As I was camping in Governor Dodge State Park this weekend I got a taste of what many of the other folks who were with me in western Wisconsin were having to deal with — torrential rains.

Not only did it suck to camp in the rain, but every time I took a step in my tent I would feel my feet sink two feet into the mud. Fortunately the bottom of my tent held strong and I didn’t get water in the tent but we were confined to the tent for way too much of the weekend. Yes, it was good for sleeping but it sucked for camping.

But a bad weekend of camping was just an inconvenience for me. There were many people who found their homes were flooded and millions of dollars in damage occurred over the weekend. While my tent will dry in the garage, their lives will continue to be turned upside down. They will struggle to rebuild and they will have to work for months, if not years, to reacquire that which they have lost.

Good planning could have prevented some of the damage.

Consider what has happened in the last 20 years. The DNR has sold wetland credits to developers. Case in point — there is some land near 124th and Brown Deer road that could not be developed because it falls within a wetland. Several years ago the DNR allowed the developer to develop the land as long as they took some land in another area of Wisconsin and made that area a wetland.

The problem?

It’s not even in the same watershed!

Water needs a place to collect and wetlands are natures way of holding all of the water from spilling into other areas very fast. When you take away a wetland, or part of a wetland it leaves no place for the water to go. This creates a problem that results in flooding.

This problem highlights one of the benefits of the public intervenor — also known as Wisconsin’s environmental watchdog. At one time, it would go so far as to sue the DNR if it did things that made the environment worse off. Former Governor Tommy Thompson gutted the budget of the public intervenor, essentially shutting it down. With no funding, the public intervenor had to be shut down.

One has to wonder, would the damage in the southwestern part of our state have been lessened had we still had the public intervenor?