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Comment by bonestamp2 | Hacker News Reader

> The LCD screens being made by Foxconn require benzene, chromium, cadmium, mercury, zinc, and copper ... The Walker administration had also exempted Foxconn from the state’s usual environmental rules, allowing it to discharge materials into wetlands...

WTF? Wisconsin is a beautiful state with rich wetlands and farmland. Letting a Taiwanese* company fuck that up for 13,000 jobs that will never pay back the incentives makes no sense, other than a small tick on Walker's re-election campaign resume which he is now shying away from anyway. This project needs to be cleaned up or killed before it starts to literally kill people in Wisconsin.

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The article is painting a pretty misleading characterization of the wetlands issue. Foxconn isn't being permitted to "discharge" heavy metals into wetlands. Foxconn is being permitted to fill certain isolated wetlands (i.e. wetlands that are not connected to rivers or lakes that would put them under federal jurisdiction) with the requirement that they create 2 acres of additional wetlands elsewhere for every acre they fill in: https://journaltimes.com/business/local/dnr-foxconn-to-creat.... That's more than the usual state law requirement of 1.2 acres created per acre of wetland filled in.

There's no indication, moreover, that Foxconn has received waivers from ordinary state and federal rules that regulate dumping heavy metals into the soil. The article misleadingly tries to suggest that by juxtaposing the fact that the LCD panels "require benzene, chromium, etc." with the fact that Foxconn has been authorized to fill in certain wetlands.

Regardless of whether or not they're going to discharge heavy metals, they're planning on drawing up to 7 million gallons of water per day from Lake Michigan outside of its basin on what amounts to a technicality in the Great Lakes Compact. Also the factory itself is going to be so large and built on a flood plain that it could cause flooding just over the border in Illinois because rainwater won't have anywhere to go.

FWIW, the allowance of 7 million gallons/day from Lake Michigan is apparently a "0.07 percent increase in the total surface water withdrawals from Lake Michigan", according to the state's Dept. of Natural Resources:

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/25/dnr-...

Sure, but it violates the compact. The compact only allows use of the water inside the basin. What's going on here is the factory is going to use water from Racine (which is on the lake) and therefore allowed to draw the water even though the factory itself is outside the basin.

Lake Michigan is vast on a scale that is hard to get your head around. 7 million gallons a day is not outside the scope of what other commercial entities draw from the lake; for instance, the NIPSCO plant near the IN/MI border draws 12 million gallons a day. If you're going to claim that drawing an amount of water from the lake is a problem, you're going to have to support the argument with evidence; people seem pretty innumerate about the water supply here (see also: the Nestle debate in Michigan).

Or cite the compact? Even though IL has gutted big sections of it in court, id imagine a blatant water pull deserves an assumption of being covered?

I went and read the complaint letters from the WI (and MN) environmental groups, and the complaints broke down into two areas:

1. The diversion violates the interstate compact, which says that significant diversions are supposed to have some public or residential benefit. Foxconn's doesn't. It's not inherently problematic for the environment, but it sets a precedent they don't like.

2. Foxconn might pollute Lake Michigan.

That second concern is of course valid, but has nothing to do with the amount of water Foxconn consumes. I found one complaint that claimed consumptive use of water (that is, unlike NIPSCO, water that is diverted from the lake and not fed immediately back) could cause long-term problems because Michigan only replenishes 1% of its water annually. But Foxconn's draw is something like 0.0000002%.

If the lake was ringed with Foxconns from Gary to Mackinaw City, I'd see the problem. And: totally legit to be vigilant about precedent! But I don't see the intrinsic practical impact from Foxconn today (in terms of water usage).

Worth noting: Foxconn came back and cut their water demand in half with a recycling plant. Not that I want to sound like I'm defending Foxconn, because I think this is a really bad deal for Wisconsin.

Put me firmly in camp 1. It’s a significant diversion & it seems sketchy as hell. If we had 100 of them how would we feel? I think the answer is awful.

That’s enough to justify the scale part of the appeal.

If we had a hundred of them I'm still not clear that there would be a significant environmental impact purely from the draw.

(From the factory footprints on the lakeside, sure!)

We're agreed about the Foxconn project in general. I'm just crusading against Michigan water supply alarmism.

Yep. It seems Foxconn is being allowed to bypass certain environmental regulations covering construction around wetlands and waterways. To my understanding, the waivers apply to the construction of the plant, not the operation of it.

More info: https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Does_Wisconsin%27s_Foxcon...

Thank you for the clarification.

> requirement that they create 2 acres of additional wetlands elsewhere for every acre they fill in

I did this type of work during high school. The new wetlands are inspected regularly and must meet quality standards to count. After a period of time (10 years in my state), the wetlands are certified and no longer need to be inspected nor maintained. I have visited old projects that the state signed off on. After maintenance stopped, nearly all of the "high quality" wetlands that I worked on rapidly deteriorated into cattail, or worse, reed canary grass monocultures. When I was planting, I believed I was creating valuable habitats, but I was actually just working to check a box on a form.

So...why not just build the dump pit instead of using an existing natural resource and "building some wetlands" afterwards?

I think "fill" means "fill in with other soil so you can treat it like normal land" not "fill with toxic waste".

Thanks, that makes sense.

It's the verge

A maximum of 13k jobs. They still get billions and carte blanc environmental waivers even if only a tenth of those materialize.

Also worth noting that the average salaries required to get those subsidies have dropped substantially since the beginning of this process; we've gone from "lots of skilled jobs" to "mostly $15/hr factory labor". Totally predictable to those of us who know the difference between "iPhone factory" and "Apple HQ", but this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They [1] really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree.

[1] edit: here "they" refers to 10-15 specific people, and isn't intended to generalize to "all Wisconsites", although I do believe there's a demographic that's being intentionally deceived and who would change their opinions on Foxconn if someone sat them down and explained that "working in an LCD factory" is not a "tech job" in the sense of six figure salary with good benefits, and that if those "tech jobs" do come to Wisconsin via Foxconn it's going to be a relatively small number of them and most certainly won't go to people who are straight out of high school after 6 months in a fast-tracked community college program.

>this was a huge source of confusion among my non-tech blue collar Wisconsin friends. They really did think there would be six figure tech jobs available to anyone with a CC degree....

That's unfair. Wisconsinites are not stupid. We knew what this deal meant for the most part. The issue is corruption. We have few effective methods of fighting it here in Wisconsin. I'm not trying to wuss out or anything, but there is a reality to life in a place like Wisconsin.

Think of it this way, there is probably some percentage above which corruption becomes too ingrained, and you can't do anything about it anymore. Maybe that percentage is 10%? Maybe it's 20%? Whatever. But if a place reaches that tipping point, that's it.

And I don't think that's unique to Wisconsin by the way. I think MOST states and municipalities would present the same issues if their tipping point number was reached. It just becomes very hard to do anything about what's going on around you.

> That's unfair.

I'm not painting with a broad stroke here. I'm referring to specific people I have had specific conversations with.

Of course, Milwaukee, Madison, and also many of the smaller cities in Wisconsin have great engineering cultures with extremely smart people who understand this distinction. And also many Wisconsites with non-Engineering backgrounds obviously understand the distinction.

All I'm saying is that, based on my first-hand experience, there were many in Wisconsin who did not/do not understand this distinction. Which is good news, because that means that explaining simple and easily demonstrable facts can change people's minds.

Perhaps sustained canvassing on this issue would be a good way to change things in WI. I've been able to win a few people over by explaining over a year ago where this whole thing was going to go and then reminding them any time there's a development.

Thank you for that clarification.

When Walker's recall campaign failed, I stopped being sad about leaving the state, because at that moment I knew that it was now majority gullible idiot.

Walker is as much of a track mark on Wisconsin's dirty drawers as Blagojevich was on local and state government back when I lived in Chicago--perhaps a bit less obvious about it, and with an (R) instead of a (D) pinned to his dark money drop box.

From my perspective, it looks like the corruption is growing, the normal measures to fight it are not effective, and it may be necessary to take up arms to bring it back under control, or just leave and not look back. It seems like almost everywhere is at least near its tipping point, if not already well past it. The Citizens United decision might have made it a runaway.

I agree it's not unique to Wisconsin. Maybe it's more prevalent in places that don't have that much industry in that area, so it's easier to fool people. When a new amazon fulfillment warehouse comes to a city, hopefully people know it's not going to be filled with programmer level salaries. But if you had no expose to software design and only had warehouses then you might not know the difference.

Factory labor might be shit, but it typically comes with good health benefits and will put food on the table for your family.

I get the feeling that people who snub factory jobs live too high on the economic ladder to realize how much of a step up that sort of job can be for a person.

Used to. Pensions are gone and wages have stangated for decades. Most anything above $20/hour puts it squarely in "the capex to automate this makes sense now" territory. And everything else gets farmed out to rotating temps so that any benefits that do exist can be advertised but are only rarely paid out. I've seen that play out a few times just among relatives (consider this a tacit response to your second paragraph, BTW).

More importantly, Foxconn's agreement with WI states that up to 93% of workers can be paid $15/hour. That's barely enough to live on even in Wisconsin.

If Foxconn were legally required to pay 50k+ with benefits for factory work, I would happily agree with you. But that's not what the contracts say. The contracts say basically everyone except management and engineering can be paid $15/hr.

Also, the Amazon fulfillment center just a few miles from the site of Foxconn's new plant pays $15/hour and is constantly hiring. So we're basically paying 4.1 billion for... a bunch of jobs that are roughly equivalent to openings that already go unfilled just down the street.

Finally, remember that we're talking about 4.1 billion dollars. That's a lot of healthcare/education/infra/small business development/etc. opportunity cost.

I don't know much about the Foxconn plant, so you may be right about the particulars there.

I also agree with you that the working conditions for factory workers have been degrading significantly for the past 20 years or so.

$15/hr might be barely enough to live on, but it's still better than minimum wage. Also the nature of working on an assembly line is different from working in a fulfillment center. Being able to tell people "I help build those" has more pride behind it than telling people you run around shoving stuff into boxes for people.

I'm in Iowa, which I imagine is similar cost of living to Wisconsin. My dad worked in factories almost his entire working life. I stand by my statement that if you are lucky enough to land a full time factory job, it can be a viable way to raise a family.

I realize the current administration is not likely to push hard for compliance, but aren't there federal laws with allowed water pollution levels enforced by the EPA? Maybe Wisconsin has stricter rules that are being waived (and can a governor just waive laws passed by the state's assembly?) but in an article this long some actual information on that would have been nice. Something like "The Wisconson state regulation of only 50ppb of chromium in discharge water will be waived and the federal rule of 60ppb will be used instead."

> Letting a Chinese company

Newsflash, American companies are do it too.

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company to boot...

Do you mean a Republic of China company?

It's obvious the poster meant that. Just like it's obvious that by a Chinese company, people mean a company from the People's Republic of China.

Sure, but have they been given a legal right to do it?

Foxconn is a Taiwanese company

Do you mean a Republic of China company?

Right in the middle of one of the state's tourism areas, no less.

The tourism areas are Door County and, to a lesser extent, the Kettle Moraine. Both are well north of where Foxconn is going to be --- it's much closer to Illinois than people are realizing. Racine and Kenosha are not tourist areas.

I grew up around Milwaukee. There are plenty of hot summer days where you'd love to go to Bradford Beach on Lake Michigan, and often it's out of the question because E. Coli levels are too high. We dump raw sewage into the lake. Nobody is concerned about Foxconn pollution.

edit: For the record, I was against this deal as soon as it was announced and still am, but not because of pollution.

I was thinking there of how the area around Racine is starting to attract people from northeastern Illinois who don't want to drive all the way to Door County. Not as big a destination, no, and probably never will be, but it's something.

I think that's fair, if you're coming from Chicago it might be nice to go around that area to get away on a Saturday or something.

That being said, it's definitely a developing area and becoming more urban. Oak Creek especially is becoming very nice. In 30 years or so, it would not surprise me if that whole stretch of 94 between Milwaukee and Chicago became urbanized.

Last time I drove 94 from Chicago to Milwaukee..it feels like it mostly is already.

Yeah, this thread is a bit out of date. Those southern counties bring in hundreds of millions through a combination of bedroom households (people who commute into the northern suburbs or into Milwaukee) and tourism.

Go take a look in the marinas in the counties between Milwaukee and Chicago. A lot of Big City money floating in those communities (and in condos/houses along the lakeside).

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