Photo via Joe Brusky, Flickr CC
The softest jobs in state government these days have to be working for either the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or the Department of Justice punishing polluters for violating Wisconsin’s environmental laws.
That’s because Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s idea of perfect environmental protection is never citing any polluters for violating the state’s environmental laws.
“My goal is to have no citations,” Walker says with a perfectly straight face, “because when an agency issues a citation, that means something went wrong.”
You know, it means some irresponsible corporate polluter has befouled the air or water or committed some other sickening and possibly even life-threatening environmental crime.
But if the DNR and the attorney general’s office don’t issue any citations at all against polluters that means pollution and environmental destruction have been completely eliminated by the Walker administration.
And if police would just stop arresting murderers, the governor could put an end to homicides too.
So far, Cathy Stepp, the anti-environment Republican legislator and homebuilder Walker appointed DNR secretary, and Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel have been doing a bang-up job.
They haven’t totally eliminated all citations against polluting corporations (who also happen to be some of Walker’s largest political donors), but they’re rapidly closing in on zero citations and financial penalties for polluters in Wisconsin.
Public records released by the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation show that last year forfeitures paid by individuals and corporations for violating state environmental laws plummeted a whopping 78%, from nearly $1.4 million in 2014 to only $306,834.
That was just the most recent and most dramatic reduction in fines against polluters, which have been rapidly disappearing in Wisconsin ever since Republicans took control of the governor’s office and Legislature in 2010.
During Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s last term in office from 2006 to 2010, the state collected $15.2 million in forfeitures from polluters. Between 2011 to 2015, under Walker, those financial penalties have been cut in more than half to $6.4 million.
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George Meyer is executive director of Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, the state’s largest environmental conservation organization. Meyer was secretary of the DNR for eight years under Republican governors Tommy Thompson and Scott McCallum in those bygone days when polluters were prosecuted under Republican as well as Democratic governors.
“What the Federation is not buying as an answer” to the drastic reduction in fines against polluters, Meyer said, “is that environmental violations have dropped 86% in the last ten years or 78% since 2014.”
No Fines for Corporate Farms
Walker has made no secret of his intention to make the DNR more business-friendly and stop being so hung up on devastating climate change and all those bothersome laws protecting the environment that cut into corporate profits.
In a speech in Florida last year, Walker’s like-minded DNR Secretary Stepp noted how difficult it was to shift the culture within her department, when so many long-time employees had strong convictions about protecting the environment.
She said one employee told her the constituents the DNR served were the “deer and the butterflies and clean air and clean water.” She said she told the employee: “Well, the last time I checked, they don’t pay taxes and they don’t sign our paychecks.’”
The easiest way to reduce penalties against polluters is simply to eliminate scientific staff and inspectors so there aren’t so many people identifying threats to the environment that require enforcement. The DNR and Legislature have been doing that with a vengeance.
It also helps to have a Republican attorney general like Schimel. Schimel has more important priorities than protecting the environment, like legally defending the Walker administration’s attacks on voting rights, women’s health care and clean energy standards.
Even more shocking than the massive drop in penalties against polluters is that many of the state’s filthiest, most environmentally dangerous businesses seem to have turned bright green overnight.
In all of 2015, the DNR did not find a single problem with any of what are now several hundred massive corporate farms in Wisconsin known as CAFOs.
That stands for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, those horror shows packing thousands of large farm animals side by side in enclosed pens, where they continually consume high-growth feed in one end and produce enormous, groundwater-threatening lagoons of liquid manure out the other.
Neither did the state levy a single fine against anyone for illegally disposing of hazardous waste last year.
This would all be terrific news, of course, if anyone could possibly believe anything so incredibly unbelievable.
But that would require us to believe we don’t really need any laws protecting our environment. When corporate polluters no longer have to worry about being prosecuted for destroying the environment to boost their profits, they will voluntarily stop pollution out of the goodness of their hearts.
After all, that stuff is dangerous and disgusting. Everyone knows corporate leaders would rather not even have higher profits if it means engaging in shoddy or unethical practices.
