A Wisconsin native shares experience in the great outdoors biking, camping, canoing and hiking. He explains where locals can visit to enjoy the weather and fall colors.
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Residents voiced concerns about Gilbert Farms’ expansion plan on Wednesday, during a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources hearing over a Wisconsin Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit for the farm. The hearing was held to gather feedback before the agency decides whether to approve the farm’s permit.
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As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)
A new proposal from a pair of legislative Democrats would institute a number of labor, energy and sustainability requirements on tech companies seeking to build data centers in Wisconsin.
The proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) comes as data centers have continued to pop up across the state — largely in southeast Wisconsin — sparking heated local debates about land use, local jobs and the centers’ heavy use of water and electricity.
There are now 47 data centers in Wisconsin, with more under consideration by local governments. The data centers house computer servers to store information for cloud-based software and, increasingly, to support the expansion of artificial intelligence.
For local governments, the construction of data centers offers an easy opportunity for property tax revenue from a business that won’t require many local government services. But the servers have high energy and water needs, are often sited on land that has long been used for farming and raise concerns associated with AI. Experts and advocates have been looking for the state government to weigh in more forcefully on how to regulate the centers, the Wisconsin Examiner reported last month.
So far, the only mentions of data centers in state law are a provision in the 2023-25 state budget which exempts data center construction costs from the sales tax and a law enacted earlier this year to study the growth of nuclear power in the state.
The proposal from Habush Sinykin and Stroud, announced Thursday, would establish rules beyond current incentives for data center growth.
“The new legislation being proposed today is about making sure that we have clear, statewide guardrails in place that provide people in communities across Wisconsin with the information and transparency they need to engage in the local decision-making process in an informed, effective manner from the start,” Habush Sinykin, whose district includes a controversial data center project in Port Washington, said in a statement.
Under the proposal, electric companies in the state will be required to submit quarterly reports to the Public Service Commission on the amount of energy being used by data centers in the state. Those reports will be required to include information on the source of the energy and be made public. Water utilities in the state will also be required to publicly report when a single customer will account for more than 25% of the total water usage in the district.
The data center companies would be required to pay an annual fee to the Department of Administration, which will put that money towards renewable energy programs. Data center buildings would also be required to obtain sustainability certifications.
The bill would also give data centers an incentive to encourage utility companies to expand clean energy and it would also require the PSC to establish a class of “very large customers” and ensure that normal ratepayers aren’t bearing the increased energy costs caused by the data centers’ growing energy demands.
“It’s mind-blowing that the only regulations we have on the books are to just incentivize data centers with no expectations for them being good environmental partners with the communities they’re going to be located in,” says Jen Giegerich, the government affairs director at Wisconsin Conservation Voters, which was involved in helping draft the proposal.
“It’s really important that what this bill does is actually make sure that the data centers are paying their own way,” Giegerich continues. “We’ve just seen energy costs rising, and the fact that we would continue to put costs for energy development for tech giants who are making unheard-of profits, and then expecting Wisconsin ratepayers to pay for that is really a problem. So this bill rectifies that, and I think it’s sorely needed.”
The proposal also includes labor requirements for data center construction. Under the bill, any workers at construction sites for data centers must be paid the local prevailing wage rate or, if the worker is a member of a union, the wage rate in that worker’s collective bargaining agreement. The data center company will have to pay whichever wage is higher.
To qualify for the sales tax exemptions already available for data centers under current state law, the companies would be required to meet the labor requirements in the bill and source at least 70% of their energy from renewable sources.
Steve Kwaterski, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, says data center projects have already been a source of consistent, good paying construction jobs for his members and the bill will go towards ensuring that these jobs support families in the state.
“We want to make sure that any project that’s as complex as a data center is being done with the most skilled and trained workforce that’s out there,” he says. “That ensures that it’s being done right on time, on budget, and done safely as well.”
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One Wisconsin resident reached out to WHYsconsin with a crop-related mystery that's been puzzling her ever since she was a child. To get to the root of her question, WPR hopped in the car with a plant expert.
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Evan Larson, a fire ecologist at UW-Platteville, says the spark has been ignited for a return to cultural prescribed burns. This centuries-old Indigenous practice once helped red pine and blueberries flourish along Lake Superior.
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After months of uncertainty over its future, an online resource for tracking the financial cost of weather and climate disasters throughout the United States has been revived.
The U.S. Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database was previously managed by a team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Since 1980, the program has been responsible for analyzing wildfires, tornadoes, winter storms, and other disasters that cause at least $1 billion in damage. But it was retired in May, one among several NOAA products and services to get shuttered by President Donald Trump’s administration this year.
Now, a nonprofit called Climate Central, which communicates climate change science and solutions, has hired the scientist who led the project at NOAA, Adam Smith, and has taken on the responsibility of compiling and releasing the latest data.
In the first six months of 2025, there were 14 disasters with damages costing just over $101 billion in total. Many of them occurred throughout the Mississippi River Basin — states like Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee were among the hardest hit by severe storms and tornadoes, which caused just over $40 billion in damage.
Wisconsin saw $1.1 billion in severe storm damage in early 2025 — part of the more than $5 billion in such damage since 2021.
The January wildfires in Los Angeles resulted in approximately $60 billion in damages, making it the most expensive wildfire on record.
Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at Climate Central, said the Climate Central staff brought back the database because they “were hearing from every single sector how important this data is for decision-making and understanding areas that are increasingly at risk for billion-dollar disasters.”
Among those who have typically relied on the database are policymakers, researchers and local communities. It’s especially important for planning disaster relief and emergency management efforts “because they can focus resources on areas that are seeing big trends in the number of billion-dollars disasters,” Labe said.
Bryan Koon, the president and chief executive officer of the consulting firm Innovative Emergency Management, said the analysis is helpful. His company works with government agencies and other organizations to help with disaster preparedness, response and recovery.
“These kinds of data sets are very important in the broad scope, at least from my perspective, for trend analysis,” Koon said.
In states like Missouri, for example, he said his company and other interest groups can analyze previous billion-dollar disaster data on tornadoes and their frequency over the past decade or two. That information can be used to inform how insurance companies write their policy, how buildings are designed and how notification systems are structured.
“I want to make sure that we, as a nation, wrap our arms around as much information about these things as we can so that we communicate the threat of future disasters for Americans,” Koon said.
The Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative — a cooperative of more than 100 communities between Minnesota and Louisiana — pushed the Trump administration to keep the database open, according to the cooperative’s executive director, Colin Wellenkamp.
“It was a critical database that showed us where costs associated with disasters were most impactful. What sectors of the economy were hit the hardest by a disaster? Whether it be intense heat, flooding, drought, forest fire, named storm event, or otherwise,” Wellenkamp said.
From a cost-benefit analysis standpoint, said Wellenkamp, the database can tell cities, counties and states how to spend resources on mitigation to avoid incurring similar costs from future disasters. But industries like manufacturing, construction and agriculture also want to see the data, he said. That’s because the database’s financial impact analysis includes physical damage to commercial and residential property, losses associated with business interruption and crop destruction, damage to electrical infrastructure, and more.
Other stakeholders that see the value of the database are both the insurance and re-insurance industries.
Franklin Nutter is the president of the Reinsurance Association of America, one of the largest trade groups in the country. The goal of reinsurance is to provide insurance for the insurance companies, stabilizing the industry and playing a role in “the financial management of natural disaster losses,” according to the RAA’s website.
“It’s like an iceberg: the public is made aware of the impact of extreme weather by seeing the graphics (the tip of the iceberg) but most commercial users value the underlying data (the body of the iceberg),” said Nutter by email.
While the billion-dollar disaster data is valuable to various financial stakeholders, Nutter said he believes its greatest value comes from providing “public awareness of the increasing extreme weather risk.”
There are many factors that come together to make a billion-dollar disaster — such as weather, infrastructure, population, and location. Labe said that the number of events has been increasing since 1980.
“It’s very likely that 2025 will not be the costliest year on record when we look at the statistics, but it definitely falls into this long-term increasing trend,” he said.
Climate Central is not the only organization trying to pick up the pieces of a resource that was shut down by the federal government or is at risk.
Last month, amid growing concerns over the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, the MRCTI announced that it would be partnering with a nonprofit called Convoy of Hope to provide aid within 72 hours of disasters for communities along the Mississippi River.
But Wellenkamp said that there aren’t many states that can afford the response and recovery efforts from a billion-dollar disaster.
“These (initiatives) are not meant to be permanent solutions,” Wellenkamp said. “These are not meant to replace federal capacity. They are meant to put our cities in a relatively secure position until the federal questions are answered. And the sooner that those answers come, the better.”
For many, the answers will require data.
“Just because the federal government decided they’re not going to do it anymore doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing,” Koon said.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch staff added Wisconsin data to this story.
A tool tracking billion-dollar disasters is back after the Trump administration retired it 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.
Environmental groups argue a federal permit issued for Enbridge’s Line 5 reroute is unlawful due to an ongoing legal challenge. Labor unions and business groups hailed the approval.
The post Opponents say Army Corps’ Line 5 approval violates the law, supporters hail the move appeared first on WPR.
Activism against Line 5 includes members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and residents across Wisconsin, including at this home in Madison. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Environmental groups are blasting what some are calling a “premature and unlawful decision” by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to approve federal permits for the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline project in northern Wisconsin. The permits have been issued despite an ongoing court challenge to state-level permits and before Wisconsin’s water quality certification for the project has been finalized.
“This is a clear violation of the Clean Water Act,” said Rob Lee, staff attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates. “It appears the Army Corps is fast-tracking a fossil fuel project at the expense of environmental protection and legal due process.”
In June, Midwest Environmental Advocates submitted formal comments during a public hearing warning the Army Corps to not approve the permits until a final water quality certification had been issued by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). A water quality permit had been issued in November but that permit is still the subject of litigation and therefore has not been finalized.
“Federal law is clear,” Lee said in a statement. “The Army Corps can’t approve this project without final water quality certification from the relevant state authority. The DNR’s certification is still being challenged in court, which means it’s not legally final — and that makes this permit premature and unlawful.”
Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin said in a statement that the group was “horrified that the Army Corps is willing to condone an extremely dangerous project that will irreparably destroy the integrity of the watershed.” Conmiller added that “the damage, not to mention the long term risks associated with the pipeline itself, must be considered before any such project would be granted permits to proceed.”
Owned by the Canadian oil giant Enbridge, Line 5 is an over 70-year old pipeline carrying thousands of gallons of crude oil from Canada into the U.S. A federal court ruled pipeline route has been trespassing on the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s reservation. Enbridge’s planned reroute is also being challenged before an administrative law judge. Advocates for the pipeline say it will generate 700 jobs and boost Wisconsin’s energy sector, while critics argue that the pipeline’s new route would continue to threaten the Bad River watershed and other ecosystems in the event of a catastrophic oil spill. .
Clean Wisconsin has intervened in the administrative challenge to the planned pipeline reroute. “The health of these ecosystems is critical to Tribal Nations, fisheries, and local economies across the region,” said Clean Wisconsin President Mark Redsten in a statement. The group highlighted that tourism alone generates $378 million in economic activity and supports over 2,800 jobs in Bayfield, Ashland, Douglas and Iron counties.
In the past, Enbridge pipeline spills have devastated waterways and habitats. Another Enbridge pipeline leaked over 69,000 gallons of oil before the breach was noticed in late 2024, the same week environmental and trial groups filed new legal challenges of the Line 5 reroute.
Emily Park, co-executive director of 350 Wisconsin, said the group was “deeply disturbed” by the decision. “Wisconsinites and millions of other residents of the region depend on clean and healthy water for our lives, food, jobs, and recreation,” said Park. “We are appalled that the Army Corps is willing to appease a foreign corporation by risking the health of water, the stability of our climate, and the wellbeing of current and future generations.”
By “fast-tracking the Line 5 reroute,” said Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter Director Elizabeth Ward, “the Army Corps has backed Canadian oil giant Enbridge at the expense of the Bad River Band, Wisconsinites, and the 40 million people who rely on the Great Lakes for safe drinking water. There’s no safe way to reroute this pipeline. Every day that Line 5 continues to operate, our water, ecosystems, and way of life is in danger.”
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A gray wolf (Getty Images).
Permanent rules to guide the conduct of wolf hunting in Wisconsin are set to take effect Saturday, capping off a yearslong process in which the state Department of Natural Resources worked to write policy about one of the most politically polarized issues facing the state.
A state law enacted in 2012 requires that when the animal isn’t protected on the federal endangered species list, a hunt must be held. DNR staff say the permanent rules will prevent a potential future hunt from being stopped by a lawsuit while tightening some of the provisions that resulted in the highly controversial 2021 wolf hunt in which hunters exceeded their 200-wolf quota in just three days.
The wolf has been back on the federal endangered species list since a ruling by a federal judge in California in 2022.
The rules largely govern how a hunt must be held if and when the animal is no longer considered endangered. During previous hunts, the DNR was operating under emergency rules. DNR officials have warned that a future hunt without permanent rules in place could be halted by the court system.
The new rules include shortening the window by which hunters must register wolf kills, update wolf harvest zone boundaries, issue zone-specific tags and provide protections for wolf dens.
They were passed unanimously by the state Natural Resources Board in October 2023 at the same time it enacted the first full rewrite of Wisconsin’s wolf management plan since 1999. The management plan stirred debate because it doesn’t specifically declare a numerical population goal. Instead, the plan divides the state into sub-regions in which DNR staff will regularly determine if the local wolf population needs to be reduced, maintained or allowed to grow.
Farm and hunting groups, who are often fiercely opposed to the growth of Wisconsin’s wolf population because of concerns about wolf attacks on livestock, hunting dogs and pets, as well as longstanding societal and cultural fears of the animals, were largely against the new wolf management plan. Those groups pushed for the plan to include a statewide population goal of 350 wolves — which is the number stated in the 1999 plan, written when the animal was beginning its slow comeback to the state’s landscape after being extirpated in the 20th century.
Estimates put the current Wisconsin wolf population at about 1,200 wolves, with signs that number is stabilizing.
Environmental groups and the state’s Native American tribes were in favor of the new management method, stating it matches the best available science for how to responsibly manage animal populations and fearing that the anti-wolf crowd would see a 350-wolf population goal as a ceiling. The wolf is especially important to the Ojibwe people, who have a deep spiritual connection with the animals.
Some Republicans in the Legislature were also opposed to the new wolf management plan and for years the implementation of the new rules had been held up by a Republican-controlled committee. A recent state Supreme Court ruling found that the committee couldn’t indefinitely prevent the passage of administrative rules, allowing the DNR to move forward.
Also this year, Senate sporting heritage committee chair Sen. Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond) wrote a letter to the DNR asking if it would make changes to the rule. Stafsholt’s requested changes included setting a statewide population goal or range, increasing the harvest registration window to 12 hours, allowing harvest tags to be used anywhere statewide and eliminating all subzones, including areas set aside as a measure to protect wolf packs on tribal reservations.
Despite those objections, the DNR has continued to move forward without any changes.
Amy Mueller, a member of the Sierra Club of Wisconsin’s executive committee, says she feels like the rules and the management plan are the best possible compromise on an issue as polarizing as wolves, in which one side is opposed to wolf hunting in general and the other would like to see the population reduced.
“I think this is probably the best kind of compromise we can hope for coming out of an emergency rule that had been on the books for, you know, decades — a plan from 1999 that still had a population goal hoping that we could reach 350 wolves,” she says. “I feel like these are important steps, and probably good wins where we need them. And of course, I’d like to see more, but I think being realistic, this is still worth supporting.”
Mueller adds that she believes the DNR gets an “unproportionate amount of flak that’s misdirected” about wolf hunting because it has to follow the law and the law requires wolf hunts.
“Unfortunately, if we want to stop wolf hunting we need to look at the makeup of the Legislature, and we need to figure out how to amend Act 169. So I think the DNR is doing what it can with a very controversial issue and having their hands tied by this law,” she says.
Tyler Wenzlaff, director of national affairs at the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, echoes Mueller, saying public opinion is at “two different extremes” but that the new rules and plan do seem to represent a good compromise that will help guide the state whenever a hunt happens again.
“We have two forces here that are — we’re trying to get the number as low as we can, and the tribes are at a zero quota. And so the DNR is in the middle, trying to navigate these two forces and bring us to some kind of compromise,” he says.
“And looking at the rule,” he adds, “we support the rule and some of the changes that were made. We believe that it’s a strong compromise for both the agriculture and hunting community, but also those that want to see wolves remain on the landscape in strong numbers. And so moving forward, we believe this rule is in a good place. And really a permanent rule is necessary for Wisconsin to delist the wolves in the future and have a hunting season.”
As the DNR works to implement the new rules, Mueller, who has a seat on the DNR’s Wolf Advisory Committee, says she’s looking forward to working on the plan’s provisions for education about wolves and their role in the ecosystem and efforts for non-lethal abatement of wolf conflicts with humans and livestock.
Wenzlaff says the Farm Bureau is going to continue pushing for a numerical population goal to be set, even if it’s set to a level higher than the 350 wolves advocates have sought.
“If the population were to be gradually reduced to a more socially acceptable range, it would restore balance between maintaining a healthy wolf population and protecting farmers’ livelihood, pets and livestock,” he says. Wenzlaff says farmers are willing to hash out the right number with the wolf management committee, “but unfortunately, the DNR didn’t want to have that conversation. So we’re left with broad guidelines that can be reinterpreted by the next administration, which we don’t really support.”
For both sides of the wolf debate, the outcome of next year’s midterm elections are going to play an important role in their efforts.
For tribes and environmental groups, the prospect of Democrats gaining control of the Legislature and holding the governor’s office presents an opportunity to repeal or change the wolf hunting law to block whatever actions the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress take.
“There’s a lot at stake, because right or wrong, wolves are highly political,” Mueller says. “So I think [I’m] optimistic about the potential changeover in our state but cautiously optimistic. Understanding there’s a lot at stake, and it could really change things for wolves in Wisconsin, for the better or for the worse.”
For the farm and hunting groups, the prospect of a Republican governor would mean the state government is pushing in the same direction as the Trump administration. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor and seen as the frontrunner in the Republican primary, has authored legislation that would take the wolf off the federal endangered species list.
Wenzlaff says the Farm Bureau is ready to work with either party and wants to focus on how to get wolves delisted by Congress.
“It really comes down to the federal government and what their plans are,” he says. “What Wisconsin does really doesn’t matter until we have that delisting … There’s a lot of different ideas on what that could look like, but we’re willing to work with anybody, any stakeholders that are willing to talk about a reasonable wolf management goal.”
Sludge and septage are spread across around half a million acres in Wisconsin, but most of it has never been tested for PFAS.
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The Wisconsin DNR is proposing to reduce the commercial harvest on whitefish in Lake Michigan as the population has seen a dramatic decline.
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a federal permit Wednesday to a Canadian energy firm that wants to reroute its oil and gas pipeline around a northern Wisconsin tribe’s reservation.
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An emergency room nurse tends to a patient at Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital in Texas. States, counties and nonprofits are striving to continue their work to close racial health disparity gaps but are struggling amid a loss of federal dollars. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Racial health disparities may widen as states, universities and nonprofits grapple with federal funding cuts to programs that were aimed at filling gaps in care, public health experts say.
As part of its federal restructuring and crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, the Trump administration has been shuttering federal offices and rescinding grants dedicated to addressing worse health care access and outcomes for racial minorities.
The shake-up has caused some state agencies and nonprofits to pause programs and some groups and universities to apply for foundation grants instead.
Hundreds of grants have been terminated for state, local and territorial health departments as well as nonprofits and universities, many of which addressed health equity across rural, low-income and communities of color.
The nation’s racial health disparities were laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus killed Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people at higher rates than white people. The police murder of George Floyd in May 2020 also fueled a racial reckoning across the nation, prompting efforts by states, universities, health systems and the federal government to address racial health disparities.
Those approaches ranged from targeted vaccine campaigns and efforts to enroll more people of color in clinical trials to corrections of diagnostic tests that relied on inaccurate information about race and biology.
COVID revealed the impact of health disparities to individual health — as well as how not addressing these disparities undermines the health system for everyone.
– Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association
Communities of color have long had less access to health care, increased exposure to environmental pollutants and higher rates of certain chronic illnesses and cancer deaths. They also have more diabetes-related amputations because of a lack of access to care. And specific genetic diseases, such as sickle cell disease, disproportionately affect Black people.
“COVID revealed the impact of health disparities to individual health — as well as how not addressing these disparities undermines the health system for everyone,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.
Now, many of the programs trying to address health disparities are being rolled back.
As a result, health policy experts, clinicians and researchers fear those disparities will widen as states, universities and nonprofits grapple with lost federal dollars while the administration continues to limit federal funding for DEI programs. In July, the U.S. Department of Justice released guidance saying such initiatives should not receive federal funding, alleging they are “discriminatory.”
Entities that receive federal funds “must ensure that their programs and activities comply with federal law and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, religion, or other protected characteristics—no matter the program’s labels, objectives, or intentions,” the news release said.
Several state and local health officials were reluctant to speak with Stateline on the record about how the federal administration’s DEI crackdown has left them in a bind, fearing retaliation or targeting by the federal government. The White House did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.
“My concern about what the administration is doing is that they are, in effect, making these disparities worse,” Benjamin said. “Everybody’s health is not the same. … It’s important to know that the disparities are really profound.”
Benjamin added that the cumulative effect of disparities means more late-stage disease — costing both patients and health systems more.
“There’s a trope or misunderstanding out there that DEI is a ‘woke’-related agenda. DEI is not a ‘woke’ agenda. DEI is an American agenda, because it’s really one that is the same thing as ‘rising tides lift all boats,’” said Brandon Wilson, senior director of Health Innovation and Public Health at Community Catalyst, a health equity advocacy organization. “When you cut [resources] off, you’re actually disproportionately impacting those who are already impacted.”
The administration canceled billions of dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many of the grants helped recipients create solutions tailored to their communities’ needs and strengths.
At least three dozen state, local and territorial health departments have had pandemic-era grants that addressed health equity terminated. While originally focused on COVID-19, agencies have since used that grant money for other public health efforts: testing and contact tracing for a wide range of diseases, better data reporting, and community partnerships that address social and environmental effects on health.
The money was part of a $2.2 billion national health equity initiative that aimed to address vulnerabilities and protect those communities ahead of the next outbreak.
The Department of Health and Human Services told media such cancellations were due to the pandemic emergency ending in 2023.
At NIH, the administration terminated more than 5,400 NIH research grants, although about 2,800 were reinstated. Canceled grants included research toward illnesses like HIV and AIDS, which disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic people as well as gay and transgender people.
The Trump administration has also gutted federal offices dedicated to fighting disparities, including the Offices of Minority Health under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Department of Health and Human Services.
At the state level, the Arkansas Department of Health recently shut down its own minority health-focused office. Ashley Whitlow, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement that it “relies on federal grant funding to support a variety of public health programs.”
“The recent reduction in program staff reflects the Arkansas Department of Health’s ongoing efforts to operate more efficiently with the resources available. Despite these changes, ADH remains fully committed to serving communities across the state,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, Maryland’s Department of Health said its minority health office is funded through state general funds and not directly impacted by the federal cuts.
The nation has seen a spike in congenital syphilis cases, which disproportionately occur among Black and Indigenous families.
“Regardless of whether you’re at the highest risk, any outbreak that’s not controlled can spread widely and broadly, and you can see that that’s what’s happening with measles,” said Dr. Julie Morita, former executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former health commissioner Chicago Department of Public Health.
But states likely can’t replace all the lost federal dollars.
“You’ve got declining capacity, and increasing need — which is a formula for problems,” said Richard Frank, director of the Brookings Institution Center on Health Policy.
“It’s impossible to make all that up with state and local dollars,” he continued. “You’re going to see programs that serve real people getting pulled back.”
Frank and Wilson also expressed concern about the Medicaid changes included in the broad tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July. The law is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $911 billion over the next decade, largely because new work requirements will push people off the rolls. Data shows the majority of Medicaid enrollees already work, and experts say many will be kicked off the rolls due to difficulties in states’ reporting processes. Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately represented on the Medicaid rolls.
OB-GYN Dr. Versha Pleasant, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan, directs the Cancer Genetics and Breast Health Clinic at Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital. She treats patients at high risk for breast and ovarian cancers. Black women have an almost 40% higher risk of death from breast cancer than white women.
“That, to me, is unacceptable,” she said, adding that such disparities speak to the need for ongoing programs to “provide everyone with a fair chance at leading a long and healthy life.”
“If we don’t make a special effort to save the most vulnerable lives … where does that leave us?” she continued. “The changes that we’re seeing are only going to magnify preexisting challenges.”
Dr. Sarah Rudman, acting public health officer at the Santa Clara County Public Health Department in California, and others have told Stateline that federal officials are informing health agencies that race and ethnicity data are no longer required to be reported.
“We are being asked to change the way we collect our own data here and report it,” Rudman said, adding that her county is going to continue collecting data to “understand who is here, who’s experiencing what health outcome and what they need.”
Many families, in the shadow of the county’s Silicon Valley, still struggle with poverty — more than 27,000 children suffer food insecurity, United Way Bay Area says.
“It is sometimes surprising and striking to people to understand how much poverty and other types of vulnerability are hidden among the more visible wealth of Silicon Valley, and that’s where we’ve dedicated our resources,” Rudman said.
“It’s hard to even imagine what my colleagues in smaller areas of California or in other parts of the country are experiencing,” she added about lower-income counties. “We are feeling extremely strained and already in our second round of layoffs, knowing that many more are likely. So I think that the hits are going to be that much more significant in areas who have less resources than we do.”
Federal officials also canceled the county’s $5.7 million grant to address COVID-19-related disparities, used to shore up vulnerable communities ahead of the next disease outbreak, natural disaster or heat wave, Rudman said. The money helped the county conduct basic laboratory testing and vaccine outreach for a wide range of diseases, not just COVID-19.
Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Lake Pepin, the largest naturally occurring lake on the Mississippi River, is a beloved resource and important economic engine for the Wisconsin and Minnesota towns that border it.
In the summer, its calm, expansive waters are popular for sailing and water skiing — the latter of which was invented on the lake in 1922. In the winter, it’s an ice fishing hub.
But it’s got a big problem: Massive amounts of sediment are eroding from stream banks, bluffs and agricultural fields upstream and settling in the lake. Parts of it have become so shallow that boat travel is impossible, leaving some communities cut off. The upper one-third of the lake could be unusable for recreation by the end of this century.
A new yearlong project aims to understand how to curb an overlooked source of that sediment.
The Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to improve the health of the lake, has launched an investigation into how erosion can be controlled in ravines and gullies. Ravines act like fast-moving highways, delivering soil into the Mississippi River and then the lake, according to the alliance. The analysis will be led by Norman Senjem, who retired from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in 2011 and has deep knowledge of the lake’s challenges with sedimentation.
Senjem plans to work with county conservationists and watershed groups in south-central Minnesota, which delivers large sediment loads to Lake Pepin, to identify the best ways to stop erosion from ravines.
Michael Anderson, executive director of the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, said with results from Senjem in hand, landowners will be able to take action to stop sediment from ravines on their properties.
“We’re obviously not the people who will be the excavators,” he said. “We’ll help put the pieces together and start to push the snowball down the hill to get momentum going.”
Lake Pepin, which stretches 21 miles between Bay City and Nelson on Wisconsin’s western border, has always acted as a sort of settling pond for sediment. Once river water enters the top of the lake, its slower-moving waters allow silts and other particles to drop to the bottom, and the water that exits the lake and flows farther down the river is cleaner.
But sediment erosion has increased tenfold since before European settlement of the area. Each year, a sediment load as big as a 32-story building spanning a full city block enters the lake, according to the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance. At this rate, the entire lake could be filled in less than 350 years.
A large majority of that sediment comes from the Minnesota River basin, which covers nearly 15,000 square miles, including many areas that are heavily farmed. There are thousands of ravines that cut through the slopes on the sides of the river, ushering sediment from the farmed landscape quickly downstream.
“But they’re kind of hidden away,” on the edges of farm fields or wooded areas, Senjem said. “I’m going to try to shed some light on them.”
Built structures called water and sediment control basins can intercept sediment from ravines, Senjem said. But increased rainfall across the Midwest due to climate change is rendering the basins less effective. The expanded use of agricultural drainage tile in the Minnesota River basin, an underground pipe network meant to more easily drain farm fields, also contributes to water flowing faster down ravines.
Senjem expects to find that more work will be necessary to control the problem, such as building multiple control basins in a row to slow the sediment or adding so-called “buffer strips,” made of grass or permanent vegetation, to help catch more of it.
Over the next year, Senjem will study which options like these have been implemented across south-central Minnesota to limit sediment from ravines. Those might offer a road map to members of the Legacy Alliance as to which types are most effective. Since such projects can be costly, he’ll also include in his analysis what kinds of financial assistance are available to landowners to undertake them.
For landowners to want to take action to save a lake many miles away, there’s got to be local incentive, too, Senjem said — like if a restored ravine would protect a road or smooth out a farm field. He’ll prioritize potential solutions that do that as well.
The project is funded by a $15,000 grant from the Red Wing Area Fund, a community foundation on the north end of Lake Pepin.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
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Erosion from ravines threatens Lake Pepin — and Wisconsin communities that depend on it 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.
Interior of a modern data center. Interior of a modern data center. (Stock photo by Imaginima/Getty Images)
The efforts of some of the largest companies in the world, including Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and OpenAI, to develop data centers in communities across Wisconsin have sparked heated local debates among residents, government officials and even comedians.
Those debates have often been over the data centers’ use of water and electricity, the net impact of local government deals with big corporations, the value of handing over large tracts of land for big warehouse-like buildings and the secrecy in which the plans are often shrouded.
Data centers, buildings that house computer servers to store information for cloud-based software and, increasingly, to support the expansion of artificial intelligence, are becoming more and more prevalent in the Upper Midwest, according to the Minneapolis branch of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
While Wisconsin still lags behind its neighbors, the state is now home to 47 data centers with more on the horizon. As communities across the state weigh the merits of accepting data center development, critics and proponents say the state needs more than the current, piecemeal local approach.
In Port Washington, a Milwaukee suburb on the shore of Lake Michigan, the local government has supported a proposal from tech giants Open AI and Oracle to develop an AI-focused data center on 2,000 acres of farmland in the community. That project is moving forward despite local backlash.
In Mount Pleasant, a village in Racine County where state and local officials have been trying to salvage a failed Foxconn development, Microsoft has spent billions of dollars for the construction of two data centers in the community.
But in nearby Caledonia, Microsoft was forced to back off a planned development after backlash from local residents led to the denial of a requested zoning change.
Overwhelmingly, the largest complaints about data centers are the electricity and water usage. A recent Bloomberg News report found that the construction of data centers has caused electric bills in nearby communities to surge because of the high energy needs of the centers. A recent report from Clean Wisconsin found that just the data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington will use enough electricity to power 4.3 million homes.
Many data centers need to use water to cycle through their cooling systems, which are necessary because computer equipment can’t be allowed to overheat. While proponents of data centers have downplayed the amount of water required to run the cooling systems, critics point to the water use associated with the increase in electricity demand. Wisconsin’s existing power plants use a high amount of water.
These demands on water have become especially fraught as the data centers have become increasingly concentrated in southeast Wisconsin, where residents are very protective of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes watershed.
Melissa Scanlan, the director of UW-Milwaukee’s Center for Water Policy, says Wisconsin’s failure to address data centers comprehensively could quickly put an overly burdensome strain on the state’s utilities.
“There should be a state level review of all of the potential proposals, so that the state can assess the impact on electricity generation and water supply,” Scanlan says. “Doing it in a piecemeal way, where you’ve got local governments deciding about hosting, but then utilities that are committed to supplying the electricity and water, is going to very quickly bump up against the realities of our ability to generate electricity in a responsible way.”
Robin Palm, a certified urban planner who lives in Milwaukee, says he’s largely supportive of data centers because they provide local governments with a consistent source of property tax revenue without requiring many city services.
“A data center is extremely low services, they’re not going to have kids that need to go to school,” he says. “They are not going to have homeowners that are going to make demands at the village board, and they’re not going to have police calls because of crime or anything like that. So it’s a really low services, high value land use.”
He says the current approach of leaving these decisions up to local officials and zoning boards has pointed the public’s skepticism in the wrong direction. The local officials, he says, are making an easy economic development calculation when the real blame for the confusion should go to the state Public Service Commission and power companies — which have failed to support the expansion of renewable energy in the state.
Palm points to Iowa, which has far more data centers than Wisconsin and gets more than 60% of its power supply from wind.
“[Iowa is] getting cheap electricity. They use a lot more per capita than a lot of other states, and they’re way far ahead of us in data centers, and it’s mostly renewable,” he says. “I can’t see anything to complain about that situation. So it seems to me that the obvious culprit, I think, on our side, is the PSC and We Energies. There is something in that mechanism that’s basically screwing us.”
Late last month, state Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said that a “data center stampede” has started in Wisconsin and that state officials need to develop some sort of statewide plan for how to manage it.
“We must develop a statewide plan for data centers that prioritizes the needs of our neighbors and its impact on the environment and our communities before the profit margins of private utilities and big tech companies,” he said in a statement. “If we don’t, the data center stampede will likely continue unabated, and in its wake may very well be a Wisconsin we no longer recognize — one that has abandoned its tradition of protecting our air, water, and land for future generations.”
Richard Heinemann, an attorney for Madison-based law firm Boardman Clark, says state lawmakers have already made a policy statement affirming their desire for the construction of data centers. In the 2023-25 state budget, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a provision was included to give a sales tax rebate on the “development, construction, renovation, expansion, replacement, repair, or operation” of data centers.
Heinemann also points to two bills signed into law by Evers earlier this year to advance the development of nuclear energy in the state. That legislation was introduced specifically to respond to the increased energy demands of data centers.
“Wisconsin must be prepared to meet soaring energy demands that will be driven by the development of data centers and other energy-intensive economic development,” the co-sponsorship memo states.
But Heinemann says he believes local officials and residents already have the necessary tools to weigh in on data center development.
“We already have procedural mechanisms in place to try to address some of these issues,” says Heinemann, who recently wrote an article about local government’s authority to intervene in Public Service Commission considerations of utility expansion. “I’m not saying every issue, but some of the important ones that people have looked at or pointed to. So I don’t know what sort of new legislation one could propose that would address these issues in some more comprehensive way, or in a way that would just provide some due process.”
Hovering over the whole debate is the secrecy with which big tech companies have operated while working to build data centers. The corporations responsible for development are often hidden behind obscure LLCs and have a record across the country of trying to get local governments to sign non-disclosure agreements (though it’s unlikely such an agreement could stand up to Wisconsin’s open records laws). A group of environmental organizations recently had to file a lawsuit to force the city of Racine to disclose how much water it was estimating it would be providing to the Microsoft site in Mount Pleasant.
Heinemann says these debates would go more smoothly if the companies worked in the open with communities.
“Data centers themselves have an obligation to make sure that they’re doing the outreach necessary when they work to site a facility in a locality,” he says. “It behooves them to do that work of trying to address the needs of the locality.”
Heinemann says says the state Public Service Commission, Department of Natural Resources and local communities through their zoning authority already have the resources they need to regulate data centers
“Each project is complicated. It does require a lot of infrastructure,” Heinemann adds. “There are a lot of potential benefits to communities, but there are also impacts on the communities, those can be addressed, and there are legal procedures and agencies whose job it is to do that.”
When a major infrastructure project comes to town, it can become a herculean effort to locate information about the development and its potential environmental impacts.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources hosts an online permitting database. The website serves as a public repository of documents related to projects like large livestock farms, mines and even mock beaver dams.
But queue it up and face an onslaught of records.
If it takes a grown professional to decipher the documents, what would it take for a teenager to care?
A student club in Stillwater Area Public Schools, located in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, is exploring methods to bring such esoteric data to life.
At a recent environmental forum in Hudson, Wisconsin, the youth showcased their work, including constructing a submersible robot that will assess water quality in area lakes.
Another project examined water quality in the St. Croix River watershed — spanning both Minnesota and Wisconsin — including the potential impacts of a proposed Burnett County hog farm.
That animal operation was the subject of a three-part Wisconsin Watch investigation, which found that the developers improperly designated some farmland for manure spreading without the property owners’ consent.
Wisconsin regulations require the owners of large farms to own or rent a sufficient land base on which to apply livestock manure, but Wisconsin Watch verified that at least 11 of 39 landowners listed in the farm’s plan were not contacted. Some hadn’t decided if they wanted manure on their land, while many objected outright.
Even after the developers proposed hauling excess manure to Minnesota, the Wisconsin DNR rejected their application.
The hog farm would have been constructed in the headwaters of the St. Croix River in the town of Trade Lake. Field runoff ultimately would have flowed downstream to Stillwater.
Livestock farming in the St. Croix River watershed introduces fecal waste equivalent to 3.25 million people, according to estimates produced by retired University of Iowa faculty member Chris Jones, who specializes in water quality monitoring.
Area drinking wells already exceed nitrate standards, and residents feared that manure from an additional 20,000-pig farm would be a toxic addition.
Michael Manore, founder and project lead of the “This is Stillwater” initiative, which partners with the student club, created the digital model of the watershed showcased at the forum. He said the visuals sharpened the scope of the hog farm’s possible impacts: widespread manure hauling, roadside spills and odor.
The school district’s Synergy Club, led by Julie Balfanz, encourages students to visualize data in novel ways, using tools like the computer game Minecraft.
“So many of these ideas came from the kids because this is what they’re into,” Balfanz said. “But they just don’t have adults that listen to their ideas and let them experiment.”
Manore and Balfanz hope their efforts inspire youth to respond to community challenges, including environmental sustainability and water quality.
In a digitized world, human attention is an increasingly valuable commodity, and Manore realized that more than a dozen state and federal agencies govern surface water and underground aquifers, producing an “insurmountable” puddle of data.
“So much of sustainability is checkmarks or checkboxes on a brochure,” he said. “I go out and stand in my environment and I sniff the air or I dig my feet into the ground or I swim in the water. I don’t have a clue what that checkmark box translates into the true raw health metrics of my community.”
Now Manore is pondering ways to dispense with screens altogether — or at least plant them in nature.
Could tech use DNR records to augment reality like an interactive game of Pokémon GO?
Manore sure hopes so.
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Here’s how games and graphics are helping get teenagers excited about protecting the environment 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.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
State and local government officials in Wisconsin objected Friday to the Trump administration’s decision to deny additional disaster assistance to rebuild infrastructure in Door, Grant, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha counties after the historic floods in August.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said the decision left him feeling “extremely disappointed.” Crowley spoke from his office at the Milwaukee County Courthouse Friday, saying that the funds would go towards repairing parks, government buildings, and other public infrastructure damaged by the so-called flooding which swept communities two months ago.
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) initially sent disaster relief after the floods, Crowley said he “commended the Trump administration,” and that “I thought that we were putting politics behind us in making sure that communities can recover.” Crowley said that by Friday over $123 million in financial assistance has been distributed to county residents for home repairs.
But it’s not just local businesses and homes that were damaged. The rainfall, which fell in a torrential downpour on the weekend of Aug. 9, left Hart Park in Wauwatosa underwater. Downed trees and other debris were strewn along roadways. Cars, swept away by the overnight flooding, were abandoned in the street for days.
Over 1,800 homes were left damaged or destroyed, with an estimated $34 million in damage to public infrastructure. “The preliminary damage assessments show that the damage that we saw throughout all six counties is more than significant,” said Crowley. “Roads and bridges that our residents rely on sustained substantial damage. Public buildings and facilities were not only washed away, but in some cases had significant mold contamination that will also impact the public health and safety of our residents. Our parks and our trails, they were damaged, which will harm our quality of life in the short term, as well as the long term, and the list goes on.”
Crowley pointed to Hart Park as a prime example of an area with lingering damage additional funds could remedy. As the disaster relief is denied, Milwaukee County is also in the middle of crafting a budget which will not be padded by COVID-era federal funds. County supervisors are currently debating amendments to Crowley’s proposed $1.4 billion budget, which carries cuts to transit services and eviction legal defense programs and increases property taxes by 4.1%.
“We’re already making challenging decisions about funding not only programs and services, but future infrastructure spending, and capital projects that are needed not only now, but in the years ahead. Today’s action by the Trump administration will send us back even further. It will delay progress in our recovery efforts from this natural disaster, and it will place a financial burden solely on local taxpayers who have already had to sacrifice so much as a result of these floods.”
Gov. Tony Evers issued a statement Friday saying he filed an appeal asking the Trump administration to release more than $26.5 million in public assistance for infrastructure repair it has denied. “Denying federal assistance doesn’t just delay recovery, it sends a message to our communities that they are on their own, and that the Trump administration doesn’t think over $26 million in damages to public infrastructure is worthy of their help,” Evers said in a press statement. “I couldn’t disagree more. The federal government should not expect our communities to go through this alone, and we are going to fight tooth and nail to ensure they get every possible resource to rebuild and recover. We are hopeful that the Trump administration will reconsider this decision, so we can make sure folks have the resources and support they need.”
The denial comes during a federal government shutdown that has lasted nearly a month. In a letter to Evers, FEMA said that while the flood damage was significant, assessments determined that “the public assistance program is not warranted.”
The storm and flooding was dubbed a “thousand year storm” and dumped record-breaking amounts of rain essentially overnight. Wisconsin now has 30 days to send an appeal.
“Turning your back on families facing washed-out roads, damaged schools, and flooded homes because they’re not seen as political allies is unconscionable,” said Kerry Schumann, executive director of Wisconsin Conservation Voters in a statement. “These communities didn’t cause this crisis, but they’re living through it. They deserve leadership that helps them recover and protects them from the next flood, not one that deepens the damage.”
“By denying federal assistance, the Trump Administration is leaving Wisconsin communities to fend for themselves,” said U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin. “No community can pick up these pieces alone, and Wisconsinites need support so they can rebuild and be on the road to recovery. I hope my Republican colleagues will join me in calling on the Trump administration to step up to the plate and be here for Wisconsin communities left in the lurch.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, Democrat of Milwaukee, also expressed frustration. “Our state was forced to wait nearly two months for the Trump administration’s ill-advised and disappointing decision,” Moore said in a statement. “Communities in Milwaukee, which are still recovering, are counting on federal assistance to help fund critical repairs to public roadways, buildings, vehicles, and equipment that were severely damaged.” Nevertheless, Moore said, “Wisconsinites do not give up.”
Rep. Kalan Haywood (D-Milwaukee) also issued a statement condemning the denial. Haywood said that the Trump administration “is sending a clear message to the people of Wisconsin – ‘we do not care about you’.” Haywood added that, “these funds are so badly needed to repair infrastructure, businesses, and schools. These are all essential to reverse the trend of President Trump’s faltering economy. Our residents pay millions in federal taxes and they should not face these hardships alone.”
Haywood added that Wisconsin’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) “is on the verge of drying up.” while “communities are left to rebuild major infrastructure on their own, it is disappointing that the White House is choosing a $300 million ballroom ego-project over the well-being of the people of our state. It is my hope that FEMA reconsiders this decision to ensure that Wisconsin residents have a chance to recover and prosper. Wisconsinites deserve better and should demand better.”
Two bills related to disaster relief (AB-580 and AB-581) have been introduced to the Wisconsin Legislature as communities process the news. One bill would require the Department of Military Affairs to create a program to award grants to individuals and businesses severely impacted by disasters related to a state of emergency declared by the governor. Grants of no more than $25,000 could be awarded under the bill to an individual to help repair a residence, and grants of no more than $50,000 would go to businesses. The other bill would also work through the Department of Military Affairs, and would appropriate $10 million in disaster assistance grants for individuals, and $20 million in grants for businesses in the 2025-26 fiscal year.
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Farmers rely on the Mississippi River to ship grain and bring them imported fertilizer and other critical inputs. But another year of low river levels means barge travel will be more expensive.
The post Drought is shrinking Mississippi River levels — again. That’s a big problem for farmers. appeared first on WPR.
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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.”
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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.
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