said. Sediment from the minerals turned the water tan, and people complained about it, he said. 

“We did not have any PFAS, but that can change in a heartbeat. Some could start leaching in. The DNR might change their threshold limits, or the EPA. You could have perfectly good water one day and the next day, they’re telling you it’s bad,” Chambers said.

The board opted to purchase water from the city of Green Bay, pulled out of Lake Michigan near Kewaunee and piped to Pulaski. The major construction project took longer than expected.

“We had two buildings we had to build and 6.5 miles of 20-inch pipe that we put in the ground,” Chambers said. “Right after COVID, prices were going through the roof; supplies weren’t available.”

The result is a substantial water rate increase. While the quarterly bill for 10,000 gallons was about $151, it is expected to rise to about $351, Chambers said. Ratepayers are footing most of the project’s cost, he said.

“Now there are a lot of people who are angry that we didn’t put it to a referendum,” he said. “I’m a big man, so it’s hard to tar and feather me, but if they could, they would.” 

The estimated cost of constructing a new deep well was $20 million, he said, while the Green Bay water project ended up just north of $16 million. Grants from the DNR and city of Green Bay helped offset some of the cost. 

In Wisconsin, the Natural Resources Board passed PFAS limits for community drinking water at the same level as the federal limits passed in April 2024. The board is expected to take up groundwater standards for PFAS in the near future, with a proposal to impose the same limits used for community drinking water.

What candidates say

Several candidates who responded to the NEW News Lab’s general election survey suggested phasing out use of the substances where feasible. Furthermore, they said funding is only one aspect of the issue that affects many Wisconsin communities. 

“We need continued testing, help for communities facing contamination they didn’t cause and stronger prevention. I support holding responsible companies accountable for remediation costs while using state and federal resources when a responsible party can’t be identified,” said Emily Tseffos, a Democrat running to represent state Senate District 19.

Rep. Joel Kitchens, a Republican incumbent running for reelection in Assembly District 1, said the federal government should set PFAS limits for emerging PFAS varieties. 

“There will undoubtedly be more contaminants that are currently unknown to us that will emerge, and I hope that the federal government will take a stronger role in addressing them. We are not adequately equipped at the state level to determine safe levels,” he said.

To fully address the problem will take more than the PFAS trust fund, Rich said. She’s still waiting for Wisconsin to set PFAS limits for groundwater.

“Everybody wants to point fingers and say somebody else should do it,” she said. “Maybe it’s time for our local representatives to actually try to do something about it.”

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

Concerned Wisconsinites push candidates on PFAS regulations 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.

Gov. Tony Evers and state environmental regulators announced the launch of new grant programs Tuesday to help communities and private well owners address PFAS contamination.

The post Wisconsin launches grant programs to address PFAS contamination appeared first on WPR.

Wisconsin regulators will conduct a full statewide review of the environmental impacts of data center development under a legal deal with environmental groups.

The post Wisconsin will examine environmental cost of data centers in lawsuit settlement appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and a group of environmental organizations announced a settlement agreement Monday that would require stricter environmental impact assessments of future data center developments and initiate a statewide review of how data centers use the state’s resources. 

In June, the Sierra Club and Midwest Environmental Advocates sued the DNR in Ozaukee County court, arguing that the agency approved the permits for Vantage’s massive data center currently under construction in Port Washington without conducting a proper environmental impact statement. 

“AI data centers are massive, thirsty, energy hogs and have popped up all over Wisconsin,” Elizabeth Ward, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “They could completely change our landscape and use unprecedented amounts of water and energy. Wisconsinites and our regulators need to understand the impacts and opportunities to reduce harm before allowing data centers to move forward. Wisconsinites deserve an informed, transparent process for decisions that could shape their communities and environment for decades.

A report this summer by the state Public Service Commission found that the Port Washington data center and data centers being built by Microsoft in Mount Pleasant and Meta in Beaver Dam are set to be responsible for a 40% increase in statewide energy demand over the next six years. 

As part of the settlement agreement in the lawsuit, the DNR will conduct full environmental impact statements of individual data center proposals moving forward and complete a statewide strategic analysis of how data centers consume resources. 

State law and the DNR’s administrative rules allow the agency to conduct such an analysis when conflicts arise over resource demands for a  “complicated or complex issue; an issue that is new to the state; an issue or policy that will likely lead to future department actions that will require an environmental impact statement; issues for which there is a high potential for legislation or new department policy and the planning and development of controversial resource-oriented projects.”

“What started as a lawsuit over the environmental review of one data center has become an opportunity to address the data center issue on a much bigger scale,” MEA attorney Michael Greif said. “Looking at these impacts holistically is important because the impacts of data centers are statewide. State regulators will now have to examine the cumulative impacts of data center development across Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin will become one of a few states assessing the statewide impacts of data centers on their resources. In July, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order that initiated a similar analysis and last December, the Maryland Legislature enacted a law that requires a number of state agencies to study “the likely environmental, energy, and economic impacts of data center development.”

State utility regulators have signed off on an energy developer’s proposal to build a pair of new natural gas power plants in southern Wisconsin tied to rapidly growing electricity demand from data centers.

The post State regulators approve 2 southern Wisconsin natural gas plants appeared first on WPR.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to shift authority to regulate coal ash landfills in Wisconsin from the federal government to state environmental regulators.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources sought approval in February of its program to oversee disposal of coal combustion residuals, or coal ash, from the state’s electric utilities. Wisconsin has six coal ash landfills that are owned by Dairyland Power Cooperative, Alliant Energy, Wisconsin Public Service and We Energies.

Coal ash is what’s left behind from burning coal at power plants to produce electricity. Metals or pollutants within that waste, including arsenic, lead and mercury, can contaminate groundwater without proper storage.

Anne Vogel, EPA’s regional administrator for its Chicago-based office, said the agency wants to eliminate duplicate regulation.

“It’s really about having to go to two different regulators and eliminating that barrier makes things more efficient, more cost effective for the management of these landfills in a protective way,” Vogel told WPR.

The state’s regulations must be at least as stringent as federal requirements, but they could be even more protective.

Wisconsin moved to streamline regulations under an update to rules for coal ash landfills in 2022, said Kate Strom Hiorns, director of DNR’s Waste Materials Management Program. Those changes incorporated 2015 regulations imposed by the Obama administration that addressed landfill design, groundwater monitoring and closure requirements.

“By submitting this and getting this program approval, it’s that recognition that our regulations are as protective as the federal regulations, and that the sites that are being regulated can be regulated for the most part solely under state regulators and inspections,” Strom Hiorns said.

Wisconsin utilities support a shift to one set of regulations for their coal ash landfills.

“Utilities in Wisconsin have been regulated by the state for many years; transferring this particular permitting authority from the federal to state government is a positive step for Wisconsin,” said Dairyland spokesperson Katie Thomson.

However, Cheryl Nenn with the environmental group Milwaukee Riverkeeper said she’s in favor of dual regulation.

“Given the changes in politics at the state level and the federal level, there’s some benefit to having that dual oversight,” Nenn said, highlighting the state’s adoption of federal regulations.

The Obama and Biden administrations strengthened coal ash regulations, including a 2024 rule that required oversight of inactive landfills. Under the Trump administration, the EPA has proposed rolling back and revising those requirements.

“They’d essentially remove or exempt a lot of these coal ash dump sites from regulation entirely, even though many of them are already showing evidence of groundwater contamination,” Nenn said.

Nenn said there has been groundwater contamination at the closed, unlined Cedar Sauk Ash Landfill in Ozaukee County that received coal ash from We Energies’ Port Washington power plant from 1969 to 1977.

The DNR has ordered the utility to address contamination and conduct sampling for boron and sulfate, which found levels of boron exceeded groundwater standards. We Energies has said the utility has seen “declining trends” for both in monitoring wells, and sampling indicates no effects to nearby private wells. 

Strom Hiorns said the state requires utilities to conduct groundwater sampling and has long monitored groundwater at closed coal ash landfills, which wouldn’t change under the federal proposal.

She said other landfills owned by We Energies and Alliant Energy have also exceeded preventive action limits or enforcement standards for groundwater. Those detections are tied to older parts of those sites or naturally occurring substances, such as boron or molybdenum.

Brendan Conway, a spokesperson for WPS and We Energies, said their landfills are actively monitored for groundwater impacts and managed in line with state and federal requirements. An Alliant spokesperson said it’s committed to full compliance.

Under the EPA’s proposal, Wisconsin would assume authority only for coal ash landfills. The EPA would continue to oversee coal ash ponds. The EPA is currently accepting public comments on its proposal to shift regulation to Wisconsin’s program. A virtual public hearing will be held Nov. 9.

This story was originally published by WPR.

EPA proposes shifting oversight of coal ash landfills in Wisconsin to state regulators 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.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has reached a $245,000 settlement with a large livestock farm in Juneau County over allegations of manure polluting groundwater.

The post Wisconsin DOJ reaches $245K settlement with CAFO over manure pollution appeared first on WPR.

“Flush it and forget it” is easier for Wisconsin residents who are connected to municipal wastewater treatment systems. But there are more than 750,000 septic systems operating in the state. These privately-owned systems require regular maintenance and pumping.

The post Why septic system owners can’t just ‘flush and forget’ appeared first on WPR.

If elected governor, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said he would audit spending at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources before considering any fee or tax increases to support fish and wildlife management.

The post Tom Tiffany says he will audit Wisconsin DNR before weighing any fee increases appeared first on WPR.

The state recently announced it had planted its 50 millionth tree as part of the effort.

The post DNR says Wisconsin has planted its 50 millionth tree as part of the trillion tree pledge  appeared first on WPR.

Wisconsin environmental regulators have notified Enbridge of seven alleged violations of state environmental laws on a $1 billion project to reroute its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline in northern Wisconsin.

The post Wisconsin DNR notifies Enbridge of alleged violations on Line 5 reroute appeared first on WPR.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued a notice of violation to the Enbridge Energy Company for incidents in Iron and Ashland counties, where the company is working on a controversial reroute of its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline. 

The notice includes violations of permit conditions of the reroute construction project, and violations of state environmental laws for the unpermitted construction of a bypass around the Saxon Line 5 spill site. It covers laws involving state water quality, wetlands, navigable waterways, air quality, storm water and endangered resources protection.

The violations are alleged to have occurred from March 30 through Sept. 21 of this year. In August, a section of the pipeline leaked natural gas liquid near the town of Saxon, with drone video of the leak showing plumes of smokey vapor pouring out of an area where trucks and equipment were parked. Enbridge said that the leak occurred when an unoccupied truck rolled over an open excavation site near a valve project. Environmental groups fear that the leak could have been the largest of its kind in Wisconsin history.

 

 

The violation notice sets an enforcement conference, which is a standard step where the DNR and Enbridge will discuss the alleged violations. After the conference, the DNR can take further enforcement action such as issuing citations, referring the case to the Wisconsin Department of Justice for prosecution to seek forfeitures, or other court-related actions. 

A DNR press release notes that the notice of violation is separate from Enbridge’s responsibility under the spills law to respond to hazardous substances which may have been released during the August leak.

“These allegations are numerous and serious,” said Clean Wisconsin Attorney Evan Feinauer in a statement. “The DNR must now use the full force of its enforcement authority to hold Enbridge accountable and secure relief that addresses the significant harm to our environment Enbridge has caused.”

This article was updated with comment from Clean Wisconsin.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Enbridge said an early morning fire destroyed a drill rig and support equipment on a $1 billion project to reroute its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline in northern Wisconsin.

In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner called the fire that damaged a horizontal directional drill rig and related equipment an act of vandalism. She said there was also graffiti found at the site. No details were provided on where the fire took place, but Kellner said no injuries were reported.

Iron County Sheriff Paul Samardich confirmed the blaze occurred in Ashland County. The Ashland County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for additional details on the fire.

The incident follows two other fires targeting Enbridge that occurred last month, including a blaze in Ashland County that destroyed a drill rig on the Line 5 reroute.

“This is the second major vandalism involving construction equipment on the project,” Kellner said. “These incidents put the local community, landowners, first responders and our workers at risk and result in environmental impacts.”

The FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, are investigating the cause of the two previous fires that occurred in the town of Gingles and the city of Superior. Representatives of the FBI and ATF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kellner said Enbridge supports people’s rights to express their views “legally and peacefully.”

“Acts that damage property and put people or the environment at risk are neither legal nor peaceful,” Kellner said. “We take these incidents very seriously and will cooperate fully with authorities as they investigate and seek to hold those responsible accountable.”

Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline carries up to 23 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids daily from Superior to Sarnia, Ontario, serving 10 refineries and propane facilities in the Great Lakes region.

The fires come after an Aug. 25 gas leak on Line 5 in the town of Saxon released more than 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids into the atmosphere. Preliminary findings suggest a subcontractor’s truck was in neutral when it rolled into an open construction trench, striking the pipeline. No one was injured in the incident, and response to the spill is still ongoing.

Following the leak, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources asked Enbridge to halt work on a temporary bypass around the site of the leak, saying the company lacked necessary approvals.

On Sept. 28, Enbridge also reported a release of groundwater at a site where crews were directly installing pipe underneath the Marengo River. It was initially reported as an aquifer breach, and the DNR has since said it’s still investigating the source of the release and determining any negative effects to groundwater.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Enbridge says another fire destroys drill rig on Line 5 project in northern Wisconsin 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.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Dan Kuebler is out on a hot August morning on what used to be his farm.

Kuebler grew fruits and vegetables on 30 acres in Ashland, Missouri, and for decades he sold his produce at the Columbia Farmers Market. 

“Ashland was a little, bitty, sleepy town in ’77 when we bought it,” Kuebler said. 

Then, small towns in southern Boone County started becoming homes to those working in nearby Columbia or Jefferson City. Kuebler watched farmland on his 2-mile dead end road get sold and broken up into parcels. As he neared retirement, he needed to come up with a plan for the future of his farmland. 

“I don’t want it split up into five-acre plots … and become a development. That is just like — that’s sacrilege,” he said. 

Kuebler began farming at the age of 40. For the next 33 years, he grew dozens of varieties of vegetables and eventually branched out into making fermented foods such as sauerkraut, pickles and kimchi. He balanced managing the farm along with his other job as an in-home physical therapist. 

Kuebler is passionate about local farmers providing food for their community. He was an active seller at the farmers market and advocated for the permanent shelter that now houses the market on the west side of Columbia. 

As new development encroached on his neighborhood, Kuebler wanted to protect his farm from being broken up.

“I don’t want to sell it to the highest bidder. I want it to stay in farmland. So how should I do that?” he said.

The demand for more housing often comes at the expense of farmland. Flat, cleared fields are ideal for development. 

Now some agriculture advocates are encouraging farmers and landowners to use a legal tool to ensure their land remains farmable. 

They believe the need is critical. At least 50 million acres of farmland in the Midwest are set to change hands by the end of the decade due in part to the average age of farmers and landowners.

Kuebler worked with a local land trust to attach what’s known as a conservation or agriculture easement to his property deed. It dictates that the farmland must remain farmland no matter who owns it — forever.

“You cannot subdivide it, you cannot sell it off for residential development or commercial development. That is the guiding principle,” said Nick Shapiro, executive director of the Greenbelt Land Trust of Mid-Missouri, the organization Kuebler worked with. 

Land trusts do the work of ensuring current and future property owners follow the stipulations laid out in agriculture easements. 

“The initial landowner who donates the easement knows, not only is there this legal document out there that binds future owners, there is also an organization out there that is required to look after that easement in perpetuity and to defend it and to make sure that it is upheld and respected,” Shapiro said.

‘Best use’ of land

In recent years, about 2,000 acres of American farmland a day have been lost or compromised by development, according to American Farmland Trust, a national land preservation organization. The group estimates another 18.4 million acres — an area almost the size of South Carolina — will be converted by 2040.

Development pressures come from urban sprawl, when metropolitan areas continue to creep outward, paving over once-rural places. But what’s known as “low-density residential” development is also a threat. 

Housing built in the country on large plots of former farmland repurposed nearly 7 million acres of agricultural land between 2001 and 2016. 

American Farmland Trust’s analysis shows rural housing development is especially high in Missouri, elsewhere in the Midwest and in the South. 

Josh Wright is with American Farmland Trust, where he helps landowners through the often yearslong legal and financial process of securing an easement to protect land from development.

“People who have spent their entire lives working their land, whether it be in their family for many generations or not, you become so attached to it and all of your effort could be snatched up and paved over as soon as you sell the property,” he said. 

But placing development restrictions on a piece of land could reduce its value by up to 65%. Exactly how much depends on a number of factors, including location, nearby development pressures and how restrictive the easement is.

“Whenever you go to sell your property, it’s going to be appraised, and that’s going to be judged at best, highest dollar — and they call it best use in the industry,” Wright said. 

In other words, the most profitable use, which farming generally isn’t.

“Unfortunately, it’s probably considered the worst use,” he said.

 Twelve years ago, Congress expanded federal easement initiatives, setting aside about $450 million a year to compensate farm owners for a portion of reduced value of their land through a program known as ACEP-ALE, which stands for Agricultural Conservation Easement Program – Agricultural Land Easements.

That funding, which has since been increased to $650 million annually, filters through nonprofit organizations, such as land trusts, state and local agencies, or tribal governments, to essentially buy a property’s development rights from the farm owner.

Eric Gramlich works with Ozark Land Trust, a conservation organization focused on preserving land in Arkansas and Missouri. 

Although the government can provide a financial cushion to soften the blow of the drop in value a piece of property under easement will experience, Gramlich said it’s unlikely to be the landowner’s most lucrative option. 

“Even those payments would struggle to keep up with the demand and the price of land for commercial development or large scale subdivision development,” Gramlich said. “So I think the financial means, even for willing land owners, that’s a big challenge for them, and also a big challenge for us to rise up and … be on some sort of a playing field with the other competing interests for that land.”

More than 1 million acres of farmland have been preserved through easements since the federal program began in 2014. But more than half of that land is in just three states: Montana, Wyoming and Colorado. 

Currently, no farmland in Missouri has been restricted from development under the federal program. Illinois has 445 acres of farmland under permanent easements, and Iowa has 2,320 acres.

Gramlich said that’s because there still aren’t that many land trust organizations in Missouri, and the agricultural community is still learning about the option. 

“I’d like to think that we’ll be gaining more efficiencies in the program now that it’s been established, but it is generally a multiyear process to get the application in, the contracting paperwork, and then to actually do the boots-on-the-ground work of getting the easement in place,” he said. 

President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill increased the federal easement program funding to $650 million annually, to be used to preserve both farmland and wetlands. 

But preserving farmland through easements is time-consuming, while losing farmland to development can happen rapidly. 

A few years ago the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the agency that administers the easement program, made an effort to “streamline” multiple parts of the process including land appraisals, surveys and certifying organizations such as land trusts. 

In mid-Missouri, Shapiro hopes the land owners out there who value their farm’s legacy will consider preserving it with an easement.

“The older farmers who are looking to get out might be willing to take less than top dollar if they know that there is someone who really wants to take their land and run it and manage it in a way that is consistent with their shared values,” Shapiro said.

His organization, Green Belt Land Trust, was formed to preserve natural areas such as forests and wetlands. It expanded its work to farmland as development pressures increased.

“So much of mid-Missouri’s not just economy, but culture and heritage is based in farming,” Shapiro said. “There is an important role for us to play in helping to preserve that heritage as well.” 

Giving up the farm

On the north side of Kansas City, Kansas, Rick Mareske has been growing berries and forest farming on 40 acres of land for the past 20 years. His food gets to local customers through a community supported agriculture, or CSA, subscription program. 

Mareske and his wife are weighing options for the future of their business and farmland. They considered an easement for their property.

“The cons are, it’s expensive,” he said. “It’s like 20, 25 thousand dollars just to do it, and then you lose money.”

Mareske’s land is a financial asset he’s counting on for retirement income. He said he doesn’t want the years he spent caring for his land to be erased, but he can’t afford to sell for less.

“We’re trying to make it as beautiful as possible and as enticing as possible for someone to buy it and keep it going the way we have it,” he said.

With or without an easement, Mareske hopes the future of his land includes farming.

Meanwhile, in Boone County, after 33 years Dan Kuebler has stopped selling produce and preserves at the farmers market. He still goes each Saturday to buy his food for the week and catch up with his former customers as he shops. 

“I see them and we talk, and it’s like I really didn’t lose my community,” he said. 

Kuebler estimates that it cost him about $20,000 to place an easement on his land, most of that cost coming from the land survey and appraisal. He didn’t take advantage of the federal ACEP-ALE program and its compensation offer, even though his 30 acres of fields, forest and pastures dropped about $90,000 in value once development rights were stripped. 

He sold the land to another local farmer last year. The easement requires the land remain in agriculture and that the methods used to grow crops are sustainable or regenerative. 

There’s a small, old cabin on the property, and one of the more unique stipulations of the easement is that Kuebler gets to spend time there, and on the land, until he dies. 

“I really couldn’t give up the farm totally because I (am) so attached to it,” he said.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent environmental reporting network covering America’s largest watershed. Sign up for the desk’s newsletter here. Read the story on the desk partner’s site.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Aging farmers and the government want to save farms, but for many the cost is too high 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.

Enbridge said an early morning fire destroyed a drill rig and support equipment on a $1 billion project to reroute its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline in northern Wisconsin.

The post Enbridge says another fire destroys drill rig on Line 5 project in northern Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.

Biden-era changes to the Clean Air Act would have tightened regulations for industrial sites, but the Trump administration has given exemptions to hundreds of facilities. People living near the sites are concerned about air quality and their well-being.

The post Communities worry for their health after Trump weakens pollution limits: ‘It’s a kick in the gut’ appeared first on WPR.