Author: Wisconsin Public Radio

Postal workers in Wisconsin are optimistic that a new law overhauling the U.S. Postal Service and injecting more than $100 billion into the service will help put an end to years of instability in the service. A bipartisan bill to address the financially strapped service will save money by reducing USPS’s health care costs and eliminating a burdensome federal requirement that the service pre-fund retirees’ expenses. The bill also makes six-day delivery a matter of law, after some cost-cutting plans could have ended Saturday service, a plan that was announced and then rejected in 2013. “If this bill didn’t...

Federal officials said work to restore polluted sites on the Great Lakes, including in Wisconsin, will wrap up faster than expected after a $1 billion boost from the bipartisan infrastructure plan. President Joe Biden and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on February 17 that the funding will allow regulators to clean up 22 sites contaminated by historic industrial practices within the next decade. The U.S. and Canada designated 43 sites, known as Areas of Concern, or AOCs, among the most polluted across the Great Lakes in 1987. “This $1 billion investment is going to turbocharge the cleanup and...

Located just 2 miles north of downtown, Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood thrived for decades with vibrant small businesses and a nightlife scene that drew people from across racial lines. But, as was the case for many of the country’s minority neighborhoods, urban renewal programs of the 1960s and 1970s destroyed much of Bronzeville. Freeway construction in the 1960s led to the loss of more than 8,000 homes, churches and businesses — scattering the once tight-knit community across Milwaukee. Artist Mutòpe Johnson lived in Bronzeville until he was about 8 years old. Now in his late 60s, Johnson said Bronzeville had...