MADISON, Wis. (WSAU) — Local officials are reacting to the Wisconsin DNR’s decision to no longer consider the impact of nearby wells on the aquifer or surface water when deciding whether to permit a high-capacity well.
The DNR followed the legal opinion of Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel and recognized that they don’t feel they have the authority to impose such regulations. Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) has been fighting for water rights in her district since she was elected in 2012, and she feels the DNR’s decision was misguided as Schimel’s opinion was not legally binding.
“They chose the route of politics and not policy, not evidence-based science and using scientific research, and that’s what makes me so disappointed. Not only are they now standing on shaky grounds in terms of following one legal opinion versus a unanimous Supreme Court decision that uses our state Constitution, but they also chose the route of politics instead of the route of policy,” Shankland said.
Shankland is referring to a 2011 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that the Attorney General argued was superseded by a law from the same year stating that state agencies cannot enforce policy that is not explicitly in their written purview. Because of this, Shankland only sees the fight for water rights going in one direction.
Shankland said, “I think that there’s going to be an inevitable court case that’s determined through the actions of the DNR choosing to not follow the state’s constitution and the state’s constitution public trust doctrine.”
Shankland represents a portion of the Central Sands region, a battleground for water rights. She and other lawmakers held a listening session on the issue in Saratoga in April and she wants to get more voices involved in the fight to keep water flowing in public waterways.
She said “This issue is critical to the Central Sands economy, to the economy of Portage County, but also to individuals who really care about the legacy of the Little Plover River, or the Tomorrow River, you name it, Long Lake, Huron Lake. There are so many bodies of water that have been affected, and we need to work together.”
Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) also represents a portion of the Central Sands region. Krug doesn’t blame the DNR for heeding the opinion of the attorney general, mainly because of the overall confusion they’ve dealt with on the issue since 2011.
Krug said, “I think the DNR was caught in a ‘darned if you do, darned if you don’t’ situation, between the Attorney General’s opinion, court cases that have been decided the last five years, they’ve been really up in the air on what they should be doing and what they shouldn’t be doing.”
Rep. Krug is trying to strike a balance between the farms looking for more water and the people who just need water to come out of their faucet. Krug is not happy that the DNR has backed down, but wants to pass legislation that will give them the authority to use environmental impact studies in their decisions.
Krug said, “I think it’s important for people on both sides of the debate, especially between agriculture and tourism or agriculture and environmental protection to understand that there’s not a winner or a loser here. It’s something that we can do, we can do regulation with the precision of a surgical knife. We don’t have to do this “one size fits all” approach.”
The representative has criticized his colleagues across the isle of not being open enough to compromise. He introduced a bill in 2015 to begin to regulate high capacity wells, but it didn’t see a vote before the session was over.
A study was conducted on the Little Plover River by the DNR earlier this year, and the results indicated that high capacity wells have had a major impact on the flow and water levels of the river with their current placement.
