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Wisconsin governor calls special session on Foxconn deal

AP PHOTO Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou, left, and Gov. Scott Walker hold the Wisconsin flag to celebrate their $10 billion investment to build a display panel plant in Wisconsin, at the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee, Wis., Thursday.

MADISON, Wis. — A wide array of Wisconsin environmental regulations would be waived in an effort to speed up construction of a $10 billion Foxconn electronics factory under a proposal Gov. Scott Walker unveiled Friday.

Walker called on the Republican-controlled Legislature to consider the measure as early as Tuesday. It also would borrow $252 million to finish rebuilding Interstate 94, which connects Milwaukee with Chicago and runs near where the massive display panel factory is expected to be built.

The plant would be the first outside of Asia to produce liquid crystal display monitors used in computers, televisions and other areas. Walker calls it a once-a-generation opportunity to transform Wisconsin’s economy.

The envisioned factory, expected to open in 2020, would be 20 million square feet on a campus that spans 1.56-square-miles in what Walker is calling the “Wisconn Valley.” It would initially employ 3,000 people, but the deal calls for that to grow to 13,000 within six years.

An exact location has not been determined, but Foxconn is looking at sites in Racine and Kenosha counties.

Walker took to the air on Friday in a campaign-style airplane tour to make the case that the entire state would benefit from a plant three-times the size of the Pentagon.

“There’s a whole lot of people out there scrambling to try and come up with a reason not to like this,” Walker said in Eau Claire. “I can tell you, that’s fine but I think they can go suck lemons. The rest of us are going to cheer and figure out how we get this thing going forward.”

Walker’s tour also took him to La Crosse, Eau Claire and Wausau.

The bill Walker unveiled Friday would allow Foxconn, without permits, to discharge dredged materials, fill wetlands, change the course of streams, build artificial bodies of water that connect with natural waterways and build on a riverbed or lakebed.

Foxconn would also be exempt from having to create a state environmental impact statement, something required for much smaller projects.

A number of environmental groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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