Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group released an analysis Tuesday on national water policies, assigning state-by-state letter grades to various aspects of current policies.
Overall, Wisconsin received an \F."" The ""C"" Wisconsin earned for having a maximum penalty of $10,000 per day for violators of the Clean Water Act could not raise the state's average because of failing grades in areas of frequency of inspections, reporting discharges and assessing appropriate enforcement actions.
Additionally, WISPIRG's findings revealed 40 percent of Wisconsin's waters are not safe for fishing and swimming.
According to Anthony Pizer, the clean water associate for WISPIRG, the failing grades and poor water quality indicate the necessity to change the law to include more water inspections, stricter policies requiring reporting findings from inspections and a more rigid policy for addressing violators.
""If we stick with the laws that we have basically two things happen: One is the polluters are being protected more than the citizens ... and the second thing is that the Wisconsin taxpayer ends up footing the bill for the enforcement programs, not the polluters.""
Resource ecologist Dave Zaber said he thinks current problems are partially due to the anti-environment ideology that existed under the Thompson Administration.
However, Professor of Planning and Wildlife Ecology Steve Born, said he thinks a significant part of the problem lies in lack of funding for law enforcement.
""All these agencies are taking a [financial] hit ... so they're cutting back in staff. You can imagine there's moral problems,"" he said.
While Born said he thinks changes will be hard to make due to a lack of resources, Pizer said WISPIRG will draw up a bill to amend the law.
Pizer added WISPIRG encourages citizens to write to Gov. Jim Doyle or their Wisconsin legislator.
""Say that this is something I'm concerned about ... [Say] I want my children to be able to eat fish out of Wisconsin lakes and streams,"" he advised.
