We were 10 minutes into our Friday night dinner cruise last week before I rested the rowboat’s oars in embarrassed silence, suddenly realizing we were gliding over a cold-water shrine to Wisconsin’s conservation ethic.
Somehow I had spaced out the site’s recent history in populist protection of natural resources. The oversight was mine. No one hid the site’s identity from me.
Our hosts -– longtime friends Kevin and Carole Clark of Wautoma -– said we’d be rowing and boat-picnicking on the Mecan River’s headwaters. And as my wife, Penny, helped me prepare our boat for launching, we stood within yards of asign reading “Mecan Springs State Natural Area.”
Finally, perhaps realizing I was overlooking the site’s significance, Kevin Clark pointed to a glistening black vein in the nearby fen.
“Listen,” he said. “That’s spring water pouring in. If you take off your shoes and wade it, your feet will be numb before you reach dry ground. This is where Perrier tried to build its high-capacity wells a few years ago.”
People are also reading…
Forehead smack.
That’s when I stilled the oars and absorbed our surroundings.
These 111 acres of public land and pristine water united anglers, farmers and earth-mamas alike in Winter 2000. Citizens by the thousands rallied against Perrier, the giant manufacturer of chic bottled water; and Tommy Thompson, perhaps the most popular governor in recent Wisconsin history.
“No Way, Perrier!”
“Go Away, Perrier!”
Talk about a common cause, bipartisan politics, and shunning the possibility of 250 jobs and a $100 million Perrier infusion, including a $35 million bottling plant.
By the time the caterwaul quieted the next year, Perrier’s exploration and business-development teams fled Wisconsin’s proffered tax breaks for southern Michigan. This was after they realized the folks of Adams County were no more willing to sell Big Spring’s pure groundwater than their neighbors in Waushara County were to sell the Mecan’s.
Twelve years later, former Department of Natural Resources Secretary George Meyer still calls Perrier’s foray into central Wisconsin one of the trickier minefields he navigated in his six years at the agency’s helm. The scars remind him of a principle inherited from previous agency chiefs like Lester P. Voight and Carroll “Buzz” Besadny:
An informed public is the ultimate guarantor and protector of Wisconsin’s natural resources.
“You can always end up with bad legislators, governors, DNR secretaries or Natural Resources Board members,” Meyer said. “Even if they’re all stacked against you, Wisconsin’s air, land, water, fish and wildlife will be safe if you have public involvement. DNR staff should never forget that.”
Perrier’s geologists, lobbyists and business-development team first sought help in 1999 from the Thompson administration in obtaining groundwater permits. Besides high-capacity wells, Perrier proposed building a monstrous facility to process and truck Wisconsin water to market.
The only way the DNR could have denied the permits was to prove the pumps would deplete or harm a municipal water supply, but there’s no sizable community nearby.
“They wanted their wells on state land, and I made the tactical decision to buy time by keeping them there,” Meyer said. “Given the groundwater laws at the time, we couldn’t deny them a permit. But if they stayed on public land, we could place more restrictions on them. We didn’t want to push them to private property.”
Meyer explained his reasoning to concerned DNR fish managers, who feared the project would ruin the Mecan’s water table and Class 1 trout fishery. As word percolated within the agency about Perrier’s plans and why the DNR was “cooperating,” details filtered to nearby retired DNR biologists such as Mike Primising, Elward Engle and Bob Hunt.
Hunt, in turn, tipped off an Appleton Post-Crescent reporter, who broke the news in mid-January 2000. The resulting explosion consumed Trout Unlimited, local legislators, downstream landowners and other fire-breathers. By March 2000, Perrier shifted its efforts to Adams County. Those options collapsed the next year amid more protests. Perrier left Wisconsin for good in 2001.
That’s a story to paste into scrapbooks, and share with kids and grandkids. It’s also one to contemplate as you fish trout, paddle kayaks or row cedar-boats on the upper Mecan.
As you peer into Mecan Springs’ clear waters and see cold plumes puffing sand from the dimpled bottom, you ponder what we would have lost had citizens forsaken their liquid treasures.
Contact Patrick Durkin, a free-lance writer who covers outdoors recreation for the Wisconsin State Journal, at patrickdurkin@charter.net or write to him at 721 Wesley St., Waupaca, WI 54981.
