It seems as though the State Legislature just can't learn from its
mistakes. Last year the Legislature blind-sided the public by pushing
through the poorly-named Jobs Creation Act (Act 118), which rolled back
30 years of environmental protections designed to maintain Wisconsin's
heritage of clean air and water.
Then,
less than 24 hours after its announcement, the Assembly held a public
hearing on the Jobs Creation Act II, A.B. 277. The bill passed the
Assembly and has had a hearing before the Senate Natural Resources
Committee.
But let's call this bill what it really is: the Dirty Air Bill.
That's because this bill will allow more air pollution under the guise of creating jobs.
For
the 500,000 Wisconsinites who have asthma or other respiratory
problems, the Dirty Air Bill means that taking a breath of fresh air
just got a little harder.
Last year's Act 118 paved the way for
major sources of air pollution to get general operating permits. Now
the Dirty Air Bill takes it one step further and exempts those same
major sources of air pollution from obtaining currently-required
construction permits.
This is a step in the wrong direction in a Republican-led and Doyle-sanctioned race to the bottom.
Not
only will the bill allow polluters to operate without required permits,
it targets the DNR for more contentious litigation by industry over air
pollution controls.
For example, under the Dirty Air Bill, a
polluter can sue the DNR over an air pollution limit, and avoid having
to comply with it until ordered to do so by a judge.
The
polluter can tie up the pollution limit in court while it gets a free
ride — and a competitive advantage over other businesses not as willing
to sue the DNR at the drop of a hat. Worse still, because these
lawsuits will be against the DNR, the taxpayers are stuck with the
legal bill.
The legislators backing the Dirty Air Bill claim
that these regulatory rollbacks are necessary to stimulate job growth,
but once again our "leaders" are using the environment as a scapegoat
and failing to identify the real threat to Wisconsin's manufacturing
sector: globalization and the export of our manufacturing jobs to other
countries.
According to a report by the AFL-CIO, 61 percent of
the layoffs by Wisconsin manufacturers between 2001 and 2004 were
trade-related.
The Dirty Air Bill doesn't mean more jobs; it
means more asthma attacks, increased health-care costs, and a continued
failure to address the real threats to our manufacturing base.
It is time for our state legislators to remember what their job is: protecting rather than polluting the public.
(Melissa
K. Scanlan is Executive Director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, a
non-profit environmental law center working for clean air, clean water
and a clean government.)
