More than 60 people showed up at the September 8 Dane County Zoning and Land Regulation Committee meeting to urge the committee to revoke the permit for Enbridge’s Line 61 expansion and impose a $25 million trust fund requirement. The trust fund requirement would have replaced the environmental impairment liability insurance that the committee unanimously voted to require as a condition of the permit issued last April—a requirement nullified in July by the GOP Legislature via a provision anonymously slipped into the state’s budget bill at the 11th hour.

The Zoning Committee declined to act out of fear that the Legislature would retaliate not just by banning the trust fund requirement, but also by approving a pending proposal to rescind the county’s zoning authority altogether. A Madison.com news article—and a slew of spinoff articles showing up in local, regional, and national press outlets in the ensuing days—concluded that the issue is dead. But like our allies in the Midwest and beyond, we’re in this for the long haul.

If you’re interested in details of the Dane County struggle, see 350 Madison’s petition to the Zoning Committee and our legal brief decimating the objections of the county’s assistant corporation counsel.