A water-related billfloating through the Legislature is causing waves. The measure would give lakefront property owners and developers more latitude to manage wetlands on their land and dredge their waterfront. Critics insist ecosystems and wetlands stand to suffer.
Mary Knipper sits in her cozy no-frills cottage on Lake Delavan in western Walworth County. The registered nurse had a full career before she and her husband moved here year-round.
The lake’s history as a vacation oasis dates back to the 1800s. “It was ballrooms, nightclubs, camps, hotels,” Knipper says.
Eventually cottages multiplied. All of that good lake living and a sea of septic systems took their toll.
“The ecosystem broke. Game fish were gone. We had huge, huge algae blooms. When I first came up here, it was so thick you could throw a rock in and it would stand on the surface,” Knipper says.
She says collaboration grew out of crisis.
“From the federal EPA all the way down to the local, the DNR Army Corps of Engineers, University of Wisconsin students, they did a study. They learned what is wrong with the lake and what are some of the options to bring it back,” Knipper says.
A barrage of treatments followed - from temporarily draining the lake to creating wetland systems upstream. $7 million dollars later, Delavan Lake showed signs of life.
Now Knipper fears the bill the Senate’s natural resources committee will review Wednesday morning could unravel what’s been restored.
The bill makes it easier for property owners’ to fill in wetlands and dredge stretches of the shoreline. An Assembly committee held a hearing January 5 and passed the bill out of committee on a party-line vote Tuesday.
“I have this movie on in my head. They’re dredging on both sides of me. I like to fish – well that habitat is going away there. I picture all these trucks as I look across the lake – why, why? I thought we didn’t own the water,” Knipper says.
Brad Boycks says his group didn’t directly lobby for the dredging provision of the bill. Boycks, executive director for the Wisconsin Builders Association, says it took time to get the bill’s wetlands provisions right.
“One problem with current law – it really limits what people can do with their own land, by saying instead of doing the driveway on the land you own, why don’t you buy a lot here or why don’t you get an easement and come in from the other way,” Boycks says.
Boycks maintains, the bill strikes a balance.
“Continue to protect the environment but to allow some greater flexibility to landowners to do things with their land. That could include remodeling a home, or building a new home, and we think that’s good for landowners in the state,” he says.
Boycks also wants jobs for the state’s builders. “Yes, we believe that the folks who build and remodel homes are an important part of the economy,” he says.
So far, development interests and those who favor individual property rights have carried the day, as majority Republicans have propelled the bill forward in the Legislature.
Mary Knipper hopes voices like hers deter the state from repeating Delavan Lake's near-death experience on Wisconsin's 15,000 lakes.
