Over the last 50 years family farms have struggled to stay afloat in a market dominated by large-scale agribusinesses. According to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, more than 4 million U.S. farms have been lost, at an average rate of 219 farms a day, since 1960. Farms that have been owned by families for generations are lost because corn, milk or cattle have dropped in value in an agricultural economy flooded with cheap produce, dairy and livestock harvested from corporate farms.

People look at Lake Michigan and it looks like an ocean,” said Pat Henderson, deputy secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “And they wonder why they should conserve water.” But Henderson said that concerns about the availability of Great Lakes water are real. He noted that the Great Lakes account for 20% of the world’s fresh water—70% exists in the polar ice cap—but climate change, industry, rising population levels and a lack of awareness are putting pressure on this critical natural resource.

How much water do you use every day? In addition to the water you consume in the most obvious ways—showering, watering your lawn or vacationing at water parks—water also appears in everyday consumer goods and food. According to data collected by H2O Conserve, here’s how much water...

Their names are among the biggest and finest hospitals in the state—including Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Columbia St. Mary’s— and their television commercials play almost constantly as they compete for patients . . .

It looks like Milwaukeeans will have an easier time lodging complaints about unnecessarily loud car stereos, now that a Milwaukee Common Council committee voted to expand South Side Ald. Bob Donovan’s “Operation Bass Busters.” “We are not interested in chasing after you, but if we have to, by God, we will,” the always quotable Donovan vowed.

Riverkeeper Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called it “a giant fish-killing machine,” but the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) just gave a preliminary OK to We Energies’ plan to build a 1.5-mile-long water-intake pipe into Lake Michigan.

“The DOT’s whole approach to how we move people and goods around for the next 30 to 50 years just reflects a total disconnect with everything that’s happening around us,” Grzezinski said.

Ask any employer what’s keeping him or her up at night, and you’ll likely hear, “The rising cost of health care.” In 2007, total national health expenditures rose nearly 7%—twice the rate of inflation, according to The National Coalition on Health Care.

A new draft of the Great Lakes Basin Compact has been tentatively agreed to by Gov. Jim Doyle, Senate Democrats and once-reluctant Assembly Republicans. Heralded as a “compromise” when it was announced last week in New Berlin...

Although the statewide smoking ban was held up in the state Legislature this past session, it still seems to be popular among voters. A just-released survey from Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) and St. Norbert College found that 41% of respondents want a complete ban, now.

What’s the best way to ensure that local industries are not sending a harmful amount of chemicals into our sewerage system? If you’re a river-watchdog group, you want the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) to force businesses to stay within the guidelines by levying fines and penalties on...

Last week, Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) and the chair of the Natural Resources Committee, state Rep. Scott Gunderson (R-Waterford), sent a kind letter to the president of the Ohio state Senate: Let’s work together, it said, to protect the Great Lakes.