Impossible, you say. We're bordered by two Great Lakes and the Mississippi River - - watershed abundance, border to border.
The benefits of public access to water were so basic to Wisconsin's very existence and definition that Congress guaranteed it in 1787 - - before statehood - - and public water rights are now inscribed in the Wisconsin Constitution as Article IX, "The Public Trust Doctrine."
The DNR Public Trust Doctrine web page announces that "Wisconsin's Waters Belong To Everyone" and explains that the state is obligated to assertively manage water with the public interest put first; Federal treaties with Native tribes in Wisconsin contain broad rights to water, hunting and fishing - - even off-reservation.
But Gov. Walker and the GOP-run Legislature are systematically draining the Public Trust Doctrine from law and programs through power politics and party-line votes, making water access and management into private-sector tools.
Through complacent, short-sighted and partisan behavior, these politicians are disconnecting wetlands from their ecosystems and also disconnecting Wisconsin from imperative local-to-international water conservation planning.
A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body of water may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.
"The wisdom of the policy which, in the organic laws of our state, steadfastly and carefully preserved to the people the full and free use of public waters, cannot be questioned. Nor should it be limited or curtailed by narrow constructions.
The current official and lamentably partisan disdain for principled water policy, science and law emerged in the early hours of Governor Walker's administration.
Aware of the ensuing controversy, and the contradiction between fishing supplies and wetland filling, Bass Pro Shops withdrew from the situation.
But the administration was not chastened.
Imagine if authorities were to allow developers to build multiple 10-story parking ramps without studying the cumulative impacts on traffic.
* End the ability of municipalities to establish construction site runoff regulations stronger than state standards, while simultaneously transferring overall enforcement to the DNR - - an agency now run with a "chamber-of-commerce mentality" intentionally installed there by Gov. Walker.
* Open shore land to greater development, despite the benefit and need for erosion and flood controls.
* Enable unprecedented mountain-top removal in the pristine, northern Penokee Hills for an historically long, deep and wide open-pit iron ore mine in a watershed that includes the headwaters of the Bad River near Lake Superior.
The mine would be upriver from public drinking water supplies and close to wild rice producing estuaries central to the survival of the Bad River Band of Ojibwe (Chippewa), and would allow, despite scientific testimony and other warnings, the dumping of millions of tons of acid-yielding waste rock across more than 3,000 acres and into streams and wetlands - - expanding the impact of the wetlands-filling legislation written earlier that had pleased real estate and building interests..
Worse, the trend in Wisconsin away from smart water policy is taking place against a backdrop of additional problems and risks:
* Lake Michigan is plagued by destructive invasive species and remains at persistent low water levels that negatively impact commercial shipping and recreational boating.
* Wisconsin surface waters are exposed to warming temperatures and accelerated evaporation.
* Three separate and substantial 2012 fuel spills from pipeline breaks have fouled land and water near Grand Marsh, in Adams County, in and around Jackson and its wildlife marsh in Washington County, and the edge of Mitchell Airport and a creek close to Lake Michigan.
Where in this roiled natural and political environment is the required adherence to the Public Trust Doctrine and the State Supreme Court's water guidance nearly a half-century ago:
A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body of water may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.
