Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 78. Sunrise is 6:06 and sunset is 7:49 for 13 hours 43 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 54.4 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Community Development Authority meets at 5:30 PM and the Whitewater School Board at 6 PM.
On this day in 1975, NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
Sugar Creek, Wisconsin, is a Wisconsin town of about four thousand people. And yet, and yet, in the defense of their property rights, the residents of Sugar Creek are standing tall:
SUGAR CREEK — People in Sugar Creek packed into their town hall to share their frustrations with a planned high-voltage power line. Town officials say they are just as upset and claim they learned about the project after residents did.
The company Midcontinent Grid Solutions sent letters to several Sugar Creek property owners about the BECI Project, a 190-mile, 765-kilovolt power line they hope to develop between Illinois and western Wisconsin through a substation in Sugar Creek.
Rachel Catlett received the letter because the proposed power line could run right through part of her property.
“In the past week, it’s been like drinking the ocean trying to find as much information as we can,” Catlett said.
[…]
The town board decided to consider a resolution affirming their opposition against the BECI Project on Monday night.
Catlett was the only public speaker in the packed room.
“This is an ask to stand with every land owner already living with the uncertainty this project has created,” Catlett said to the town board.
The board unanimously approved the resolution against the power line project.
See Taj Simmons, Sugar Creek residents and town board unite against potential power line project through the community, TMJ4, August 18, 2026.
This is good reporting on nearby residents’ views on a major project in our area.
Note well, Whitewater: The BECI line has been moving through regional planning since at least 2024, and Midcontinent’s developers were publicly selected for the project in January. Yet Sugar Creek’s chairman says affected landowners received notices about possible structures on their land before town officials heard from the company. Whatever the developer may call its outreach, this is no model of collaboration with the people expected to surrender interests in their property.
More to come.
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Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), the Value of a UW-Whitewater Education, A New Ethics Ordinance, and Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
How Japan Averted an Even Worse Earthquake Disaster: