Gov. Scott Walker's budget bill proposal would roll back regulations designed to protect waterways from weed-producing phosphorus and other pollutants that wash from streets and construction sites.
...When new phosphorus regulations were approved last summer, the DNR estimated costs of $900 million to $1 billion over the next decade or more. Outside estimates claimed even higher costs.
The rules set limits on how much phosphorus would be allowed in waterways, putting the onus on sewage treatment plants and factories that treat wastewater, and presumably passing on the costs to customers.
"It was incredibly expensive legislation," said Scott Manley, director of environmental policy for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.
That's not all. He also proposed to:
Repeal state laws requiring communities, by 2013, to achieve a 40% reduction in total suspended solids, a component of runoff. Municipalities had complained that the mandate was expensive and hard to meet. It is already forcing many communities to increase street sweeping, install new catch basins and build settling ponds to capture pollutants.This will be very helpful indeed.
The particulate reduction rule is hugely expensive and is an exercise in theory. It's the DNR run amok. The requirements can not be imperically measured and worse yet, are not possible to achieve.
ReplyDeleteCommon Sense has returned (or finally shown up) in Madison.
Recent articles in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (of all places) reported that the most significant source of phosphorus in municipal wastewater streams is introduced in the "clean water" supply - you know, drinking water. Apparently, the majority of old water supply pipes in Milwaukee, and other cities of its size, are made from lead. To keep lead from leaching into the water, it is treated at the source by orthophosphate, which shows up as phosphorus in the sewer water when we wash our hands and do our business.
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