A bipartisan group of legislators has proposed a bill to require the state Department of Natural Resources to warn county and tribal health departments when an exceedance of state groundwater standards is discovered.
The proposed bill, which was circulated for co-sponsorship Monday by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), would include warnings about the presence of PFAS — even though the state has been unable to finalize a PFAS limit for groundwater.
That provision would allow private well owners to be warned about the presence of PFAS despite the yearslong political quicksand that has mired the effort to enact a contaminant limit for the class of chemicals. The lack of a PFAS standard has been a regular sticking point in negotiations over legislation to spend $125 million already set aside for PFAS clean up.
While the state doesn’t have a PFAS groundwater standard, it does have standards for nearly 150 other chemicals such as aluminum, nitrates and lead.
About one-third of Wisconsinites get their drinking water from private wells, which don’t come with the same warnings that are often required of municipal water systems.
“The public should be able to know if there is any threat to the safety of the water they and their children drink every day,” the co-sponsorship memo states. “This bill would provide Wisconsinites with more knowledge so they can protect themselves and their children from pollutants and allow them to take advantage of local and county-level testing initiatives and state-level assistance opportunities like the Well Compensation Grant Program.”
After the legislation’s announcement, environmental groups celebrated it as a potential win for clean water.
“Wisconsinites have a right to know about pollution that may be impacting the health of their families,” said Peter Burress, government affairs manager for Wisconsin Conservation Voters. “This legislation is a common sense solution that will protect Wisconsin families. It’s unacceptable that so many Wisconsin families could be drinking water contaminated with PFAS, lead, and nitrates — chemicals tied to cancer and birth defects — without ever being told.”
The Great Lakes are seeing near record warm water temperatures right now, which means there’s a higher chance for lake effect snow when the weather turns cold.
Reading Time: 6minutesOn a summer morning in July, scientists with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians collect adolescent whitefish from the pond where they were raised. These young fish will be released into Nunns Creek near Hessel, Mich., with hopes they will grow to adulthood in Lake Huron. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
Western religions say it worked once. Now, some are exploring a Noah’s Ark strategy to save whitefish from collapse in lakes Michigan and Huron.
Once abundant in these lakes, stocks have plunged so sharply that scientists fear entire bloodlines could vanish within years. With no cure in sight for the mussel invasion that has made the big lakes so unlivable, some want to move whitefish to inland lakes or ponds, where they would live as refugees until conditions improve.
“We need to make sure that, 20 years from now, if the lake is ready again, we can return the descendants of fish that came from here,” said Jason Smith, a scientist with the Bay Mills Indian Community who is winning some early interest in his “genetic rescue” strategy.
Modeled in part on a successful pond stocking program in the Upper Peninsula, the idea echoes a global trend. As human-caused harms push millions of Earth’s species to the brink, interventions that once may have seemed far-fetched are becoming routine.
“We’re going to see more of this,” said Gregory Kaebick, a senior research scholar at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, a nonprofit think tank based in Garrison, New York.
“The extinctions right now are almost entirely due to human intervention in the first place. So there’s a sense that if we’ve caused the problem, then we ought to be contributing to trying to fix it.”
The pond rescue idea is just one among many to save whitefish, none of which are sure bets. But there’s evidence it could work: For several years, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians has reported success raising small numbers of whitefish in ponds, then releasing them into lakes when they are larger.
“It’s more hands-off and the fish are exposed to the environment,” said Rusty Aikens, the tribe’s fisheries enhancement coordinator.
Expanding upon that methodology to keep the fish in ponds indefinitely would require millions of dollars and coordination among the tribal, state and federal agencies that co-manage the Great Lakes fishery.
From left, Matt Allard operates a small boat as Noah Blackie and DJ Smith pull fyke nets from a pond near Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., as part of an experimental stocking program operated by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
Adolescent whitefish are poured into a bucket for transport to Nunns Creek near Hessel, Mich., where they would be released to spend the rest of their days in Lake Huron. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
From left, Noah Blackie, Matt Allard and DJ Smith, members of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians Fisheries Program, pull a fyke net into a boat to collect whitefish from a pond near Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
But the idea speaks to desperation to prevent a loss that would not only corrode a key piece of Great Lakes culture but ripple through the food web and regional fishing economy.
“We think of Atikameg as the canary in the coal mine,” said Smith, using the Anishinaabe word for whitefish. “They’re the ones struggling first, but we would be foolish to think they’re the only ones.”
Whitefish in exile
Whitefish are endangered by tiny quagga and zebra mussels, natives of Eastern Europe that came to the Great Lakes in freighters and were first spotted here in 1989. They now blanket the bottom of four out of five Great Lakes, siphoning nutrients and plankton and leaving behind crystal-clear water with barely anything for whitefish to eat.
Scientists are searching for a solution, but a breakthrough could be decades away, and the effort is poorly funded compared to other Great Lakes threats.
Though whitefish remain stable in Saginaw Bay, lower Green Bay and Lake Superior, scientists fear the mussels could eventually harm those fish, too. Even if not, shrinking a deep gene pool down to a few smaller populations creates a risk of lost fitness and inbreeding. And tribes leading the whitefish rescue effort say it’s about more than ecology.
The fish are kin, deserving protection in exchange for the millenia they have spent sustaining human diets.
“If they’re extirpated, or if they’re diminished such that we don’t have access to them, we’d be lesser as a community,” said Doug Craven, natural resources director for the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians.
Advocates of pond-rearing view it as a cheaper, more humane and more promising alternative to raising fish in hatcheries, where they are often packed into concrete raceways or plastic tanks that require lots of electricity and constant monitoring.
From left, Kat Bentgen and Amy Schneider weigh buckets of whitefish collected from a pond near Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
Adolescent whitefish are piped into Nunns Creek near Hessel, Mich., in hopes that they’ll survive to adulthood in the Great Lakes. (Josh Boland / Bridge Michigan)
Studies also show that fish raised in these tightly controlled environments have less knack for surviving in the wild.
For the past five years, the Sault Tribe has been raising small numbers of whitefish in ponds near Sault Ste. Marie (225,000 this year) until they are several months old, at which point they’re trucked to the north shore of lakes Huron and Michigan. It’s a workaround, meant to protect them from the zooplankton shortage that kills hatchlings in the Great Lakes.
Unlike hatchery-raised fish, these fish must learn to feed themselves, steer clear of predators and deal with changing weather and other variables. The mortality rate in ponds is higher than in hatcheries. But Aikens said that’s not necessarily a bad thing:
“The ones that do make it to this point? They’re fitter,” he said as Sault Tribe scientists netted the 3-inch fingerlings in preparation for transport to Lake Huron.
The trouble is, the stocking program is tiny. And it will take years to know if it’s working. Young whitefish disappear into the deep water and typically aren’t seen again until they return ashore to spawn years later.
“There’s a lot of hurdles they need to overcome between now and then,” Aikens said.
So from Smith’s perspective, there’s a need for a backup plan.
Encouraged by the promise of pond-rearing, he began talking with U.S. Forest Service officials last year about finding some ponds in the Hiawatha National Forest where whitefish could hunker down indefinitely, perhaps for multiple generations, until the mussel invasion subsides.
“Time is of the essence to see if there’s consensus that we should do this or some other preservation measure,” Smith said. “It’s not simple, it’s not inexpensive, but it might be really important.”
Jason Smith, a biologist with the Bay Mills Indian Community, sees hope for whitefish if humans are willing to intervene before it’s too late. His idea: Moving some fish out of the lower Great Lakes and into inland ponds, where they and their offspring would remain until it’s safe to return home. (Kelly House / Bridge Michigan)
Officials with the Little Traverse Bay Band are open to partnering on such a project, while state regulators and The Nature Conservancy have also shown some interest.
One barrier to more coordinated action: There is no comprehensive rehabilitation plan for whitefish, unlike lake trout and sturgeon. Tribal, state and federal experts have begun discussing whether it’s time to write one, said Steve Lenart, a fish biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
“I don’t think anybody’s thinking that it’s not a pretty urgent topic,” Lenart said, but “coordination and collaboration — those things take time.”
Get used to it
If circumventing species loss by moving fish to a whole new environment sounds radical, get used to it.
Human forces including habitat loss, climate change and the spread of invasive species are pushing nature to the brink, forcing emergency rescues and heartbreaking decisions about what not to save.
Life on Earth is vanishing at a rate unmatched in human history, with some 28% of species assessed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature at risk. In Michigan, state officials have designated 407 species as threatened or endangered.
“We are in an extinction crisis, no question about it,” said Budhan Pukazhenthi, a scientist with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. “But the challenge is also, what can we do to either slow it down or to completely stop it?”
Groups like his have cloned endangered animals. Governments are freezing animals’ tissue samples “just in case” and establishing massive seed libraries like the “doomsday vault” on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway. Zoos around the globe — including in Michigan — are breeding and releasing rare animals into the wild.
Still, it won’t be feasible to save everything. Some officials have begun using a framework known as Resist, Accept Direct to help them decide when and how to intervene.
“We know these systems are changing,” said Abigail Lynch, a scientist with the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center. “We can either acknowledge these difficult issues now and make more informed decisions, or we can ignore them and let those decisions be made for us.”
Time is running short for many of the lower lakes’ whitefish. In some areas, almost no hatchlings have survived to adulthood for nearly two decades. Most whitefish left in those waters are grandparents that will soon die of old age.
In Little Traverse Bay, the average whitefish caught in fishing nets is more than 20 years old. It’s growing difficult to even catch enough fish for experiments that aim to save this genetically distinct population.
Smith knows some might see the pond rescue idea as extreme. But to him, risking the fish’s disappearance from the lower lakes is far moreso. Money, time, uncertainty about whether it will work — he sees those all as worthwhile sacrifices to save an icon of the Great Lakes.
With one caveat:
“If we do it, does that absolutely obligate us to bust our ass to fix the lakes?” he said. “One-hundred percent.”
For the first time in its history, the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin released lake sturgeon into Clam Lake as part of efforts to restore the ancient fish.
“I basically went ahead when I probably should have turned back,” climate reporter Alec Luhn recently said on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” Luhn went missing for six days this summer.
One of the proposals seeks to protect Devil's Lake State Park, while the other is a more general resolution encouraging the state to affirm the rights of all natural resources in the state.
The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
The news that $130 million in already-committed clean-energy funding for Wisconsin is on the chopping block is not abstract politics. It pulls real tools out of Wisconsin homes, schools, farms, and shop floors — right as our state is building momentum. The result is simple: higher bills, fewer choices, and lost jobs.
In a purple state like ours, climate action has succeeded because it’s kitchen-table common sense. It lowers costs, creates good local jobs, and protects the air and water families depend on. Our playbook is pragmatic — align smart policy with market innovation, center justice, and let businesses, workers, tribes and frontline communities lead together. Clawing back funds mid-stream breaks that compact and injects uncertainty just when we need reliability and speed.
What’s at stake here and now
Across Wisconsin, 82 clean-energy projects are moving forward: EV-charging corridors that support tourism and commerce from Superior to Kenosha; solar on schools and farms that cuts operating costs and keeps dollars local; grid upgrades that reduce outages for households and manufacturers. Clean energy already supports more than 71,000 Wisconsin jobs, with manufacturers, contractors and building trades poised to add tens of thousands more if the rules stay steady.
This is not coastal hype — it’s Menomonee Valley and the Fox Valley. Companies like Ingeteam in Milwaukee build components that power wind and EV projects nationwide. Give our manufacturers clear, predictable rules and Wisconsin will keep making core parts of the transition -— batteries, solar panels, wind components, EV chargers, and smart-grid equipment -— right here at home.
Schools and local governments are also using direct-pay to put solar on rooftops, electrify buses, and cut fuel and maintenance. Green Homeowners United and similar groups are helping thousands of households -— including many lower-income homeowners of color — tap rebates that reduce bills and carbon at the same time. These are the practical tools that stretch tight budgets and improve health outcomes in neighborhoods that have carried the burden the longest.
The real cost of policy whiplash
Rolling back incentives is a hidden tax on working families — up to $400 more a year on energy without the savings tools people are using now. With AI and data centers accelerating demand, the cheapest, fastest reliability gains come from efficiency, storage, and renewables. Cut those tools and we invite more price volatility and more outage risk — exactly what Wisconsin manufacturers, hospitals and farms can’t afford.
The “Big, Broken Bill” passed in Washington goes further, weakening EPA pollution standards and letting big polluters sidestep responsibility. That doesn’t eliminate costs; it shifts them to families in the form of asthma, missed school days and medical bills. It’s not fiscal conservatism to socialize pollution costs while privatizing short-term profits.
And for farmers, whose energy and conservation projects were finally penciling out with IRA tools, canceling support mid-contract leaves family farms holding the bag after planning in good faith. That’s not how you build durable rural economies.
Momentum that continues even if funds are cut
Here’s the other half of the story: Wisconsin’s transition won’t stop because some programs are attacked. Market forces, including the declining cost of renewables and storage, efficiency that pays for itself and corporate and municipal sustainability commitments, continue to drive projects. Public-private partnerships, rural co-ops, tribal governments, school districts and village halls are working together to reduce risk, share data, and scale what works. That coalition will keep moving.
But let’s be clear: Clawbacks and moving goalposts slow us down and raise costs. They strand planning, freeze hiring and deter investment — especially in manufacturing corridors that depend on multi-year production schedules. If Congress wants to improve programs, fine. Just don’t pull the rug out mid-project.
Purple-state practicality: Results over rhetoric
Wisconsin’s approach is neither red nor blue; it’s results-based:
Lower bills and stronger reliability through weatherization, heat pumps, rooftop and community solar and batteries that keep homes and Main Street businesses running during heat waves and deep freezes.
Good local jobs in design, construction, electrical, HVAC, machining and advanced manufacturing.
Cleaner air from electrified school buses and efficient buildings, health benefits that show up in fewer sick days and lower costs.
Fairness by ensuring benefits land first where burdens have been heaviest.
We’ve also learned to say no when it matters and yes to better options. When a $2 billion methane gas plant was proposed, business and civic leaders asked basic questions: Is this the least-cost, least-risk path for ratepayers? Would it lock us into volatile fuel prices just as renewables, storage, demand response and efficiency are scaling? Pushing for a cleaner, more affordable portfolio wasn’t ideology. It was risk management.
A constructive path forward
Keep the tools that help Wisconsin build here, hire here, and save here. Don’t rip away commitments families, schools, farms and manufacturers are already using.
Provide certainty so manufacturers can invest in people and equipment. Certainty is economic development.
Target affordability and reliability: Expand programs that lower bills, reduce outages, and prioritize investments in communities that have waited the longest for cleaner air and safer housing.
Let locals lead: Support direct-pay and streamlined approvals for schools, municipalities, tribes and rural co-ops to deploy projects faster and cheaper.
Wisconsin has the talent, the supply chains — more than 350 in-state clean-energy companies — and the tradition of stewardship to lead the clean-energy economy. If we stay focused on trust, collaboration and measurable results, Wisconsin’s green momentum will outpace politics.
Don’t make Wisconsinites pay more to get less. Let’s build it here, power it here and prosper here.
John Imes is co-founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative and village president of Shorewood Hills. He will speak Oct. 22 on the American Sustainable Business Network national panel “Purple State, Green Momentum” — how Wisconsin’s pragmatic climate playbook lowers bills, creates good local jobs, and protects our air and water.
A bill introduced on Monday would grant Devil's Lake State Park the rights to "flourish, evolve, and be clean." (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
To celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly announced a package of bills Monday that would grant rights to Devil’s Lake State Park and reinstitute a law that effectively banned mining.
The proposal to grant “rights of nature” to Wisconsin’s most popular state park comes just months after a group of Republicans introduced legislation that would prevent local governments in the state from enacting similar legislation. The Milwaukee County Board passed a rights of nature resolution promising to protect the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan. The Green Bay city council is also currently working on a rights of nature resolution.
Under the bill, Devil’s Lake has the right to “flourish, evolve, and be clean.” The bill gives the state attorney general the authority to enforce the law against people who infringe on the park’s rights and allows anyone to sue or intervene in a lawsuit in the name of the park to enforce the park’s rights. Anyone who infringes on the park’s rights by damaging the environment will be liable to pay damages to restore the park to its previous state.
In addition to the Devil’s Lake bill, the package includes a joint resolution acknowledging that “nature has inherent rights” and the state of Wisconsin “has a duty to uphold those rights as part of its enduring conservation legacy and its responsibility to future generations.”
The resolution also states that the Legislature won’t pass laws preventing local rights of nature ordinances.
The Republican bill preempting local rights of nature efforts is “anti-free speech, it’s anti-democratic,” Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the bills’ co-authors, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “Whereas our bill is, ‘Hey, let’s get this on the docket and actually have a productive conversation, actually bring in stakeholders about what it means to look at nature actually having rights.’”
Miresse said the more symbolic measures passed by local governments are important statements of values, but he wanted the bill to have “teeth.”
“I would like to move beyond mission and vision statements. I think those are great for guiding principles and taking us in the right direction and keeping our mission and vision top of mind when we are creating and drafting policy at the local level. And I want to make sure they have a right to do that regardless of what the preemption bill would do,” Miresse said. “However, when we were looking at this in terms of crafting policy and changing statute, there would be some teeth here.”
Miresse said the bill is targeted only at Devil’s Lake, rather than all the bodies of water in Wisconsin, because it was simplest to start with a piece of nature that has defined political boundaries already under the state’s control.
In their preemption bill, Republicans Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) argued that laws granting rights to nature posed a “dangerous shift in legal precedent” that would result in “threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”
Democrats counter that granting legal rights to a park or a body of water isn’t much different than granting First Amendment rights to a corporation — which Republicans successfully argued for in court cases such as Citizens United.
Also announced Monday is a proposal to reinstate Wisconsin’s “prove it first” mining law, which requires that in order to obtain a permit from the Department of Natural Resources, mining companies must prove the mine can be operated for 10 years and be shuttered for 10 years without harmful effects on the local environment. The law was enacted in 1997 until Republicans repealed it in 2017. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, authored the bill to repeal the mining ban when he was in the state Senate.
This year, a Canadian company has begun exploratory drilling projects in the state, potentially leading to the first operating mines in Wisconsin for the first time in decades.
Miresse said he wants decisions about mining to consider local environmental health rather than just being about “dollars and cents.”
Electric power lines. Clean energy projects, including several that involve improving the efficiency of electric power grids, are at risk of losing federal funding that was promised during the Biden administration. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Federal fallout
As federal funding and systems dwindle, states are left to decide how and
whether to make up the difference.
More than $130 million in Wisconsin clean energy-related projects are at risk as the Trump administration moves to cut up to $24 billion in projects originally approved by the Biden administration.
The projects are on a list that covers three groups of cuts proposed in May, on Oct. 2 and this past week. The online news outlet Semaforreported the third set of proposed cuts, which alone totals $12 billion, on Tuesday, Oct. 7, and published alink to a list that covers all three groups.
“However, it’s not clear whether, or when, the full list of cancellations will be enacted, or if President Donald Trump is instead looking to use them as leverage in negotiations over the [federal government] shutdown,” Semafor reported.
The Wisconsin grants on the list are a mix of projects that help boost energy efficiency, including supporting the expansion of energy storage battery systems. One potential casualty is more than $1 million to prepare young people to enter apprenticeships in the skilled trades.
Clean energy holds the promise of addressing air pollution and climate change as well as revitalizing the state’s industrial base, said John Imes, director of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative (WEI), a nonprofit that advocates policies benefiting the environment and the economy.
“These are all win-win that all of us want regardless of our political affiliation,” Imes told the Wisconsin Examiner. “This is all bottom-line stuff.”
Rolling back projects that enhance cleaner and more efficient use of energy will likely increase the cost of energy, Imes said.
“It means higher electric bills, higher energy bills, fewer choices and lost jobs,” he said. “We’re going to lose momentum.”
Battery power and rural grid upgrade
The two largest Wisconsin projects on the Department of Energy list of targets involve one company, Alliant Energy. They account for more than half of the Wisconsin funds targeted for cancellation.
A rendering of the EnergyDome carbon dioxide-based battery storage structure that Alliant Energy will build near Portage, Wisconsin. (Image courtesy of Alliant Energy)
“We understand the Administration and Department of Energy (DOE) are working through their budgets and have notified some businesses of changes to grant announcements,” said Cindy Tomlinson, Alliant senior manager for communications, in an email message last week.
“At this time, we have not been made aware of any changes to the announced DOE grants for our Alliant Energy projects,” Tomlinson said. “We are optimistic the value and viability of these projects is clear and that they will remain fully funded. These projects deliver economic and customer benefits.”
The electrical grid upgrade project received a conditional commitment from the energy department in December, but a final award agreement hasn’t been executed, Tomlinson said, and no federal funds have been received or spent.
The federal grants accounted for about one-third of the total planned investment for each project. If the grid upgrade grant is canceled, the project is still expected to go forward, Tomlinson said, “however at a slower, more gradual pace than the fast, concentrated fashion outlined in our grant application.”
Other potentially affected grants include $28.7 million for Johnson Controls, based in the Milwaukee suburb of Glendale, to support the company in its expansion of heat pump manufacturing.
The grant’s total value was $33 million at the time it was awarded to the company. According toUSAspending.gov, a federal site that tracks the status of federal outlays, the business has received $4.4 million of the total.
Johnson Controlsannounced the grant in November 2023, part of an investment to scale up heat pump manufacturing at plants in Texas, Kansas and Pennsylvania and increase production by 200%, the company said at the time.
The company did not respond to inquiries Thursday and Friday by email and by telephone about the status of the grant or its planned heat pump manufacturing expansion.
Energy efficiency and innovation
Another Wisconsin recipient with grants on the list that are slated for elimination is Slipstream, a Madison-based nonprofit that provides consulting services on energy efficiency and innovation.
“We’re trying to make our energy systems more efficient and better so everybody’s paying less for energy,” said Scott Hackel, Slipstream’s vice president for research.
Hackel said Slipstream is working with other organizations on the list of targeted projects, and some of those organizations have been notified of grant terminations.
Slipstream also has two direct grants on the list, but has not received any notification that those grants are being terminated, Hackel said.
Slipstream had been awarded $5.2 million for work on equipping buildings with technology that enables them to automatically manage their power demand — reducing the building’s electrical load when demand on the grid is high and amping up the load when broader demand eases.
The organization is in the middle of a project implementing demand management technology in a group of buildings. The information gained from that test could be used to develop incentive programs for building owners to adopt that kind of technology, Hackel said.
If that gets cut off before it’s finished, other buildings in Wisconsin “would not have this example to look to,” he said.
A second grant awarded to the organization, $4 million, is to be used to train inspectors, building designers and others in how to effectively comply with and make the best use of building codes, particularly energy codes.
“Everything we’re doing is trying to make buildings and homes more affordable to live in with lower utility bills,” Hackel said. “If we’re not able to do that, that’s also a cost to people in Wisconsin.”
Two Universities of Wisconsin grants,one for $10 million andthe other for $2.9 million, are on the list. Both involve projects to test technology innovations, according to the federal grant information documents.
‘Electric city’ upgrades and a job-training program
A grant for the city of Kaukauna, Wisconsin, to install battery storage and make related electrical grid upgrades is also on the list. The original grant totaled $3 million, and so far $59,362 has been paid out, according toUSAspending.gov, leaving $2.95 million that could be canceled.
One of the hydropower plants operated by the Kaukauna Utilities to generate electricity in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. (Photo via Kaukauna Utilities Facebook page)
The storage system is to bolster Kaukauna’s hydroelectric power generation operation, whichdates to 1913 and led to the community’s adoption of “Electric City” as its nickname.
“Collateral damage from the Trump administration’s remarkably poor governance record continues to collect, this time in Kaukauna,” said Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson. “I can’t think of something more insulting than making the electric grid of a place known as ‘Electric City’ less safe or efficient.”
Also on the list is the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, a Milwaukee nonprofit that provides training and certification to prepare people to enter apprenticeships in the skilled trades. WRTP was awarded a $1.5 million grant for training in skills related totransportation electrification. So far $112,470 has been paid out.
Dan Bukiewicz, head of the Milwaukee Building Trades Council and co-chair of the WRTP board of directors, said that the board hasn’t been notified that its grant might be at risk of being taken away by the Trump administration.
“I won’t say we’re surprised,” however, Bukiewicz said. “They’re just trying to roll back a lot of the green energy and infrastructure [investments]. … It’s trying to make time stand still, and it just won’t if the United States is going to compete globally.”
WRTP students typically come from underserved communities and are the most in need, Bukiewicz said. The program’s training emphasizes job safety, introduces students to the construction industry, equips them with basic skills that an apprenticeship will build on, and acquaints them with how the industry and the technology are changing and where they might find a place that suits them.
If the federal grant is pulled, “these dollars are irreplaceable,” Bukiewicz said. “It’s not just taking money away and eliminating classes. It’s eliminating opportunities and a chance for generational change for people who really need it.”
A new study on Lake Beulah in southeastern Wisconsin indicates that wake boats should operate in deeper waters and farther from the shore to reduce impacts to the lake bottom and shoreline.
Throughout the month of October, residents impacted by historic flooding in Milwaukee can get in-person assistance from state, county and federal personnel.
A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
More than two years after $125 million was set aside in the 2023-25 state budget to fund the remediation of PFAS contamination across Wisconsin, legislators are again trying to pass two bills to get that money out the door.
At a Senate public hearing Tuesday, the bills’ Republican authors said they’re “all ears” for reaching a compromise on final language. However in the last legislative session, initial hopes that a deal could be reached went unfulfilled after Republicans, Democrats, business groups and environmental organizations dug into their positions and the bill was ultimately vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.
As was the case in the last effort, the dispute is over who and how the state will hold entities responsible for PFAS contamination.
PFAS are a class of man-made chemical compounds commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily in the environment. The chemicals, which were used for decades in goods such as non-stick pans, fast food wrappers and firefighting foams, have been connected to causing cancer, thyroid diseases and developmental problems. CommunitiesacrossWisconsinhavefoundPFAScontamination in their water supplies.
Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the bills’ co-authors, said at the Tuesday hearing he’s trying to make sure people don’t have to choose between “their health and financial ruin” by testing for contamination and potentially being held responsible for paying for the clean up under the state’s spills law — which allows the Department of Natural Resources to force “responsible parties” to pay for the testing and remediation of chemical contamination.
“We are transitioning from a medical and legal paradigm where a widely used substance was not considered hazardous, to a paradigm where it is considered hazardous, it’s imperative we don’t sweep up those who are not responsible and treat them as though they are,” he said.
Wimberger and Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) have proposed Senate Bills 127 and 128, which establish the exemptions under which people won’t be held responsible for PFAS contamination on their property and create a number of grant programs to spend the $125 million.
The challenge is that Republicans and industry have different definitions of who counts as responsible for contamination than Democrats and environmental groups. Constructing exemptions to the spills law that are too narrow could result in people being forced to pay for remediation they didn’t cause. But writing the exemptions too broadly could result in polluters passing the cost of remediation on to taxpayers.
Across the state, municipal wastewater treatment utilities sell or give away the byproducts of their plants to use as fertilizer on farm fields. The DNR grants permits to allow the spreading of these byproducts, known as biosolids, which for years was seen as an environmentally responsible source of fertilizer because it was recycled. However biosolids from places with PFAS contamination in the water are contaminated, which can pollute the water near the field where they’re spread.
Wimberger wants to make sure these farmers aren’t on the hook with the DNR to pay for contamination they didn’t know was happening and the DNR gave them a permit to create.
But environmental advocates don’t want the exemptions to be so vague that they’re available to entities such as paper mills or chemical manufacturers.
“We’re just asking you to understand that the way that you word an exemption is going to matter,” Christine Sieger, director of the DNR’s remediation and redevelopment bureau, said in her testimony. “I implement the spill law all day, every day, and I can tell you, people are crafty when it comes to getting out of liability. They will come up with all sorts of ways for how they can get themselves off the hook. And I just, I don’t want you to help them do that. Let’s make sure that they can take care of our people and clean up the mess that they’ve made.”
After the proposed PFAS bill was vetoed by Evers last session, Wimberger complained that opponents raised concerns about the exemptions being too broadly worded without naming specifics. On Tuesday, he said people objected with “platitudes” rather than specific language that could be corrected and that he hoped opponents could be more constructive this time around.
Erik Kanter, director of government relations for Clean Wisconsin, said Tuesday the organization couldn’t support the proposal without amendments, proposing specific line-by-line changes for the bill authors to make.
Kanter pointed to a line in SB 128 that states “a person that spreads biosolids or wastewater residuals contaminated by PFAS in compliance with any applicable license or permit” is exempt from being held responsible for PFAS contamination under the spills law. However, he said, that line is so vaguely worded that an industrial manufacturer could purchase and spread biosolids on its property as a way to gain an exemption from being held responsible for contamination it caused by creating PFAS as a byproduct of manufacturing.
“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 29 months ago,” Kanter said. “Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the town of Stella and communities and individuals throughout the state have waited and waited and waited for state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. They don’t deserve to wait another day. They don’t deserve a bill that doesn’t meet their needs or lets polluters off the hook and saddles taxpayers with the bill. We believe that compromise is possible and essential. We value the bill authors’ partnership to find compromise on this bill. Clean Wisconsin shares their goal in getting a bill to the governor’s desk for his signature this session, and we will continue working in good faith toward that end.”
Both Mursau and Wimberger expressed hope that they could write an amendment that would get enough support to be signed into law.
“It’s my intention to take the feedback here … and bring forward the amendment that can earn the support of the Legislature to be signed into law by the governor,” Mursau said. “I also want to take this opportunity to thank the groups and individuals who have come to us, not just with criticisms, but with constructive ideas. Those who are willing to engage in dialogue, not just opposition, have been instrumental in helping us shape the legislation that can actually pass and deliver results. In a divided government like ours, meaningful progress requires compromise. I’m grateful for those who recognize that and continue to work with us in good faith.”
Republican lawmakers say their bills to address PFAS would offer financial aid and protect innocent landowners from footing the bill for contamination they didn’t cause. But state regulators argue the proposals would still let polluters off the hook.
U.S. counties with large animal feeding operations also often have higher air pollution and lower health insurance coverage. More research is needed to understand the correlation, a researcher says.
There’s a sweet spot for lawn chores like seeding, said Doug Soldat, a professor and turfgrass extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One of Wisconsin’s most iconic aquatic plants has been in decline in recent years. A project to reseed wild rice in one of Wisconsin’s largest lakes was rocked when the Trump administration abruptly pulled millions in funding earlier this year.
Environmental advocates are urging state regulators to bring Wisconsin’s PFAS standards in line with federal drinking water standards for the chemicals despite an ongoing legal challenge.
This summer, the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin hosted a field trip in southwest Wisconsin to see thousands of bats emerge from their roost to feed at sunset, and return as a massive swarm at dawn.
An administrative law judge may decide whether the roughly $450 million plan to reroute an oil and gas pipeline around the Bad River tribe's reservation can move forward after a lengthy hearing wraps up on Friday.
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