Thursday, January 18, 2018

Testimony tips for 1/24 state env. meeting; comment deadline, 1/19 a.m.

Thinking about attending, speaking at or sending comments for a pivotal meeting of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board in Madison on January 24th?

The good folks at Midwest Environmental Advocates have written up and posted information about the key issues to help.


Here is the meeting agenda item; note that there are important deadlines fast approaching and procedural guidelines you must follow:



View Wisconsin Natural Resources Board agendas, meeting calendar, webcasts, biographies and public participation info online.
Meeting at:
Room G09, State Natural Resources Building (GEF 2)
101 South Webster Street
Madison, Wisconsin
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Public Participation Deadline: NRB Liaison receipt of your request to testify and/or written comment is 11:00 a.m. on Friday, January 19, 2018. 

That contact person Laurie Ross, NRB Liaison, at 608-267-7420, or by email at laurie.ross@wisconsin.gov with NRB related questions, to request information, to submit written comments, to register to attend a Board tour, and to register to testify at a meeting or listening session.

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The Board will be considering new rules to limit manure contamination

and, separately, changes to the way state parks are managed which could effect everything from approving snowmobile and ATV use where they are currently disallowed to perhaps enabling the Kohler golf course development which intends to use the Kohler Andrae State Park access road and entrance and even acquire acreage inside the popular park for a maintenance storage facility.

Related summary blog post and commentary here:

 The Wisconsin DNR and its oversight body, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, are moving towards opening more state park land to snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles. Want a quiet hike? Photograph the birds? 'Go elsewhere' is the state's message. 
*  The Board will discuss the plan at the same meeting in Madison on January 24th where it will also take up DNR-proposed fee increases at some popular state parks.
It becomes easier to turn a blind eye to environmental degradation and water pollution if you treat public resources as profit centers and commodities.
And selling state land, transferring it to wealthy private businesses, or giving special interests with strong lobbies more one-sided access to it becomes normalized if you have systematically cut state science budgets, staff positions and public parks' funding in the name of very situational small government ideology which, truth be told, is more about boosting donors and businesses' bottom lines using public resources while turning the public sector and the Wisconsin Idea into memories.

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