Hydrologic restoration aims to mitigate infrastructure damages like those pictured above, which resulted from severe storms and flooding in Northern Wisconsin in July, 2016. Photo by John Buvala, Air Fox Photography.
A bill to encourage restoration of our land’s natural capacity to manage water was introduced in the Wisconsin State Assembly and Senate. WWA helped craft and strongly supports LRB 4892/1 because the hydrologic restoration encouraged by this bill will reduce flood risks and damages, improve water quality, and benefit fish & wildlife habitat.
Please ask your State Assembly Representative and State Senator to co-sponsor the Hydrologic Restoration for Flood Management Bill, LRB 4892/1. To find your legislators, you can use the Who Are My Legislators webpage and enter your address in the upper right hand box.
This period of co-sponsorship offers a brief window of time when the proposal’s authors, Senators Cowles & Bewley, and Representatives Oldenburg & Steineke, allow legislators to add their name to the bill as a co-sponsor. More early and bipartisan support improves the chances that this important legislation will become law and help start repairing our landscape.
When communicating with your legislator, key points to emphasize include:
- Wisconsin communities face increasing water challenges due to flooding, erosion, sedimentation, run-off, and water quality problems. Wisconsin communities need more tools to confront these costly and destructive problems.
- LRB 4892/1 helps communities address these challenges by creating a general permit for voluntary, collaborative projects that repair natural hydrology.
- Projects that reconnect streams and floodplains, reestablish healthy channel conditions, and restore upper watershed wetlands’ capacity to retain water are examples of the types of restoration that could be facilitated by the new general permit.
- LRB 4892/1 advances the science and practice of hydrologic restoration to help solve water problems in Wisconsin by forming a Hydrologic Restoration and Management Advisory Council.
Please call or write your elected officials and ask them to co-sponsor this legislation before the deadline on December 10th.
Additional background for you and/or your legislators includes:
- The co-sponsorship memo and draft bill.
- Overview by WWA provides more information on the need for the bill and summarizes the provisions.