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In a year of extreme weather fluctuations, from a record 26 inches of rain in the first six months in northeast Wisconsin to drought conditions and poor air quality from distant wildfires, climate change is happening before our very eyes, experts say. 

“Climate change is going to affect everybody. It is important to bring it back to the forefront,” said Bart De Stasio, professor emeritus of biology at Lawrence University in Appleton. “It’s fallen off the radar unfortunately because of the political climate we’re in right now.” 

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Climate change costs 

Leading up to the November election, affordability has garnered more political attention than the environment, but some Wisconsin residents and scientists say candidates should be diving into climate change in a larger way.

Insurance premiums and taxes often rise after property owners face stormwater damage, said Steve Vavrus, director, Wisconsin State Climatology Office, and co-director, Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI). 

“It’s in everybody’s interest, regardless of how people vote, to make sure our environment is in good shape,” Vavrus said. Seasons are becoming warmer, causing more heat stress and extreme weather, such as flooding. Wisconsin’s stormwater management infrastructure often is a century old, Vavrus said, and it can’t keep up with torrential downpours.

Warmer temperatures stem from fossil fuel and methane emissions, De Stasio said. 

“The only way we’re going to be able to really change our path here is by continuing to look for other sources of energy” and by mitigating the impacts of manmade pollution, he said. “We’re going to have to adapt. Otherwise, we’re not going to survive this.” 

Town of Peshtigo homeowner Jeff Budish couldn’t agree more. “The weather is talking to us. Mother Nature is telling us, ‘Hey, wake up,’” said Budish, a clean water advocate and avid angler. 

While Budish blames gas-powered vehicles for much of the pollution causing the greenhouse gas effect, rivers so contaminated the fish aren’t considered safe for human consumption also frustrate him. He lives near the Peshtigo River, just outside of a designated area local residents call “the plume.” The plume is an area where “forever chemicals” stemming from Johnson Controls Inc.’s Tyco fire technology center in Marinette contaminated the groundwater some residents used for drinking water. 

Tyco has taken responsibility for the contamination in this limited area, offering to provide new deep wells for some residents, but a recently settled lawsuit could limit its contributions in the future. In the meantime, many residents outside Marinette worry PFAS chemicals found in biosolids are also in runoff headed for waterways. 

Warmer rivers 

Charles Frisk, a retired Green Bay science teacher, has observed the worsening effects of climate change for several decades. Warmer rivers and lakes mean walleye and trout could become scarce, while bass become more prominent. It also could bring fewer days of cross-country skiing and ice fishing for winter tourism and poorer air quality in the summer from wildfire smoke, he said. 

“The rate at which the climate is warming up is just occurring so much more rapidly than what was ever thought,” he said. 

In many parts of the country, extreme weather events involve lightning strikes igniting wildfires that burn for days or weeks. Prescribed burns, used for forest and land management, also contribute to the smog that crosses state and national borders. 

Envisioning what his granddaughters, ages 3 and 11, are likely to experience in their lifetimes because of climate change worries Frisk. “By the time they are my age, there are going to be major highly populated areas where it’s unlivable” because of the heat, he said. 

Wildfire smog 

Summer wildfires in Canada and Minnesota sent dangerous particulate material to Wisconsin, impacting air quality, De Stasio said. The particulate matter of less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter can get into people’s lungs and cause breathing problems, he said. When the air quality index hits 200, it becomes unhealthy to be outside, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wildfires and prescribed burns were linked to 20,000 premature deaths and $200 billion in damages, with a disproportionate number of older adults, Native Americans and African Americans affected, according to a study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. 

“The frequency and intensity of these fires has increased,” said Nicholas Muller, professor of economics, engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, who co-authored a 2025 study on the cost of smoke from wildfires and prescribed burns in 2017. 

In Green Bay, city officials closed Bay Beach Amusement Park for two days in July due to wildfire smoke. 

While some people compared the smog to a campfire’s smoke, Muller said wildfire haze is far more dangerous. 

“Around a bonfire, you may get a blast of smoke in the face, but you’re not exposed to the sustained smoke,” Muller said. “When I was walking around (in July), I was aware I was inhaling something. The particles were so abundant, you’re inhaling a high concentration of them.” 

Being prepared is one way to lessen the impact of climate change, whether it be wearing a face mask, helping to prevent flooding or contaminated waterways, or cutting back on driving a gas-powered vehicle, experts said. 

Flood control 

Officials in the village of Allouez plan to construct the municipality’s eighth retention pond in Riverside Park in 2027. The ponds are designed to protect waterways from polluted runoff when stormwater surges. The newest pond is expected to cost taxpayers about $800,000, said Sean Gehin, public works director for the village.

Still, some residents confronted damp or flooded basements in April and July when streets flooded, Gehin said. 

The problem isn’t limited to the Green Bay area, said Jean Marsch, a village of Allouez trustee and 50-year resident. “It’s something all municipalities are dealing with.” 

“You can tell flooding is happening all over. You see it and hear about it and know people who have experienced this kind of flooding,” Marsch said. 

The city of Green Bay’s Fire Station No. 3 sustained over $50,000 in damage from June 24 flooding that affected the boiler, water heaters and electrical service in the basement.

Other areas of the city also were affected by the deluge, said Valerie Joosten, director of public works. A dollar amount for the damage wasn’t available. 

Shared responsibility 

While some are skeptical climate change will be addressed on the federal level, Wisconsin has had bipartisan support for flood laws, Marsch said, pointing to Wisconsin Act 265 signed into law in 2024. It created a pre-disaster flood resilience grant program. 

Marsch would like to see more government funding to help communities deal with flooding and runoff. Allouez officials also encourage residents to do their part by using rain barrels for their gardens, keeping leaves and grass clippings out of the street and avoiding fertilizers with phosphorus. 

“Everybody has a role to play in maintaining the safety and health of our community,” Marsch said. “We all have a role to play in doing what we can.” 

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

Voters, scientists say candidates should dig into environmental issues is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Superior Rivers Watershed Association recruits citizen scientists to help biologists identify macroinvertebrates in the tributaries to the lake. 

The post Volunteers help scoop out bugs to assess quality of Lake Superior watershed appeared first on WPR.

The Trump administration’s top wildlife official issued a directive last week that expands a recent rollback of endangered species protections much further than the feds had told the public.

Individuals and industries may kill endangered animals in the course of logging projects, developments and other activities, it said — so long as the activity’s purpose isn’t killing species.

The memo issued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik is the most drastic move yet in the Trump administration’s campaign to limit the scope of the Endangered Species Act. 

Wildlife advocates and experts said the nation’s bedrock wildlife conservation law would offer few safeguards under the new federal guidelines. 

“Unless you’re wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m here to draw the blood of endangered species,’ you’re basically off the hook,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director with the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit. “Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, go crazy, we’re not gonna prosecute you.”

Chris Servheen, who served as grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for 35 years, said the agency’s current approach to the endangered species law is “ridiculously extreme.”

“It’s essentially going to be a meaningless law, and it will have no protection whatsoever for species,” he said. “It’s like taking the four wheels off your car and saying it’s still your car.”

Earlier this year, the Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies finalized a rule excluding the destruction of habitat from the definition of “harm” covered by the law. As long as chopping trees or draining a wetland didn’t directly kill animals, the feds said, those actions were legal even if they led to a species’ demise. 

Now, Nesvik is instructing wildlife officials that even the direct killing of endangered animals does not constitute an illegal “take” as long the action was not “intentionally directed at a particular animal or animals.” Its instructions to staff on how to implement the new rule take effect immediately. 

“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” he wrote. “Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them.”

The memo could unravel a longstanding framework in which developers and other industries undergo an environmental analysis for their projects’ impacts to endangered species, and obtain permits accounting for that harm. Wildlife advocates warned that industries using the agency’s new directive to forgo permits may still face citizen lawsuits, and a new administration could reinstate the previous interpretation of the law.

The Fish and Wildlife Service forwarded a Stateline request for comment to the Department of the Interior, which did not grant an interview request.

The memo, sent last Monday to agency staff across the country, quickly raised alarms after it was leaked to the public. 

“This is an incredibly sneaky and disingenuous way of going about things,” said Ben Levitan, senior attorney with the biodiversity defense program at Earthjustice, a legal conservation nonprofit. “They led everyone to believe they were doing one thing with the rescission of the definition of harm, and now they’ve issued a memo saying, ‘What we actually meant was this.’”

A coalition of attorneys general, tribes and environmental groups have filed lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act. Advocates said the Nesvik memo will open up a new battle ground in the ongoing legal fight, but it’s too early to say if that will come in the form of separate lawsuits. 

Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, a conservation nonprofit, noted that the “harm” rule and Nesvik’s memo draw heavily from the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a landmark 1995 case. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that habitat destruction constitutes harm to wildlife under the Endangered Species Act. But Scalia disagreed, saying that the “take” of wildlife describes actions “done directly and intentionally (not indirectly and by accident) to particular animals (not populations of animals).”

“(Nesvik’s) decision in every aspect of it entirely relies on Scalia’s dissent,” she said. “It’s reducing the scope of (endangered species protections) to an absurdly narrow interpretation that is inconsistent with what Congress intended.”   

While some industry groups supported the “harm” rule in public comments, few of the organizations or lawmakers who backed that change have made public statements on Nesvik’s memo about how it will be applied. But some conservatives praised the decision.

“It will shield innocent people from litigation by the country’s largest law firm, the Department of Justice,” William Perry Pendley, who served as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during Trump’s first term, told Cowboy State Daily.

Wildlife advocates said the memo could allow developers or logging companies to knowingly chop down a forest filled with endangered owls or bats, so long as the purpose of their action was timber harvest. 

“(The memo) says you can knowingly kill an endangered species as long as you’re not killing it for the sake of killing it,” said Kate Groetzinger, communications director with the Center for Western Priorities, a conservation group. “This basically is a blank check to companies, landowners, developers, loggers — anyone operating in endangered species habitat — to both destroy that habitat and kill the animals and literally face no consequences.”   

Servheen, the former grizzly bear recovery coordinator, said the memo will allow hunters to gun down endangered species, as long as they later claim they mistook a grizzly bear for a black bear or a similar failure of species identification. 

“This tells law enforcement that they have no ability to prosecute somebody who kills a grizzly bear,” he said. “(Hunters) are basically relieved of any responsibility of what they’re shooting, you can do whatever you want and say ‘I didn’t mean to.’ It makes the outdoors a pretty dangerous place now.”

The memo could also limit environmental reviews of potentially harmful projects, some advocates warned. For instance, a new road through Florida panther territory may no longer need an environmental analysis if increased vehicle collisions with panthers are no longer considered “take” by federal wildlife officials, Davenport said. 

During the rulemaking process for the “harm” definition, federal officials argued that the change would empower states to protect wildlife under their own laws. But experts say state wildlife agencies lack the authority, resources and expertise to replace federal oversight. 

Wildlife officials in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, New Jersey, Vermont and Wyoming submitted public comments expressing concern with the proposal, as did the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, a nonprofit that represents state wildlife managers. 

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

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says industry-funded research and promotion programs cannot fund initiatives focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving environmental sustainability.

The post USDA restricts spending on dairy marketing after lawsuit from Wisconsin producers appeared first on WPR.

At this time of year, millions of monarch butterflies are beginning their 3,000 mile migration to Mexico. And some of them got a unique start — growing up within the walls of a Wisconsin prison.

The post Inmates at Redgranite prison prepare monarch butterflies for their long journey south appeared first on WPR.

Tribal nations and environmental groups are urging state officials to take stronger action against Enbridge.

The post Tribes, environmentalists call for state action in response to Enbridge spill in Iron County appeared first on WPR.

Some of Wisconsin's largest energy providers told WPR in statements they’re still reviewing the rules change.

The post Loosened EPA power plant regulations could negatively impact Wisconsin public health appeared first on WPR.

The Line 5 oil and natural gas pipeline across northern Wisconsin went back online Monday, three weeks after a broken valve caused 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids to spill into the nearby Iron County town of Saxon, the pipeline’s operator Enbridge said in a news release. 

The spill occurred Aug. 25 when a truck rolled forward and broke the valve as crews worked on the controversial reroute of Line 5’s path across the state from Canada. Enbridge immediately began working to bypass the broken valve and get the pipeline back up and running despite warnings from the state Department of Natural Resources that it was doing that construction without the proper permitting. 

The DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to Enbridge last week ordering it to halt its work. Despite that warning, Enbridge completed the work and said in its news release that “work continues at the site focused on safe access, environmental testing and remediation.” The company said it has worked closely with federal and local agencies to protect health and safety and that “we continue to work” with the DNR on the “relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.” 

“Ongoing environmental monitoring at the site continues,” Enbridge stated. “Wildlife has not been impacted. Testing of surface water and from a nearby residential well continues to show no impacts. Water monitoring wells continue to show no contamination. Soil and water monitoring are in place, as are plans to test, remove and properly dispose of the soil in the trench.”

Since the spill, the company has argued it needs to get the pipeline back up and running as soon as possible because the fossil fuels it transports are too important. 

“Line 5 is critical infrastructure, securely supplying 10 refineries and propane production facilities that deliver energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions,” the company news release states. 

Meanwhile, environmental activists, members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and elected officials have continued to argue that the spill is confirmation that the pipeline has always been a risk to Wisconsin’s environment and should be permanently shut down.

The Line 5 pipeline returned to service through the use of a temporary bypass around the site of a major gas leak last month in Iron County, Enbridge announced Monday.

The post Line 5 pipeline returns to service with bypass around gas leak site in Iron County appeared first on WPR.

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Editor’s note: This story has been corrected to reflect uncertainty about when Consumers Energy will close the J.H. Campbell plant. 

Wisconsin ratepayers may no longer be on the hook to keep a Michigan coal plant running past its retirement date. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday overturned a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) order keeping the 60-year-old J.H. Campbell power plant online. The plant’s operator, Consumers Energy, approached the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2025 for permission to bill ratepayers across the Midwest for the plant’s operating costs.

The Energy Department intervened to block the western Michigan plant’s scheduled retirement last spring, arguing the closure could exacerbate an “emergency” electricity shortfall in the region. Its operator, Consumers Energy, has since spent at least $295 million to operate the plant as the department repeatedly extended its life.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers urged Energy Secretary Chris Wright in July to allow the plant to close, citing a projection that Wisconsinites alone could spend $117 million on the facility over “the next few years.” 

Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board joined a coalition of ratepayer advocacy groups in a December amicus brief supporting Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lawsuit challenging the extension orders.

The court ruled unanimously for Michigan Friday, questioning the federal agency’s authority to invoke emergency powers to keep the plant open. 

“The Department’s position would empower it to pick its preferred power sources in Michigan — or, presumably, any other state — and order them to operate without regard to the multiple procedural and substantive constraints built into state reliability planning processes,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote. 

Nessel applauded the ruling in a Friday press release. 

“By forcing its continued operation, DOE tried a never-before-used tactic to illegally prop up the aging J.H. Campbell coal plant that nobody asked to keep, sticking ratepayers with a bill for a facility that should have been retired more than a year ago,” Nessel said. “I am relieved that the Court saw through this facade.”

Consumers Energy told reporters on Friday it is reviewing the ruling but does not plan to immediately close the plant.

The Energy Department has not made similar efforts to block the retirement of Wisconsin coal plants, though the agency plans to spend $425 million to shore up 13 coal plants in 10 states, at least $19 million of which may be used to extend operations at Alliant Energy’s coal-powered units at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin ratepayers still owe more than $1 billion in costs tied to retired coal plants. The Citizens Utility Board estimates that We Energies would collect more than $100 million in returns from those retired assets over the next two years under a rate proposal pending before Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission.

Court ruling could spare Wisconsin ratepayers costs of keeping Michigan coal plant open is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Trump administration is proposing a repeal of the Roadless Rule, which protects portions of National Forests from commercial logging and road building. It applies to 69,000 acres of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin.

The post As plan to repeal Roadless Rule advances, stakeholders skeptical Wisconsin will benefit appeared first on WPR.

For more than a year, the U.S. Department of Energy has repeatedly extended the lifespan of a coal plant in West Olive, Michigan, arguing the power generated at the facility was needed to help address a national energy emergency.

However, a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in a ruling issued Friday, said it was unpersuaded by the department’s justifications for keeping the J.H. Campbell Coal Plant online, determining that the department had exceeded the emergency authority granted by the Federal Power Act.

“There is no dispute that for almost a century states have exercised authority, preserved by the Federal Power Act, to regulate in-state power plants for the economic and environmental benefit of their citizens,” Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for the panel. “It is the states — informed by federal, regional, and load-serving entities’ assessments of available supply and reliability needs — that bear the responsibility to plan for and avert reliability risks on an ongoing basis. To that end, states decide which generation resources must be built, expanded, reduced, or shut down.”

The panel ultimately vacated the order.

The Campbell plant’s owner, Consumers Energy, announced a plan to retire the facility in 2021. The Michigan Public Service Commission, which oversees energy companies within the state, and the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the energy grid operator for the central United States, each signed off on the plant’s retirement, with MISO determining the move would not violate its reliability criteria.

“The Department’s position would empower it to pick its preferred power sources in Michigan — or, presumably, any other state — and order them to operate without regard to the multiple procedural and substantive constraints built into state reliability planning processes,” Pillard wrote, determining that the department’s emergency authority “is best read to apply where the Department identifies a risk of substantial harm from inadequate electricity supply that calls for immediate action by DOE in particular.”

In addition to the Campbell plant, the Trump Administration extended the operation of five other plants in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Washington.

Retiring the Campbell plant was expected to save Mchigan residents $600 million by 2040. Consumers Energy’s quarterly report filed on June 30 notes that keeping the plant online has cost the company $259 million after factoring in the $239 million in revenue it received by selling power from the plant to MISO.

Consumers Energy Media Relations Specialist Brian Wheeler told Michigan Advance the company is reviewing the court’s ruling. 

“While that happens, we are continuing to comply with the current 90-day Department of Energy order that keeps the Campbell plant operating,” Wheeler said in an email. “Ultimately, we will follow the law and work to ensure that everyone who benefits from power from the Campbell plant across the Midwest pays their fair share.”

Consumers Energy is seeking to recover the cost of keeping the plant open from ratepayers in Michigan, as well as energy customers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, challenged the Department of Energy’s order and its subsequent extensions on behalf of the people of Michigan. Friday marked the first time a decision had been made on any of those challenges. 

“I am relieved that the court saw through this facade and threw out the DOE’s order that had zero basis in reality,” Nessel said in a statement. “My office has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: this administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents. We remain committed to fighting these nonsensical orders and protecting our ratepayers.”

Earthjustice, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Clean Air Task Force and the Environmental Defense Fund also petitioned the court to set aside the order.

In the court’s ruling, Pillard notes that the U.S. Department of Energy order it reviewed had already expired, as each renewal has extended the plant’s lifespan by 90 days.

Earthjustice attorney Michael Lenoff, in an interview with the Advance, called on the department to follow the law and rescind its most recent order extending the plant’s operations through Nov. 14.

“If it doesn’t and continues to issue these unlawful emergency orders, we will challenge them in court,” Lenoff said.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has told the oil and gas company Enbridge to halt construction on the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin after a massive spill of natural gas liquids in Iron County late last month. 

The spill, which occurred near the town of Saxon and at 1.3 million gallons of natural gas liquids was the largest in the company’s history, was caused when an unoccupied truck rolled over a valve while crews were doing construction work. The company is in the process of rerouting Line 5 off the Bad River tribe’s reservation — a controversial project which has triggered numerous challenges to the DNR and federal permits. 

Since the spill, environmental activists, tribal members, candidates for office and elected officials in both Wisconsin and Michigan have renewed their calls for the pipeline to be shut down. 

After the spill, Enbridge began working to bypass the damaged valve so the pipeline could again be used to transport Canadian oil and gas. On Wednesday, the DNR issued a notice of noncompliance to the company, noting that Enbridge was constructing the bypass without the proper permits from the DNR. 

In the notice, and in an accompanying letter from DNR Secretary Karen Hyun, the agency said that it had told the company on three separate occasions it could not conduct the bypass work without approval from the state, and possibly from both the county and federal governments. 

The notice states that the bypass construction involves matting placed in nearby wetlands and close to Spoon Creek, which is considered a navigable waterway regulated by state law. 

In her letter, Hyun said she was “deeply concerned and incredibly frustrated” by Enbridge’s actions, especially the potentially harmful effects caused by the “significant discharge” of pollutants known as volatile organic compounds — which can be harmful to people’s health and the local environment. 

“Enbridge has continued to add to the growing list of environmental concerns and violations, demonstrating disregard for the environment, human health, and the statutory authority of the department,” she wrote. “Regarding the Line 5 reroute construction, Enbridge has caused additional discharges to the environment since my earlier letter, which have caused continued frustration and profound unease for the department and the people of Wisconsin. Additionally, at the location of the Line 5 Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) spill on August 25, Enbridge has made the decision to start unpermitted construction of a bypass, despite the extensive efforts of the DNR to educate Enbridge on the necessary permits and approvals for this bypass construction and a commitment to review submitted materials in a timely matter. Based on this pattern of noncompliance demonstrated by Enbridge, my concern over the environmental impacts of Enbridge’s activities over the past weeks has only heightened.”

In a statement, Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said the company is working “around the clock” to clean up the spill site and return the pipeline to service. 

“Enbridge continues working towards both priorities related to the third-party line strike near Saxon, Wis. — the safe control and remediation of the incident site and completing a temporary bypass to allow the pipeline to return to service, which will help resolve energy supply disruptions,” she said. “Around the clock work on both priorities is being done in parallel. Line 5 is critical infrastructure delivering energy to millions of people in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. We continue to work with the Wisconsin DNR on relevant permitting and separately on environmental conditions at the incident site.”

Rob Lee, an attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates who has worked on the challenges to Enbridge’s Line 5 permits, said that the company doesn’t get to decide that restoring the pipeline is more important than following state law. 

“Enbridge knew it needed authorization before it started this work. The DNR told the company that repeatedly. Enbridge went ahead anyway. That shows extraordinary disregard for Wisconsin’s environmental laws and for the state agency charged with enforcing them,” Lee said. ““Enbridge cannot simply decide that getting Line 5 back in service is more important than following Wisconsin law. They’ve been out there moving earth, crossing waterways and disturbing wetlands without permits. They need to stop treating environmental requirements as obstacles to work around and start following the law. If they don’t, DNR should revoke the permits for the reroute.”

U.S. and Canadian experts are urging government agencies to take swift action to address the threats posed by more frequent harmful algal blooms on Lake Superior.

The post Experts urge swift action to address harmful algal blooms on Lake Superior appeared first on WPR.

The head of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is asking Enbridge to halt work on a new stretch of its Line 5 pipeline around the site of a gas leak in Iron County, saying the company lacks state approvals.

The post Wisconsin DNR asks Enbridge to halt work on temporary bypass around site of gas leak appeared first on WPR.

A coalition of state attorneys general filed a pair of lawsuits Wednesday challenging the Trump administration’s rollbacks of protections for endangered species. 

The lawsuits, filed by 20 states and the District of Columbia, seek to reinstate rules that protect the habitat that endangered species depend on to survive. 

Under President Donald Trump, federal agencies have changed their interpretation of “harm” under the endangered species law to include only actions that directly injure or kill animals. For decades, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies had taken a broader position that the law also banned the destruction of forests, streams and wetlands that those animals depend on for nesting, mating and raising young. 

“The federal government’s attempt to gut the Endangered Species Act threatens the habitats of orcas, sockeye salmon, and other endangered species that are part of our economy, culture, and way of life,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, said in a news release. 

A second lawsuit challenges a pair of new rules that change the process for federal wildlife officials to designate “critical habitat.” The rules reduce protections for newly listed threatened species and make it easier for officials to decline to list certain lands as critical. 

“For over half a century, the (Endangered Species Act) has stood as a bipartisan example of what it means to protect an irreplaceable part of our planet, but these new rules attempt to destroy longstanding and integral regulatory protections and open the door to further species decline and possible extinctions,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

The lawsuits argue that the rollbacks enacted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service violate two key federal laws, the Administrative Procedure Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. According to Bonta’s press release, the rules ignore not just the purpose and history of the Endangered Species Act but also numerous court rulings and the law’s “overall precautionary approach.”

The lawsuits are led by Brown and Bonta, along with the attorneys general of Maryland and Massachusetts. The suits were also joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. 

The lawsuits were filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

In a statement, the Department of the Interior vowed to “vigorously defend its authority” to manage endangered species under the new guidelines.

“This lawsuit seeks to preserve a decades-old regulatory overreach that expanded the Endangered Species Act beyond the authority granted by Congress,” the agency said, according to Reuters. 

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

A gas leak that occurred last month on Enbridge’s Line 5 oil and gas pipeline is the largest oil and gas spill reported in Wisconsin in more than 50 years, according to a WPR review of federal data.

The post Federal data shows Enbridge leak is the largest reported oil and gas spill in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.

A legislative study committee on restoring floodplains across the state began its work Tuesday with an all-day meeting in which committee members heard from a number of scientists, state Department of Natural Resources staff and policy experts on the flood management landscape. 

Floodplains exist in flat areas along waterways marking where the water rises to during a flood event. Historically, waterways have been diverted, deepened or stifled to shrink these floodplains for development, navigability and agriculture — often making the effect of a flood more harmful and harming the health of the overall watershed. 

The committee is beginning its work to assess how floodplains can be restored to improve watershed health, restore wetland habitats and better control flooding as climate change has made floods more common and more severe. 

“Why are floodplains important? They promote habitat and biodiversity,” Tracy Hames of the Wisconsin Wetland Association said. “They’re really important for maintaining public health and safety.”

Among the benefits of floodplains, Hames said, are reducing erosion, improving water quality and filtering out nitrate pollution, stopping sediment from flowing downstream and protecting waterways against drought. 

To restore a floodplain, policymakers can remove dams and levees, let waterways return to their original meandering paths, reconnect waterways to nearby wetlands and promote the growth of native plants. But waterways across the country are governed by the Federal Emergency Management Program’s flood insurance program, limiting the tools available to the state.

The committee is made up of state  Sens. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) and Jodi Habush-Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), state Reps. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point) and local government officials, non-profit staff and policy experts. 

The meeting Tuesday focused on presentations explaining what a floodplain is, what policy tools are available to restore them, the existing state and federal regulatory landscape and how proposed floodplain projects should be analysed for viability. 

Lawmakers have already been working on proposals for floodplain restoration. During the most recent legislative session, Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) began writing a bill that would allow the DNR and local governments to work together to approve and fund floodplain restoration projects. Under a preliminary draft of the Novak bill, local governments would have to approve projects before the DNR could authorize them.

In recent years, lawmakers of both parties have been supportive of wetland restoration projects. While floodplain restoration is subject to stricter regulations, there appears to be a path forward for future legislation. 

“Land use in floodplains is subject to extensive regulation under federal, state, and local laws. Broadly, these laws seek to mitigate risks to life and property and reduce costs associated with flood response,” the Wisconsin Legislative Council wrote in an introductory brief for the committee. “However, these laws may also pose burdens to floodplain restoration projects, which have garnered bipartisan interest in recent years due to their ability to improve flood storage and support other ecosystem services.”

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.

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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.