Todd Ambs, the former water division head at the Department of Natural Resources, remembers when water wasn’t a divisive topic in Wisconsin.
“We used to have a bipartisan understanding that things like wetlands were so critical to our public waters that we should be zealously protecting them,” he says. “I can remember a time when even Republican members of the Legislature would say, ‘If you want to fill in a wetland in this state and you want to do it quickly, the answer’s no.’ That by design it should be difficult.”
No longer. Last week, the Assembly passed a bill that makes filling wetlands easier. Another bill allows high-capacity wells to be repaired or sold without triggering a new DNR inspection, and a third weakens local control and expert oversight of how property owners use their land. The bill on wells awaits a vote by the Senate, but it has already approved the other two, which now go to the governor for approval.
A fourth bill that would have made it easier for out-of-state companies to purchase public water utilities was slated for a vote but pulled off the schedule when support began to falter.
Ambs, who led the DNR’s water division for seven years and is now the campaign director of the Healing Our Waters — Great Lakes Coalition, says legislators dropped one bill that would make it easier to privatize public water systems but moved forward with others, which effectively privatize public waters in the state.
The changes, Ambs says, undermine the long-held idea that the waters of the state belong to everybody, not to private interests, and that we should be taking actions to protect those waters.
“I used to say, when I ran the water division, but I still think it’s true: We have world-class water resources in this state. And we have had them for years because we have world-class laws to protect those water resources,” says Ambs, who left the DNR in 2010. “We are, over the last few years and certainly in this legislative session, eroding those protections.”
Ambs sees two forces chipping away at water protections: the prioritization of private property owners’ interests over public water resources and an influx of financial interests in the Legislature.
“The idea that somehow private property rights should take precedence over public water resources is on full display in the current legislative session,” Ambs says.
The purpose of the high-capacity-well bill, according to one of its sponsors, was to protect the rights of landowners “who are abiding by the law and only want to protect the value of their land and businesses.”
By removing required DNR inspections triggered by repairs or sales, the legislation effectively grants permanent approval to high-capacity-well withdrawals in the state, even in the face of significant drawdowns not only to the aquifers where these wells are but also, in some cases, the surface waters connected to the wells.
A hearing for the bill that weakened local and expert oversight when it comes to decisions of land included testimony from one of its sponsors, Rep. Adam Jarchow (R-Balsam Lake), invoking Thomas Jefferson’s words: “‘The right to procure property and to use it for one’s enjoyment is essential to the freedom of every person....’
“This country has been built on the freedom to own and protect one’s own property,” Jarchow added.
Loosening restrictions to appease property owners could prove to be short-sighted not only for the state but also the property owners themselves, Ambs worries. “I’m not sure how many people are really going to want to live next to those water bodies that are algae-filled with compromised fisheries and problematic water quality.”
The bill the Assembly ultimately dropped would have made it easier for municipalities to sell their public water utilities to out-of-state companies by removing the requirement that sales be approved by residents through a referendum.
The push for that bill came directly from Aqua America, a holding company with utilities in eight states whose CEO touts its aggressive “growth-through-acquisition” strategy. The Pennsylvania-based company hired former Republican Assembly Majority Leader Steven Foti and his son to lobby on its behalf in Wisconsin, spending nearly $40,000 in 2015.
The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Frank Lasee (R-De Pere), six Republican representatives and one Democrat, Rep. Josh Zepnick of Milwaukee, said the change would give local elected officials the option of selling their utilities to fund infrastructure upgrades. In his hearing statement, Lasee said the bill would also empower communities to realize the benefits of open market principles.
Lasee and Zepnick did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Rodney Stevenson, an economist and former faculty member of the Wisconsin School of Business, the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Wisconsin Public Utility Institute at the University of Wisconsin, worries companies like Aqua America are preying on municipalities that feel financial pressure to repair aging infrastructure.
“You’re in this situation where there’s this temptation to sell off something, like water utilities, to come up with money to provide a stop-gap,” Stevenson says. But these decisions could have long-term ramifications. He also does not buy the argument that private companies would be more motivated than public utilities to offer better service and efficiency.
“What we’re talking about here are basic monopolies. There’s only going to be one water utility in the city, like there’s only one MGE for Madison,” Stevenson says. “There’s not the impetus of competition, which is argued to be the driving force to increase efficiency of privately owned companies. The incentives to be efficient simply aren’t there.”
Nationally, for-profit water companies own about 10% of water systems, the majority of which serve towns with populations under 3,300 people, according to a report published this month by Food & Water Watch, a water advocacy group.
Residents of Superior, the state’s only community with a non-public water utility, pay more than twice the average rate of major water utilities in the state, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Midwestern states that have seen growth in private water utilities have seen the average water bill under private utilities increase by 67%, according to the Food & Water Watch report.
Selling utilities, in addition to bringing higher prices, could have other adverse long-term effects. Ambs worries it could dilute a water utility’s primary purpose, which is to provide safe, potable water to residents.
“If your entire motive for operating a water utility is profit, you are by definition incentivized to cut costs wherever you can to maximize profit. The danger there is that you’re going to cut funding for operations and maintenance,” Ambs says. “It’s like upkeep on the plumbing in your house. If your driving incentive is to make money, you’re going to maybe delay that investment in that pipe because you think you can squeeze another few years out of it.”
The needed repairs used as the rationale for sales — upkeep on the pump, inspection of well casing, strengthening joints in the piping — could continue to go unheeded.
Ambs won’t be surprised if similar legislation from Aqua America or other companies crops up again soon. He says the Legislature has been unwinding the state’s 150-year-old commitment to protecting public water resources over the past few years, and these efforts will likely continue.
“If there are private water interests that think there is a market to exploit in Wisconsin, then I expect somebody will see it in their interest to introduce that bill,” he says. “We’re going to have to really continue to make that conversation a very public and transparent one.”