• Ends state-mandated community recycling, and eliminates grants that help local governments pay for recycling (WSJ 3/3/11).

• Lifts limits on the amount of phosphorus allowed to enter lakes and streams. Eliminates recent statewide phosphorus rule passed in 2010 by the Natural Resources Board. The rule sets limits on the amount of phosphorus that can enter lakes and streams. Phosphorus speeds the growth of weeds and toxic blue-green algae in lakes (WSJ 3/6/11). 

• Budget may lift requirements to reduce on urban runoff. The budget appears to eliminate rules that require municipalities to reduce urban runoff from places such as parking lots, streets and construction sites by 40 percent by 2013. State DNR says the agency is still studying the proposed change and may be open to discussions with the governor’s office about it (WSJ 3/6/11). 

From 1000 Friends of Wisconsin (http://www.1kfriends.org/news/): 

• General:

• Input from citizen boards (DNR, DATCP) becomes largely irrelevant because they no longer have rule-making or policy development authority.  (Wisconsin was considered the model for good governance, the DNR structure dating back to the Kellett Commission in 1967.)

• These changes incorporate a fundamental shift in how Wisconsin regulates the environment.  They change process, standards and levels of protection in some cases that have been in place for generations.  There is no other way to portray this but as a radical shift in environmental protection in the state of Wisconsin.

• Stewardship:

• Eliminates payments for aids in lieu of taxes and requires local governments to pass resolution of support. (This will mean fewer Stewardship purchases.)

• Prohibits the purchase of development rights EXCEPT for preserving logging rights or trails. (Fewer acres protected)

• Erosion Control:

• Transfers enforcement of soil erosion controls from DNR to Regulation and Licensing

• Lowers recent phosphorous standards to a level no more stringent than neighboring states.  (Phosphorous is the leading pollutant that degrades water quality through algal blooms.)  Wisconsin has previously been looked to as a leader in setting standards for water quality – this will ensure that we are prohibited from becoming a leader in water quality protection.

• Recycling:

• Eliminates requirement for local recycling programs in the state.  (Wisconsin’s program has long been considered the best program in the nation.)

• Transfers municipal recycling aid program revenues to economic development fund.

• Working Lands:

• Eliminates the conversion fee for rezoning land out of a farmland preservation zoning district.

• Eliminates the PACE program (Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements) and the $12 million of GPR supported bonds.

• Office of Energy Independence is eliminated.