When the man standing on State Street with a clipboard asks me if I have a moment to help save Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers, I usually say no. Luckily for our freshwater bodies, there are lots of people unlike me who have been working very hard over the past few years to reduce toxic urban and farming runoff to help clean water in our state. Unluckily, Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill is a proverbial onion – the more we peel back layers of budget slashing, the more drastic and detrimental cuts we find underneath. One new measure that has come to light would diminish state clean water regulations so much that it would set those hardworking environmentalists back years, and the Environmental Protection Agency would be forced to pick up the slack.

Wisconsin’s water nowadays is some of the cleanest water there is. Years ago, however, that wasn’t the case. In the past, the main threat to Wisconsin’s clean water was chemical runoff from farms and urban areas.

In the runoff, the principal pollutant is phosphorus, a byproduct of fertilizer and human waste that runs in massive quantities into rivers and lakes from farms, parking lots and city streets. Phosphorus is not only a harmful chemical, but it also encourages the growth of blue-green algae that produces highly visible blooms that look like scum. The blooms reproduce rapidly and choke out marine life, which can disrupt and even destroy the ecological web of a lake or river. Some blooms even produce poisons, called cyanotoxins, which have lead to cases of human poisoning. The slime was found in both Lake Mendota and Lake Monona.

As a response to this threat, the DNR drew up proposals to update sewage treatment in 160 Wisconsin plants. This would have meant installing all new equipment and would have cost the state $1.3 billion dollars.

Realizing this was too high of a bill to foot, the DNR went back to the drawing board with water treatment engineers, EPA municipalities, and environmentalists and retooled the proposal.

The new proposal greatly reduced costs by having districts both work with farmers in their watersheds and compensate them for using farming methods that reduce runoff levels. This way, sewage treatment plants didn’t need to buy all new equipment to filter out phosphorus because a far less amount would come into the plants in the first place.

The proposal also stated that if runoff levels decreased enough in the next 10 years sewage treatment plants wouldn’t have to buy new filtration systems at all. The DNR also gave leeway to municipalities that didn’t have the money to comply, giving them flexible dates for implementation. As a result of this work and past efforts, Wisconsin has the best water regulation standards in the area, far above those of Illinois and Iowa.

However, provisions in Scott Walker’s budget look to override what work has been done towards clean water and return Wisconsin’s water standards to the lowest quality they can legally be, which negates the previous work of environmentalists and water specialists.

Walker wants to throw out current phosphorus standards, and make them no more stringent than neighboring states. The section of the budget, to environmentalists, is so shocking they think it might be a mistake. “Do you really want to see our lakes and rivers the same quality as Iowa’s”? asked Rep. Brett Hulsey, D-Madison. Amber Meyer Smith, program director at the environmental group Clean Wisconsin, echoed this statement by saying, “We shouldn’t be measuring down to the lowest common denominator. I would argue that we care a lot more about our water standards than Iowa.”

In fact, standards may fall so far that the EPA would need to step in, as they have done in other states. Shahla Werner, director of Wisconsin’s Sierra Club chapter, posed the question,”Who do you want regulating phosphorus in Wisconsin? The state or the EPA”?

Walker’s measures will do away with negotiations between farmers and sewer treatment plants as well. If these groups aren’t able to work out mutually beneficial techniques for reducing runoff, the sewage plants will have to add the expensive filtration systems they were looking to avoid in the first place. “If we lose that [negotiation],” Dave Taylor, a special project coordinator with the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District, said, “you’re looking at a brick and mortar addition to the plant.”

Walker’s budget also eliminates measures to reduce urban runoff, the main water pollution problem in cities. Runoff was supposed to be reduced by 40 percent by 2013 in the city of Madison and other large cities through rain gardens, eco-friendly parking lots and collecting basins, but Walker’s measures would slash the budget for those as well.

The reduction of clean water standards is just another shovel-full of dirt on the grave that is the funding for important public works and special programs in Wisconsin. Undoubtedly, environmentalists, the DNR and concerned water treatment officials will continue to fight for superior water quality in our lakes, rivers and streams. The only way we’re going to be able to deal with waves of Walker’s cuts now is to be aware of what they are and continue to organize and provide a unanimous grassroots voice. We must make it known that although Walker’s budget cuts criteria for clean water, the citizens of Wisconsin still have high environmental standards. So next time I see the man with the clipboard on State Street, I’m going to at least take time to listen.

Taylor Nye ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in biological anthropology.