MADISON – With one week until the Assembly finishes the 2025-26 legislative session, Republican legislators haven’t scheduled a vote on AB 635 & SB 628, the bipartisan Water Pollution Notification Act. For the one third of Wisconsinites who rely on private wells for their drinking water, this legislation is an important step in ensuring the health of their families.
This popular, common-sense legislation would require the DNR to notify local health officials when they’ve identified groundwater contamination and ensure those health officials have the tools they need to notify impacted Wisconsinites.
“Every Wisconsinite deserves equitable access to safe, affordable drinking water” said Peter Burress, Government Affairs Manager. “Rural Wisconsinites are sick and tired of being on their own when it comes to protecting their kids, homes, and businesses from contaminated drinking water. Our legislators need to step up. And since Republicans control both chambers, the life or death of this bill is in their hands. With one week left of the legislative session, Wisconsinites are eager to either thank them for passing this bill, or hold them accountable in November.”
There is widespread support for the bill:
- 69 legislators are co-sponsoring, including Republicans and Democrats from both the Senate and the Assembly.
- In November, 60 stakeholders sent a letter to the legislature expressing their support.
- Wisconsin Conservation Voters members and their coalition partners have talked with thousands of Wisconsinites across the state about this legislation and have found widespread support. They have hosted events in southeast, northeast, and northwest Wisconsin, sent nearly 900 emails to all 99 assembly districts, knocked on more than 1,000 doors with water testing kits, made 2,000 calls into priority districts, surveyed 2,395 Wisconsinites across the political spectrum, and run four digital ads across 17 districts that have collectively received nearly 15 million impressions.
This support is anchored in real stories about groundwater contamination impacts, from homeowners like Tarion O’Carroll, business owners like Larry Brenner, farmers like Ty Fisher and Sam Bowen, parents like Katy and Dennis Matzek, and local elected officials like Casey Crump.
“Yeah we got better, but it causes cancer and I don’t know what it did to my daughter, it could come up later,” said Sam Bowen, a farmer in Pierce County. Both Bowen and her 2-year-old daughter got extremely sick from nitrate contamination and only improved after they stopped drinking their tap water. “I don’t want other people to go through this…We’ve just gotta get that information out there.”
“People do have a right to know that if there is a spill somewhere, you could take precautions before the neighbors all get sick,” said Katy Matzek, a mom whose 3-year-old son was hospitalized from E. coli poisoning. “If we had known about this spill sooner, we would have never gotten to the point where our child could have died.”
“People are really concerned about health, because they know someone who died from cancer that’s next door,” said Stella Town Chair Casey Crump, whose community is dealing with PFAS detections 6,000 times higher than health-based standards. “The notification of county health departments, I think, is important because that’s kind of the go-to for everything related to public health for the county. And if they’re not aware of something that’s going on…then how are they gonna be able to properly provide public health services to the community?”
“Legislators need to understand that it’s not enough to say they support this policy. They need to make sure it’s voted on and becomes law,” said Burress. “We are counting on Republican legislators who co-sponsored this bill to urge Speaker Vos and Majority Leader LeMahieu to schedule it for a vote.”
