Revolution Watch----Water in Wisconsin

Right smack-dab here in the middle of Wisconsin one would not think there could be a water problem. Ya, we do have some water quality issues involving nitrates, Aldacarb and Artizine but we all know where they come from, and we DO need our potatoes and dairy products. There are not that many folks who can't drink there water for fear of going into some catatonic fit or have dripping open lesions covering their bodies. It is not like 13th century Europe where most people had one malady or another.

Truth is, we have a water quantity issue if you can believe that? As a result we have some lakes and streams, like the Little Plover mentioned above, that have hit the road, done the dirt nap, kissed it off and left town. So, even though we get substantial rain, and we have had a few dry years, the lakes are disappearing and taking the entire biological community with them as they head out here---not like they can go somewhere else.

The Little Plover River was once a trout stream with beautiful Brook Trout flitting about. They were not giant fish by any estimation but still their presence also would indicate that there was a rich environment of another sort here in the river valley, and that included a few bold fisherman.

Well, it turns out that in the last how many years, there has been, and still is, a rapidly increasing number of high capacity wells being punched all over the place in the central sands to irrigate potatoes and some GMO corn. In the past there was no irrigation because folks were pleased with an adequate yield, but then someone decided they had to feed tatters to more and more people, and make more and more money. The idea was to keep the sands saturated, dump on tons of chemicals and get these giant potatoes that could be perfectly sliced for Mc Donald s.

Turns out we are sustaining lots of potatoes but not our streams and lakes. Just goes to show what has value---at least on the surface. In the long run it might be questionable what is the most valuable but for right now the Revolution is going poorly---maybe the so called Green Revolution of Borlaug is still going but for what? Maybe the citizen of the future will forget what steams were as the baseline of perception shifts. They will not even know they were there. I'll remember fishing on Pickerel Lake.