Wild rice, or manoomin in the Ojibwe language, is culturally significant to northern Wisconsin tribes, and Wisconsin regulators are anticipating an increased wild rice harvest this year.

The post Wisconsin’s wild rice harvest is expected to be up this year appeared first on WPR.

State leaders are breathing a sigh of relief that the Trump administration’s threats to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency have subsided. 

But experts say there’s still confusion about President Donald Trump’s decisions to approve or deny disaster declarations, leaving states with uncertainty about whether they can expect federal recovery funds.

“The foundation (at FEMA) seems stronger than it did six months ago, but this is an unreliable administration when it comes to the fair and equitable distribution of disaster funds,” said Juliette Kayyem, faculty chair of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a former Obama administration official.

Trump has long called on states to take on a larger role in responding to disasters, and suggested early in his second term that FEMA might “go away” entirely. Kristi Noem, who served as Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security until she was fired in March, pledged at one point to “eliminate” FEMA, and slashed the agency’s spending and staffing during her tenure. 

Last month, the Senate confirmed Cameron Hamilton to serve as FEMA’s administrator, making him the first permanent agency leader during Trump’s second term. Hamilton, once a FEMA critic, had previously served as acting administrator, but was fired in May 2025 after saying he had become convinced the agency should not be eliminated. 

Experts say Hamilton’s return and Noem’s departure are signs of stability for FEMA. 

“It’s basically a return to regular order,” said Craig Fugate, who served as FEMA’s administrator under President Barack Obama. “They’re filling positions and reestablishing programs that got cut during the purge.”

State emergency managers say the leadership changes are welcome developments. 

“(Hamilton) he has the right attitude as far as supporting his employees and supporting the states,” said Lynn Budd, director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security. “I have a positive feel for that.”

Budd also serves as president of the National Emergency Management Association, a nonprofit comprising state and territorial emergency officials.

While FEMA appears to be safe from the most drastic threats, states still face uncertainty over some agency programs they have long relied on. The agency has said that states must comply with Trump’s voting and immigration policies in order to qualify for Homeland Security Grant Program funding. A coalition of states and municipalities have sued, saying they stand to lose out on millions of dollars they need to prepare for terrorist and other security threats. 

The White House press office did not respond to a Stateline interview request. 

Trump decisions

Experts say the biggest challenge for emergency managers is the lack of clarity around Trump’s disaster approvals. While FEMA has clear thresholds that determine which disasters qualify for federal aid, the president has full discretion to approve or deny those requests for help.

Trump has been far more willing to grant disaster declarations for Republican-led states, at 89%, while Democratic-led states have seen only 23% of their requests approved, a Politico analysis found in March. 

Trump overruled the recommendations of his own agencies when he rejected federal aid for four Democratic-led states in July, Politico reported. 

“The bad news is you have a very unreliable administration and a very political president,” said Kayyem, of Harvard. “When it comes to states’ expectations, we can’t know what this White House will do.”

But some emergency management veterans said the denials aren’t a clear-cut case of political retribution. Fugate, the former FEMA administrator under Obama, noted that many of the disaster requests Trump rejected were snow-related. Trump’s administration has pushed to eliminate snow assistance from FEMA disaster aid, arguing that states should not receive federal reimbursement for plowing their own roads. Many of the northern states that have experienced snow disasters are represented by Democrats. 

For other disasters, Fugate said, Trump has a higher bar for granting federal recovery funds. 

“The administration’s been very clear they’re wanting to raise thresholds, even if they haven’t formally changed the numbers,” he said. “I’ve not seen them deny catastrophic disasters, major disasters. It’s the smaller marginal disasters that are really judgment calls.”

While saying he “ain’t a big fan” of the Trump administration, Fugate said shifting the financial burden for disaster relief from the feds back to the states has been a longtime discussion among both parties. 

Still, emergency managers said the White House should provide more clarity about what the new thresholds are and give states time to prepare for a bigger role. 

“There’s really never been feedback about why a disaster was denied,” said Budd, the Wyoming official. “That’s something I would hope to see in the future, creating more clarity in what exactly are we looking at when we go through the process of trying to request a major disaster declaration.”

State money

Some states have begun preparing for a drawback of FEMA support. Tennessee lawmakers established a statewide recovery fund intended to help communities hit by disasters that don’t qualify for federal aid. While Republican Gov. Bill Lee requested $100 million to create the fund, lawmakers ultimately approved $44.2 million earlier this year. Some legislators fear that won’t go very far. 

“Cutting it by more than half shows the State can’t afford for FEMA to cut back its support, much less to stop supporting states altogether,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro, a Democrat, told the Tennessee Lookout in a statement. “Funded at its current level, this fund can only really fill a few gaps where FEMA is too slow or too rigid.”

Budd, the president of the emergency managers’ group, said other states are considering similar funds. 

“These are the types of programs that we as states need to look at, and something that I will have conversations about with our legislators in the future,” she said. 

But as states look at making those investments, Budd called on the White House to give them more time. 

“The very hard part about saying states need to do more is that it cannot happen overnight,” she said. “It will take time for states and lawmakers to build that.”

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

Officials in Page, Arizona, a small city near the Glen Canyon Dam, passed a land sale agreement last fall that establishes a framework for future construction of a data center.

The sale of the 500-acre parcel about a mile away from the Colorado River’s Horseshoe Bend — one of the most visited natural landmarks in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area — to Huntley LLC for $7 million specifies that the company intends to build a 1 gigawatt data center.

Residents have been pushing back and launched a petition earlier this year to stop the planned data center from being built. 

About 5 miles south of the city, a group of tribal leaders began to take notice. The proposed data center borders the LeChee Chapter of the Navajo Nation, located in the northwest corner of the Navajo Reservation. 

Like most of Arizona, the community has run into challenges from severe drought conditions this year. After learning how much water it could take to cool the thousands of servers housed in the massive facilities, members of the tribe grew increasingly concerned about the proposed data center.

The LeChee Chapter also passed a resolution opposing Page’s decision to sell the land to the developers. 

“Water is precious to us,” said Irene Whitekiller, president of the LeChee Chapter. “ … Water is used for everything, like with holy water in church and traditional ceremonies. But with a data center coming in, it’s going to take a lot.”

Data center developments are continuing to spread throughout the country as the demand for digital processing power grows — especially as artificial intelligence systems become more prevalent. But in addition to concerned residents, some federal, state and local officials are worried about how data centers could drive up utility bills, strain water resources and hurt the environment.

And now, tribal communities are grappling with the fact that more developers are eyeing their land for future data center projects.

“Because of the history with treaties, removal actions and those sorts of things, tribal lands are probably more pristine and not as developed as other state, federal or local government lands,” said Tana Fitzpatrick, the associate vice president of tribal relations at the University of Oklahoma and a member of the Crow Tribe in Montana and a descendent of the Lakota Sioux, Ponca and Chickasaw nations. 

“That might be one of the reasons why tribes are finding that people are coming and wanting to build data centers on their lands.”

Some tribal leaders are also concerned about President Donald Trump’s ability to alter regulations related to federal lands. While most of Trump’s executive orders don’t apply to federal land belonging to Native nations or reservations, Whitekiller said that could change.

In July, for instance, Trump issued two executive orders to revise the boundaries of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Bears Ears National Monument so the lands could be “put to a higher-priority use,” such as extracting minerals to invest in national security. The orders faced backlash from environmental advocacy groups and Native nations.

“We’re trying to educate our people to say no to this kind of thing (data centers) because we want the land the way it is. This is a federal land that we live on, but Trump doesn’t respect that,” Whitekiller said.

In March, the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma became one of the first Native nations to enact a complete moratorium on data centers. Honor the Earth, a national nonprofit organization advocating for the protection of Indigenous sovereignty and the environment, has helped communities like the Seminole Nation organize against data center development on their land.

Some companies see tribal land as a regulatory dream, said Ashley Leitka, an enrolled member of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the director of the department of sovereignty and self-determination at Honor the Earth. She is also part of the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota nations.

While municipalities are pushing back against data center developers by tightening codes and enforcing stricter regulations, she said some companies are hoping that tribal nations will be more lenient. As sovereign, self-governing nations, tribes are not required to follow all state and local laws.

“These companies are really preying upon the lack of economic diversity in our tribal nations,” Leitka said. “The reality is our tribal leaders are given a mandate to care for their nations, and whenever there’s opportunities, it’s pretty difficult for them to assert why they would not consider it. I just think it’s several things happening at the same time — that makes tribal nations prime targets.”

A handful of other tribes have taken action against data centers. In July, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma’s Business Committee formally declared its opposition to construction and operation of data centers on its lands. 

And in August, following a report detailing the impact of data centers on economy and environment, the Cherokee Nation announced it would be banning hyperscale data center development on tribally owned and trust lands, according to the nation’s official news site.

However, some tribes are considering how data centers could help their people. Colusa Indian Energy, for instance, has become one of the only tribally owned microgrid companies helping lead data center partnerships with Native nations.  

And in the past few years, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs has encouraged tribes to consider data center projects by offering financial and technical resources to assist.

Data centers are a significant way to bring economic opportunities to tribal communities, said Eric Mahroum, the office’s director. Mahroum said data centers also offer a number of jobs to community members.

“I think that’s why a lot of private companies are approaching tribal lands and the tribal governments to partner with them,” he said. “And we’re here to help them with that. I’ll be the first to say that there’s a lot of private companies and a lot of bad players that want to take advantage of the tribes. But then there’s a lot of great players that want to help the tribes.”

As more communities push data center developers out and states consider rescinding tax breaks, some of the country’s top tech developers and data center companies see tribal land as an easier option.

Microsoft, for instance, recently proposed a data center project in Fernley, Nevada, about a 10-minute drive from the boundary of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation, according to Honor the Earth’s Data Center Tracker. The company’s community-first AI initiative outlines steps Microsoft will take to be a “good neighbor” in the communities where they build, according to an unsigned written statement from the company.

In the meantime, tribal leaders have expressed the need to continue studying the impacts of data centers through task forces. And now, more Native nations are considering moratoriums to allow time for more discussions, said Fitzpatrick, of the University of Oklahoma.

“In general, every tribe is their own sovereign nation,” Fitzpatrick said. “Regardless of the issue, every tribe is going to have their own ways of governing, choosing their priorities and looking at their citizens’ priorities.”

Reading Time: 2 minutes

A judge in Milwaukee County has tossed out a trespassing citation a Shorewood man received last year for walking past a public beach along Lake Michigan’s shoreline, saying the action was protected by the public trust doctrine. 

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge J.D. Watts on Thursday reversed the decision of a  municipal judge, who found Paul Florsheim guilty of trespassing. Florsheim, with the help of the nonprofit Midwest Environmental Advocates, appealed that decision, saying he hoped the case would make its way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court so the court could weigh in on public beach access in the state.

“It was very gratifying to read the decision,” Florsheim, a professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, said in an interview with WPR. “I did feel vindicated.”

Florsheim received a $313 trespassing ticket from the Shorewood Police Department after he walked along the shoreline past Atwater Beach last summer. He represented himself during a municipal court hearing, arguing the part of the beach where he was walking was public land, and he was allowed to be there. 

The state’s public trust doctrine protects the public’s rights on navigable waterways in Wisconsin. Florsheim argued the doctrine protects his right to walk along the shoreline up to the ordinary high water mark. 

But Shorewood Municipal Judge Margo Kirchner ruled against Florsheim, citing a 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Doemel v. Jantz, that found the public cannot walk on the area of the shoreline between the ordinary high water mark and the edge of the water. It said private property owners have exclusive rights to that area.

On its website, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says the ordinary high water mark is defined as, “the point on the bank or shore of a waterway up to which the presence and action of the water is so continuous as to leave a distinct mark either by erosion, destruction of terrestrial vegetation or other easily recognized characteristic.”

Watts, in his decision, wrote, “the strip of land below the (ordinary high water mark) is lakebed owned by the state of Wisconsin,” and that the state’s property extends to that point along Lake Michigan. 

Watts said Florsheim walking along the shoreline of Lake Michigan, below the ordinary high water mark, was a “recreational activity.” 

The 1923 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision related to a dispute along Lake Winnebago, an inland lake. In his decision, Watts said Doemel v. Jantz, “may guide decisions in cases involving tort actions for trespass on inland lakes but provides little guidance for this case.” 

The judge found the walk was protected under the public trust doctrine and “did not infringe on any riparian landowner’s rights.”

A Thursday press release from Midwest Environmental Advocates said the decision from Watts, “did not overrule Doemel.”

In a statement, Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said, “The dismissal affirms that the shore of Lake Michigan is public land, and, while the direct impact of the decision is limited to the dismissal of Paul’s ticket, we believe the principles affirmed in this case should be broadly applied.”

This story was originally published by WPR.

Milwaukee County judge overturns trespassing citation in Lake Michigan beach access case 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.

A judge in Milwaukee County has tossed out a trespassing citation a Shorewood man received last year for walking past a public beach along Lake Michigan's shoreline, saying the action was protected by the public trust doctrine.

The post Milwaukee County Judge reverses trespassing citation in Lake Michigan beach walker case appeared first on WPR.

Wisconsin wildlife regulators have now received almost 900 reports of dead deer in southeastern Wisconsin that are tied to an ongoing outbreak of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease.

The post Reports of dead deer surge in southeastern Wisconsin amid disease outbreak appeared first on WPR.

Enbridge now hopes to restore service to its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline by Tuesday after a gas leak in northern Wisconsin last week.

The post Enbridge hopes to restore service to Line 5 by Tuesday after gas leak appeared first on WPR.

Residents who have been struggling with PFAS contamination in northeastern Wisconsin are one step closer to securing safe water after lawmakers voted to release $10 million from the state’s PFAS trust fund.

The post Marinette, Peshtigo residents closer to aid after lawmakers release $10M to address PFAS appeared first on WPR.

A federal judge ruled Monday that New York cannot enforce its landmark “climate Superfund” law, a measure that sought to charge fossil fuel companies $75 billion over 25 years to help the state deal with the costs of climate change. 

While the legal battle is far from over, the ruling could give pause to lawmakers in many other states who have been considering similar legislation. 

Chief Judge Brenda Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York ruled that New York’s 2024 law is preempted by the federal Clean Air Act, calling the measure “simply beyond the limits of state law.” Fossil fuel companies have long argued that federal regulations governing emissions supersede states’ authority to punish companies for their role in causing climate change. 

“It is precisely because the (state) Climate Act operates within an area of law ‘in which the federal interest is so dominant’ that it cannot be enforced,” Sannes wrote in her ruling. 

The case against New York’s law was brought by fossil fuel companies and the attorneys general of 22 Republican-led states. 

“This is a major victory in the fight against liberal states, trying to balance their budgets on the backs of our hard-working men and women in the coal, oil and gas industries,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey said in a statement. 

Environmental advocates called on New York Attorney General Letitia James to appeal the ruling. 

“The fossil fuel industry would like nothing more than for one district court ruling in New York to scare lawmakers across the country into backing down, but this decision doesn’t bind other states or stop them from passing their own laws,” Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Make Polluters Pay, an advocacy campaign supporting climate Superfund bills and lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. 

“New York should fight this ruling, and every other state should keep moving until we make polluters pay their fair share.”

New York was the second state to pass a climate Superfund law, following a measure in Vermont. A lawsuit against Vermont’s law is still pending. 

The laws are modeled on the federal Superfund program, which requires polluters to pay for the cleanup of toxic waste sites. 

Lawmakers in at least 12 other states have proposed similar bills this session, although none has advanced so far. While the policy has gained significant attention and support in recent years, experts said that some legislators were likely waiting to see how the legal battles over the New York and Vermont laws would play out. 

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

A Chicago-based energy developer is planning to build two new large natural gas power plants in northeast Wisconsin, but the company has not yet said how much the project will cost.

The post Energy developer planning nearly 2 gigawatt natural gas plants in northeast Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.

Dozens of southeastern Wisconsin residents, community organizers, local leaders and environmental activists voiced their opposition to a proposal from the electric utility We Energies to raise rates during a series of meetings in Milwaukee Tuesday. 

At a rally outside the We Energies offices Tuesday morning and at a public hearing on the rate increase held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission on the Marquette University campus in the afternoon, opponents of the planned increase by as much as $22 per month by 2028 complained that the company was raising money that would go to building data center infrastructure and executive salaries on the backs of Milwaukee residents struggling to get by. Opponents also demanded that Wisconsin change direction as the state continues to fall behind its neighbors in renewable energy development. 

The proposed rate increase comes as public attention has focused on the structure of Wisconsin’s energy system and the sources of its power due to widespread opposition to the construction of hyperscale data centers — particularly in the communities of Port Washington and Mount Pleasant. The issue has become a major topic in the ongoing race for governor as both Democrat David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, and Republican Tom Tiffany, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, argue for their vision for the future of data centers and energy in the state. 

Crowley has said he wants to require that data center developers pay the cost of their own energy use while pushing them to construct renewable sources of energy such as utility-scale solar and wind. Tiffany, whose campaign  ads attack “data center David,” has argued that data centers, wind and solar farms are all taking too much of the state’s farmland. 

Voters across Wisconsin have expressed frustration recently with the lack of oversight or regulation of polluting industry. A group of activists in western Wisconsin recently successfully challenged the state Department of Natural Resources’ decision to grant a controversial Pierce County factory farm a permit to expand on the grounds that there weren’t enough protections for local groundwater. 

We Energies’ request to raise rates would increase monthly bills by $13.35 per month in 2027 and another $8.69 per month in 2028, adding up to about $22 more per month after two years, for a household that uses 660 kilowatt-hours per month. 

At the rally in Zeidler Union Square Park, directly in front of the We Energies headquarters, attendees complained that the PSC hearing was being held on the first day of school, when many of the working families who will be most affected by the rate increase are too busy to attend; that the utility has increased rates several times in recent years as the company’s profits have continued to go up; that, on a hot and muggy late summer day in Wisconsin, poor residents in the city would have to choose between cooling their homes and other necessities and that the state’s utility companies have continued to extend the lives of coal and natural gas power plants. 

“I didn’t come here to complain. Y’all know we do not complain. That’s not what we do. We have a reason to be angry, though,” Antonio Butts, executive director of the local non-profit Walnut Way Conservation Corps, said. “They’re asking for $480 million —  $480 million on top of hundreds of millions that they’ve asked for in previous years. We have a right to be angry. We literally have a right to be angry. But being angry has never reduced our energy bill. Not one time.” 

Most of the speakers complained that the utility has continued to reap massive profits and returns to shareholders — and paid its CEO $12 million in 2025 — while many Milwaukee families are struggling to make ends meet. 

“We have a runaway monopoly that are supposed to be stewards of a necessity, a necessity that we all need,” Rev. Steve Tipton, pastor of El Bethel Church of God in Christ on the city’s northwest side, said. “We need to be warm in the winter, and you know how Milwaukee is. Y’all know how Milwaukee is. And we need to be comfortable in the summer. You see how we are sweating right now. So imagine how homes and families and people that are working, people that are working with two and three jobs that are trying to take care of their children and still keep their household together, and still have to deal with a bill where they got to make a choice whether it’s going to be groceries, their medication, or the necessity of energy.” 

Throughout the rally, speakers explicitly tied the fight against the rate increase to the broader fight against climate change and pushing Wisconsin’s energy system to use more renewable energy. 

“Climate change is no longer some distant environmental problem, it is an issue of public health, infrastructure affordability, and ultimately human safety,” Yusuf Adama, a Beloit common council member and environmental justice advocate with Walnut Way, said. “And we continue to see another reason why we need to move from our dependence on volatile fossil fuels like methane gas when our energy systems depend on fuels whose prices can fluctuate because of markets and events far outside the control of other Wisconsinites.”

State Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) was at the rally and hearing Tuesday, arguing that government officials should listen to the demands of the activists in Milwaukee on Tuesday and Wisconsinites who are fighting against data centers across the state. With Democrats confident they’ll win control of state government in November, he said he wanted to push for protections against data center-caused increases in energy and water use, cap utility rate increases at 2%, bar utility companies from lobbying and forcing more renewable energy development. 

Larson made that argument as Tiffany’s campaign for governor argues explicitly against renewable energy and for the increasing Wisconsin’s use of fossil fuels. 

“Tom Tiffany is lying through his teeth, or maybe he’s too dumb to realize,” that he’s been deceived by fossil fuel “propaganda,” Larson told the Examiner. “The cheapest form of energy is solar.” 

Adama, of the Beloit common council and Walnut Way, told the Examiner that while Tuesday’s hearing was about the rate increase, it’s important to keep the focus on the “cohesive set of circumstances” that form the state’s energy policies and push for broader policies to fight climate change.

The Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee approved the release of nearly $10 million in PFAS settlement funds to the Department of Natural Resources Tuesday, concluding a years-long process to offer help to residents of Marinette County whose drinking water was contaminated with PFAS chemicals

In June 2026, the Marinette County Circuit Court approved a settlement in the State of Wisconsin v. Tyco Fire Products LP. The agreement marked one of the first efforts to hold polluters accountable for PFAS “forever chemical” contamination in Marinette. 

Under the settlement, Tyco agreed to provide safe drinking water to households including by installing new deep wells, maintaining associated treatment of new and existing wells and providing bottled water or treatment to households without a deep well. 

Tyco also agreed to provide more than $9.9 million to the state’s PFAS fund, which was established in the state’s 2023-25 budget and holds funding for the mitigation of PFAS contamination. The settlement did not specify how the funds should be used, but a legislative committee had to sign off before the DNR could use them. 

The DNR held two listening sessions in Marinette to get input on how to use the settlement money and used the feedback to come up with a plan, which includes using the funds for activities that provide safe drinking water and health information to impacted residents.

Settlement money in the state of Wisconsin has to be approved for use by the Joint Finance Committee under state law. Gov. Tony Evers had urged the budget committee last month to release the funds so they could be put to use as soon as possible. 

“I’m glad that these critical investments will be getting out the door to get PFAS out of our water for good and ensure every Wisconsinite has access to clean, safe drinking water,” Evers said in a statement after the committee voted. “This is a big step in the right direction, and the DNR will continue to collaborate with local leaders and communities to ensure we get these funds out the door and to the impacted communities to address their most urgent needs in a timely fashion.”

The committee unanimously approved the release of the funds to the DNR’s general program operations appropriation in 2026-27 to provide PFAS-free drinking water and health information to residents of the City of Marinette and the Town of Peshtigo affected by PFAS contamination. 

The transfer of the funds to the general operations will allow for “expeditious allocation of the settlement funds to the impacted community in accordance with preferences expressed by local residents,” according to papers prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. 

Between $6 million and $9.2 million, or about 90% of the funds, will be used to provide safe drinking water to owners of private wells contaminated by PFAS. Up to $1 million will be used for private well testing, up to $7 million will be used for deep well installation and up to $1.2 million will be used for in-home PFAS treatment installation. Some of the funds will also be used for long-term operations and maintenance, though that cost is to be determined. 

Between $20,000 and $50,000 will be used to offer blood serum testing for PFAS to residents of the city of Marinette. 

Between $500,000 and $750,000 will be used to support a community liaison consultant to help residents access settlement funds. Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillett), who voted for the release of the funds, expressed concerns about the use of funds for that purpose. 

“We’re talking about 500 people, and we’re going to be paying upwards of that amount to essentially fill out your forms,” Wimberger said. “The bulk of what you’re doing is great. You got to deal with these immediate problems with the wells which it focuses on, but there are also long-term problems up there, which is keeping biosolids out of the environment to begin with.” 

Biosolids are the byproducts of municipal wastewater treatment utilities that are sold or given away to farms to be used as fertilizer. The DNR grants permits that allow for the spreading of them, but biosolids from places with PFAS contamination in the water are contaminated and could pollute the water near the field where they’re spread. 

As Evers and lawmakers, including Wimberger, have worked on PFAS issues, Wimberger expressed concerns about farmers being held responsible for spreading PFAS through contaminated biosolids. The issue created gridlock that held up funding to address PFAS contamination for years. 

“I hope that in the future, you at least focus a little bit on maybe some treatment plants located at the landfill site, so it doesn’t get into the municipal treatment facilities and onto our farms,” Wimberger added.

Enbridge says it’s temporarily halting work on rerouting its Line 5 oil and gas pipeline following a gas leak in Iron County on Tuesday.

The post Enbridge temporarily halts work on Line 5 reroute after 1.3M gallon gas leak appeared first on WPR.

ROSLYN, Wash. — Francisco Martinez hefts a canister filled with a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline. A tongue of flame dances above the nozzle. He tips the drip torch forward — whoosh — and a stream of blazing liquid races across the forest floor.

In less than a minute, a long wall of fire is spreading across the slope as Martinez and a small team of igniters fan out along the hillside. They walk in parallel, lighting grasses and shrubs, moving forward as flames spread into a dancing orange curtain behind them. 

Dense columns of dark smoke billow uphill. Ashes swirl, and radiant heat warms the skin of the crew members on the line. A vortex of flame coils up a tree. Thousands of pine needles combust in an explosive shower like a fireworks show.

Radios crackle with updates as other crews race to put out spot fires caused by embers falling outside the prescribed burn area. Somewhere up the hill in the thick of the smoke, a dozen or more people are furiously working to make sure this blaze stays under control.

The scene is intense but not chaotic. The crews, assembled from local fire districts and conservation groups, move with practiced urgency instead of panic. They eat a quick lunch on the ground just a few dozen feet from the downslope edge of the fire. Some grab a fresh pouch of nicotine, and they all get back to work.

This team is conducting a prescribed burn on a forested ridge in central Washington, above a small town, Roslyn, that was nearly wiped out by a wildfire just a few years ago. The specter of wildfire is one that increasingly haunts hundreds of communities throughout the West, and the work here could point them toward a new model of living with fire. 

But it won’t be easy. 

FIRE belongs on this landscape.

Before white settlers arrived in the late 1800s, the forests in this part of Washington burned roughly every decade — fires sparked by lightning or set by local tribes to manage the land. These ponderosa pine forests thrive on fire, which mostly spares mature trees but opens the understory for lush regrowth that feeds many animals.

For more than a century, though, state and federal land managers kept fire away. Smokey Bear taught generations of Americans that wildfire was a scourge to be prevented. Officials throughout the country invested heavily in firefighting resources to suppress such blazes quickly.

Without fire, forests grew denser. Trees competed for water even as climate change dried the landscape further. The parched trees grew vulnerable to pests and diseases. Brush, pine needles and dead branches piled up. The forests that had been spared from fire for 100 years became primed for infernoes.

Over those same decades, more and more Americans moved into communities bordering these areas. Nothing from the recent past gave them warning that their spot on the map was supposed to burn every few years.

In recent years, wildfires have swept through communities in the West, devastating small towns and urban areas alike. The Camp Fire in 2018 destroyed much of Paradise, California, and killed 85 people. Wildfires in Los Angeles destroyed thousands of homes in January 2025 and killed at least 31. And earlier this summer, hundreds of homes went up in flames when fires ripped through neighborhoods of Spokane, Washington.

Roslyn’s wake-up call came in 2017. The Jolly Mountain Fire, sparked by lightning strikes in the nearby Wenatchee National Forest, advanced toward the town on Labor Day weekend. The fire’s incident commander gave local leaders a grim assessment.

“(He said), ‘I hate to tell you, but if fire gets into these woods, we’re going to have to write off large portions of your town as indefensible,’” recalls Chris Martin, emergency management coordinator with the Roslyn Fire Department. “That was the change-of-underwear moment for Roslyn.” 

Thankfully, the fire changed course, but Roslyn now knew it was sitting on a tinderbox. The idyllic mountain community of 950 with a rich coal mining history is now a thriving tourist town that plays host to campers, mountain bikers, artists and foodies. It also ranks in the 99th percentile for wildfire risk nationwide.

Just a few months after Roslyn’s near-miss, Martin offered to host a prescribed burn on forestland he owns above the town. The burn doubled as a training exercise for state, local and federal agencies — many of which were just beginning to rethink fire’s role on the landscape. Residents, still shaken by the recent wildfire, were alarmed to see smoke rising nearby. But Martin and others built an outreach program to convince their neighbors that it was time to fight fire with fire.

Roslyn has been burning ever since.

Martin keeps a map showing an ever-growing patchwork of black and yellow blobs surrounding the town. The black spots mark the 500-plus acres that local leaders have burned since 2017. The yellow represents areas where they’ve brought in logging equipment to thin trees and brush. Together, they form a rough semicircle around Roslyn that’s meant to act as a shield. If a wildfire hits this area, it will quickly be deprived of fuel — giving firefighters a chance to make a stand.

PLENTY of other towns face a predicament like Roslyn’s. 

More than 1,800 communities in the Western United States are threatened by wildfire, federal research warns. Nationwide, nearly 72 million homes sit in areas with some wildfire risk, the climate research company First Street has found. As climate change dries the landscape in the coming decades, the risk will only expand.

“A lot of people have the perception that this is a problem with large federal and state land ownership and that private citizens don’t have a role to play,” said Greg Dillon, director of the U.S. Forest Service’s Fire Modeling Institute. “But in many places, there’s a stretch of private lands between (public forests) and homes that can catch on fire. It’s a really important and less understood piece of the fire risk picture.”

Mike Norris, an assistant division manager in the prescribed fire program with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, said the state averages about 20,000 acres of prescribed burns across all lands each year. But Washington’s forests need three to five times that amount to stay healthy. 

Many states face a similar fire deficit. And private lands are a big part of what’s missing. 

But burning on private lands is hard. One section of forest may include dozens of landowners, many of whom are skeptical of fire. And even with community buy-in, burns require an incredible collaboration of resources. 

“Historically, it would have been easier to burn those areas when there weren’t property lines and structures in the way,” said Kyle Lapham, who runs Washington’s Certified Prescribed Burn Manager program. “These places should be burning multiple times in our lifetime, and we’re not even scratching the surface with that first burn on tens of thousands of acres.”

The burn in Roslyn brought together 30 people from multiple fire districts and Upper Kittitas County Fuels, an interagency network that works on prescribed burns and forest thinning projects. They worked alongside staff from The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit that manages the parcel that was burned and is perhaps the foremost practitioner of prescribed fire on private lands. 

To burn just 55 acres, half a dozen organizations had to coordinate for two full days of burning and an extended monitoring period after the fire. Long before, crews dug boundary lines to hold the fire, filled portable tanks with water, laid out hoses and positioned fire engines and water tenders. Burn leaders conducted extensive briefings on safety, contingency plans and objectives. 

 After all that, had atmospheric conditions changed slightly, the whole thing could have been canceled. The painstaking efforts can fizzle in an instant because of strict clean air rules designed to protect communities from smoke. Fire advocates say their “burn windows” can be severely limited by well-intentioned regulations.   

While catastrophic fires are far worse for smoke, prescribed burners do need to account for its very real effects on communities. They conduct extensive outreach before each burn and prepare for scenarios such as an asthmatic neighbor who needs hotel accommodations or visibility concerns on a nearby highway.  

Pulling off a burn, given all those hurdles, is no easy feat. 

BUT ROSLYN shows that it can be worth the effort. 

On a bright June morning, Martin led a tour of a nearby forested hillside that was burned in 2021. Along the trails, a lush carpet of green grass and wildflowers grew up beneath the trees, sporting charred bark but still growing strong. A deer grazed peacefully in the distance. 

Norris, the prescribed fire official with the state DNR, helped lead the prescribed burn that drastically reduced the dead material, brush and “ladder fuels” that can spread flames into tree canopies.

“It’s safe to say Roslyn’s in a much better place,” Norris said. “They’ve really pushed the needle in the right direction for their community.” 

The burns have even become a tourist attraction. Roslyn recently designated a Forest Resilience Trail that has made the scorched forest a feature of the town’s outdoor recreation appeal.

“Now that the burns have been done, people can see the abundant wildlife, they see more flow in the streams because there’s fewer shrubs soaking water out of the landscape,” Martin said. 

State leaders hope Roslyn can be a model to help other communities learn to live with fire. They’re seeing growing interest from towns that have faced close calls of their own. The work will be arduous, a few dozen acres at a time. Burn bosses will have to deal with skeptical neighbors, wary regulators and real-world risks. Volunteers will need to put in immense hours and deal with frequent setbacks.

Perhaps the only thing more daunting is the cost of doing nothing.

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect that The Nature Conservancy manages, but does not own, the parcel burned in Roslyn. Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

Story and photos by Alex Brown

ROSLYN, Wash. — In less than an hour, this hillside will be ablaze — sparks flying, smoke swirling, the forest floor turning into a black carpet.

That’s all part of the plan. 

Here in the small town of Roslyn, Washington, local leaders have embraced prescribed burns as a tool to protect their community from wildfires. They’re part of a growing effort across the West to empower residents to lead burns on private lands. 

A century of fire suppression policy has left many forests dense with trees, shrubs, fallen limbs and needles — kindling that can fuel out-of-control megafires. Low-intensity burns conducted under the right conditions can clear out those fuels, sparing mature trees and creating habitat for wildlife.

After years of reporting on wildfires, along with several personal brushes with fire as an outdoor enthusiast in the West, Stateline reporter Alex Brown joined Washington state’s burn manager boot camp in 2024 as a way to learn more about fire’s role on the landscape. The course covered everything from the moisture levels in different forest plants to federal clean air regulations related to smoke dispersal.

After passing the test at the end of the training class, Brown joined crews assembled to burn a 55-acre parcel laid out by local leaders near Roslyn. It brought together 30 people from multiple fire districts, covering half a dozen organizations. 

After the team’s weather reporter gave the all-clear, a crew of igniters set a “backing fire,” a preliminary burn that crept slowly against the wind, establishing a black strip between the forest and a dirt road. 

By burning the edge of the parcel in advance, the crews created a wider containment line, eliminating the fuels that might allow the fire to spread across the road. Once the “black line” was established, teams fanned out on the hillside to begin the primary burn. 

Team leaders stayed in contact over the radio, and some crews positioned uphill put out spot fires caused by falling embers in another area of the forest. By the end of the afternoon, the fire had spread across the parcel, burning shrubs and plants but leaving most of the mature trees unscathed. 

A few dozen acres at a time, Roslyn leaders are aiming to create a semicircle around the town that will give them a safe place to make a stand if another wildfire approaches. 

Back in town, life went on as usual as a column of smoke floated over the nearby hillside. 

Local leaders say the forest is thriving in the areas where they’ve burned. Mature trees, scarred black but still growing, tower over a forest floor that is open and green once again. 

Roslyn has even turned the burned area into a tourist attraction, recently opening a Forest Resilience Trail that showcases the landscape restored by fire. 

After witnessing the burn in Roslyn, Brown joined a TREX, or training exchange burn, that brought together fire crews from around the world. Held in Southwest Washington, the burn allowed participants to build contacts in the fire community and try new roles for the first time. 

The event was hosted by the Mt. Adams Prescribed Burn Association. State leaders say such grassroots organizations are taking the lead on bringing fire to private lands — bringing together local organizations to build resources, manpower and public buy-in.

The burn cleared underbrush and vegetation from the forest floor. Experts say regular, low-intensity fires such as this reduce “ladder fuels” that can spread flames into tree canopies and create out-of-control blazes. 

Burn leaders face strict air quality regulations designed to protect communities from smoke. 

Among other challenges, burn leaders say prescribed fires not only protect communities, but also renew habitats where fire has long had a regular presence. Burning, they say, is an act of creation rather than destruction.  

Editor’s note: This is one of three stories examining efforts to use prescribed burns to fight fire with fire. Read the other parts here and here. Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

AUBURN, Wash. — In the back row of a small community college classroom, I sip my coffee and consider a cumulus cloud, a puffy white pillar over an expanse of blue. I’m not staring out the window, but at a presentation on a screen at the front of the room. 

Cumulus clouds are a telltale sign of an unstable atmosphere, Matthew Dehr, wildland fire meteorologist with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, tells our class. Fifteen students, clad in hoodies and flannel, nod along. They know what an unstable atmosphere means: Smoke will disperse instead of settling over the ground. In other words, ideal conditions for setting stuff on fire.

My classmates and I make up the fifth group to take Washington’s Certified Prescribed Burn Manager course. It’s put on by the state DNR to encourage more residents to light carefully planned fires in overly dense forests to help ward off megablazes. 

After decades of warnings from Smokey Bear to prevent forests from burning, the state’s approach would now be better illustrated by a soot-smeared Uncle Sam urging citizens to pick up a drip torch. 

I’m the outlier in this batch of recruits. My classmates are all veterans in the world of fire and forest management, familiar with the tools and terminology. They come from conservation districts, land trusts, environmental nonprofits, tribes and forestry companies. The class isn’t designed to train journalists, but to certify pros who are poised to put fire on the ground.

Over the next three days, we’ll attend the same classes and field outings and take the same certification test. They’ll go back to their communities empowered to lead prescribed burns. I will also deploy to the fire line, but wielding a notebook and camera as my tools. 

Like many Westerners, I’ve spent summers monitoring smoke forecasts and been stuck inside for weeks at a time. I’ve arrived at trailheads to find flames crackling in the trees overhead. I’ve texted friends who live in mountain towns to see if they’ve gotten the order to evacuate.

Tattooed on my left forearm is a topographical map of a remote section of Olympic National Park, a lake-filled basin high in the mountains that’s my all-time favorite hike. Last summer, a large wildfire burned its way along the ridge above the basin, the border of the tattoo just below my elbow. Every few hours, I refreshed the page mapping the spread of the fire, hoping the wind would shift. I checked the local weather forecast, hoping for rain. 

As I monitored the spread of that wildfire, I looked out the window to see smoke pouring off the hillside just a mile away from my home, in the Cascade foothills on the fringes of the Seattle suburbs. This fire, sparked in a city-owned forest, was quickly contained. But the lingering smoke hung in the air all day, a reminder of how quickly one spark can turn into a threat. 

I cover lots of issues as an environmental reporter. Fire is the one topic that’s front of mind regardless of whether I’m writing a story about it on deadline. My friends are constantly thinking about fire too, and it’s not because they’re spending their day interviewing state forestry officials. 

FOR MOST OF US, fire feels like an ominous foe, one we have to trust others to fight. But crews on the front lines have a different relationship with fire. They understand that it’s a natural part of healthy ecosystems, one that has been absent from many Western forests for far too long. 

Fire creates vibrant landscapes and critical habitat. When deployed properly, prescribed fires can protect forests — and towns — from truly destructive blazes. 

“We need to be burning ourselves out of the problem, not waiting for fire to show up when we don’t want it,” said my prescribed burn instructor, Kyle Lapham, who has managed the Washington certification program since it launched in 2022.

When I got the chance to join Lapham’s class, it seemed like an opportunity to feel less powerless against fire. Sure, it wouldn’t turn me into a frontline hero battling blazes. But it would help me understand the growing movement to turn fire into an ally. 

Just going through this boot camp, puzzling over the difficult questions burn leaders must face, felt like a way to engage with the problem, even if I did more typing than burning. 

Wildfire veterans want many more people to get this kind of training, to see fire as a backyard issue and not one that governments alone can solve. 

Particularly in the West, a century of wildfire suppression has left many forests overly dense. Places that used to burn regularly now have more trees per acre than ever before, and a forest floor stacked with dead limbs, needles and brush — kindling for the catastrophic megafires that can devastate millions of acres. 

Increasingly, federal and state managers are trying to restore fire’s role. Burning in the spring and fall, they’ve spread low-intensity fires in state forests and national parks to reduce fuels and “treat” unhealthy forests. That work can lower the risk of high-intensity wildfires by 60%, research has shown. 

But lots of the forests that need fire are not managed by the U.S. Forest Service or a state agency. And burning on private lands is incredibly difficult. Many states now want to empower landowners and community groups to burn on their own. They’re training burn leaders and offering grants, equipment and technical support. 

“If you don’t treat any private lands, you’re missing the boat,” Lapham said. 

DURING A FIELD OUTING at a nearby state forest, our class stands in the rain among dripping ferns and plans a hypothetical burn, soggy conditions notwithstanding. We set out sampling grids and practice calculating different fuel types in the forest vegetation, based on the time it takes their moisture levels to change. We note nearby roads, dwellings and businesses, considering the atmospheric conditions that would minimize smoke impacts on the community. We discuss the logistics of a multiday collaborative effort from a host of organizations and local fire districts. 

Over three rigorous days, Lapham’s class covers everything from weather variables to smoke permits to community relations. We learned how to navigate a maze of regulations, coordinate with a host of agencies and plan for scenarios such as smoke over a busy roadway or complaints from a neighbor with asthma. 

While the course is not required to conduct a burn, those who earn certification gain legal protections that can limit their liability if something goes wrong. Burning is inherently risky, but state officials say carefully planned fires set by qualified practitioners carry far less risk than leaving forests in their current state.

My classmate Tony Craven, wildfire preparedness project manager with the Kittitas County Conservation District, grew up playing in the forests above the small Washington town of Roslyn. 

“Me and my friends used to play tag and hide and seek up there all the time,” he said. “You wouldn’t be able to do that today because you wouldn’t be able to find the other guys. We have more trees than we’ve ever had, and the shrub layer is thicker than it’s ever been. We have 100 years of fire debt built up.”

Craven is overseeing a $10 million federal grant to protect communities near Roslyn, which nearly went up in flames a few years ago when a wildfire came dangerously close to the town. Prescribed burns will be a big part of that solution.

The state wants, perhaps needs, more people like Craven to pick up drip torches. On the dry, fire-prone landscapes east of the Cascade Range, more than 40% of Washington’s forestlands are owned by private citizens, timber companies, tribes and local governments. 

It’s a similar story throughout much of the West. In California, for instance, more than half of the state’s high-risk forestland is owned by families or private entities. 

About 20 states now run courses like the one I took to certify burn managers and provide them with some level of legal protection. Advocates say Western states are following the lead of Southeastern states such as Florida, where burning has long been a cultural norm. 

The courses also serve as a critical networking forum. Very few organizations have the resources to burn without outside help, so making connections is as important as the training itself. 

Even in states where wildfire is not a top concern, officials say there’s growing interest in restoring fire’s ecological role, in part because of climate change. Pennsylvania, for instance, held its first certified burn manager course in 2023, with 27 participants. After years of burning only on public lands, the state hopes to jump-start a culture shift that promotes burning on privately owned land, which makes up 83% of the state.

AS MORE states certify residents to lead prescribed burns, they’re still finding many obstacles — including states’ own regulations.

During the course, we spent extensive time talking about clean air rules and the maze of regulations and permits burners need to navigate. Fire practitioners say these rules limit their “burn windows” to highly specific conditions. While the restrictions are designed to protect communities from smoke, those same towns often spend the summer under far worse smoke from out-of-control wildfires. 

The member of Congress who represents my district, Democratic U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier, has sponsored federal legislation that would provide additional funding and loosen clean air rules to give burners more flexibility. The measure has earned bipartisan support, but has yet to advance this session.

Another challenge is simply the extensive resources needed to pull off a burn. Even small burns can require dozens of personnel, tankers, engines, containment lines, hose networks and portable water tanks.

Many burns have to pull in help from several counties over, or even neighboring states. Fire veterans say nearly every prescribed fire requires multiple agencies and groups working together for days at a time. 

And sections of forest might include dozens of landowners, many of whom are skeptical of lighting fires. It takes locally led efforts to build trust. 

One approach that’s quickly taking hold is known as a prescribed burn association, which basically serves as a local coordinating entity for neighbors and community groups. Prescribed fire advocates say such community-led programs represent the best path forward to restoring fire on private lands. 

In Southwest Washington, the Mt. Adams Prescribed Burn Association, composed of several local groups and launched in 2022, has focused on the landscapes surrounding the iconic volcano. On a fall morning a few months after my class, the association hosted a burn as part of a multiweek training exchange, or TREX, that brought in fire practitioners from across the world. 

Camera in hand, I walked the edge of the pine-oak woodland, a few steps ahead of the igniters and their drip torches. I snapped away as they tipped blazing fuel onto the forest floor and walls of fire ribboned through the brush.

For all my training, the images I was seeing still felt apocalyptic — raging flames, billowing black smoke, green understory turned to ash. But the crews moved calmly, just another day on the job. The mature trees, charred black on their lower trunks, withstood the fire just fine.  

As the last flames hit the perimeter and flickered out, Adam Lieberg helped me appraise the situation. Lieberg, who helps manage this parcel for the nonprofit Columbia Land Trust, said this landscape is considered a “trailing edge” forest that would struggle to regenerate if a high-intensity wildfire wiped out its trees. This burn has reduced that risk considerably. 

After the burn, I camped out nearby, still reeking of smoke and coughing occasionally. Finally, I understood a little something of what it looks like to deploy fire as an ally, to torch a forest in the name of saving it.

THIS STORY was supposed to end on a hopeful note, a reflection on the progress that burn leaders are slowly making to restore fire’s role on the landscape. But in the months following my prescribed fire boot camp, President Donald Trump imposed drastic cuts on staffing and grants for the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies. 

Community Wildfire Defense Grants, a key source of funding for many locally based prescribed burns, were frozen, although some have since been restored. Burn leaders say they’re uncertain whether the federal funding that has supported them will be available, or if the federal agencies they’ve long partnered with will have enough staff to provide support. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Washington state, facing a looming budget crisis, slashed the state fund that supports wildfire preparedness work. The state’s grant program to support community prescribed fire efforts, which handed out $1.4 million in the previous two-year budget cycle, received only $170,000 in 2025. 

Lapham, who leads the burn manager training class, said conservation districts and other local partners were facing staffing cuts due to the loss of state and federal funding. 

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “We already know we’re behind the curve on treating what needs to be treated. Any time you put a big dip in that momentum, you’re just that much further behind.”

But as the funding dried up, leaders with the Washington Department of Natural Resources noticed a surprising development. More and more communities were setting up prescribed burn associations, leaning on local solidarity even as state and federal grants disappeared. From Spokane County on the eastern edge of the state to Bainbridge Island in the shadow of Seattle, local leaders are working to form new cooperatives to bring fire to their communities. 

“Connection begets connection begets connection, and that’s how we’re seeing this growth here,” said Will Rubin, forest resilience communications manager with the state DNR. “This was a fledgling idea here not that long ago, and now it’s spreading more quickly than it ever has.”

Meanwhile, state Public Lands Commissioner Dave Upthegrove successfully lobbied lawmakers this year to restore funding for wildfire prevention, securing $60 million for an account that includes the DNR’s prescribed burn program. While there’s still uncertainty at the federal level, land managers say they’re now on a much stronger footing. 

The work of states could become ever more important as progress stalls at the federal level. During Trump’s first year in office, a recent analysis from the Center for Western Priorities found, wildfire prevention work — such as prescribed burns and thinning of vegetation — fell by 35% on federally managed forests and grasslands. 

Trump administration advances plan to rescind protections for nearly 45 million wild acres

Meanwhile, this summer devastating wildfires are torching millions of acres, fueled by a winter drought that left forests parched and mountains bare of snow. 

And many advocates are concerned by the Forest Service’s rollback of the Roadless Rule earlier this month, which protected 45 million acres from road construction and development. Studies have shown that wildfires are far more likely to ignite near roads. 

I’ve spent the past two years learning about atmospheric conditions and smoke regulations, interviewing fire veterans and walking the fire line beside ignition teams. For all I’ve learned, for all the work to reorient my feelings around fire, it feels like the winds are still swirling with uncertainty. 

I did pass the test at the end of the burn manager course. But now it seems a larger test is facing all of us: Will we welcome fire back onto the landscape and invest in burning, not just suppression? Or will we give up on our fragile progress and wait for the next wildfire to challenge our defenses? 

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

Enbridge says it’s working around the clock to safely remove remaining vapors from a stretch of its Line 5 pipeline following a gas leak in Iron County.

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Scientists say the strengthening El Niño is likely to be the largest ever recorded, increasing the chances of a warmer fall and winter in Wisconsin.

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is asking Enbridge to halt work on its Line 5 reroute in response to a gas leak that began Tuesday.

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A near total lunar eclipse will cast an orange glow showing off the moon’s craters and details. At its peak --- which is expected at 11:12 p.m. Thursday --- 96 percent of the moon will be covered by the Earth’s shadow. The event known as the blood moon will be visible throughout Wisconsin, as long as the skies stay clear.

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