One of the biggest environmental battlegrounds facing Wisconsin’s future is actually underground. Groundwater supplies, one of the state’s most precious and valuable resources, are under siege.
Todd Ambs, the administrator of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Water Division discusses some of the current battle fronts in the address “Fixing Wisconsin’s Groundwater Problems” Tuesday, Nov. 4 at 7 p.m. at Lawrence University. The program, in Lawrence’s Science Hall, Room 102, is free and open to the public.
Ambs will outline several major new state policy initiatives designed to deal with a growing array of groundwater-related problems in Wisconsin, including Perrier’s quest to pump large quantities of spring water in Waushara and Adams counties for its international bottling operations, the rise in arsenic levels in private wells near Appleton and a precipitous drop in the groundwater table in the Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay areas as a result of increased consumer demand.
The former executive director for the River Alliance of Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization designed to protect the health of Wisconsin’s streams, Ambs was appointed the DNR’s Water Division chief last year by Governor Doyle. Earlier this year, he was named a “River Hero” by River Network, one of the nation’s premier river conservation organizations.
Ambs¹ appearance is sponsored by Lawrence’s environmental studies program and the Spoerl Lectureship in Science in Society.
