NE Neighborhood Land Use Committee

Notes from the Committee Meeting on 5-20-08

By Phyllis Hasbrouck

Present at the table: Alder Steve Arnold (Chair), Alder Andy Potts, Alder Jay Allen, Alder Bill Horns, Samuel Cooke (RCC Chair), Tom Hovel (Senior Planner), Randy Christianson (with Sveum Enterprises). Present around the edge of the room: about 18 consultants, neighbors, and observers.

I won't report everything, just some highlights and lowlights.

Frog and Toad Need More Space!

At the last meeting, developer Phil Sveum said that a 75 ft. buffer would be enough for the restored wetland, not the 300 ft. buffer that the city had proposed. He was answered today by Professor Joy Zedler (UW Madison) who spoke about the need for very wide buffer zones around streams and wetlands to protect amphibians and reptiles. She cited the work of Dr. Ray Semlitsch, who found (using transmitters) that amphibians travel 125.3 meters (370 ft.), from wetlands to terrestrial habitat.

Dr. Semlitsch suggested an aquatic buffer zone of up to 30 - 60 meters, then the core habitat at a width of 142 - 289 meters, and then a terrestrial buffer of 50 meters, for a total of somewhere between 222 meters and 399 meters (728 feet and 1309 feet).

Dr. Zedler also spoke of how buffers help protect wetlands from the negative effects of stormwater runoff, which are: excess water, excess nutrients, and excess sediment. At the Arboretum, Dr. Zedler's team has shown how tubs planted with 14 native species are filled with nothing but Reed Canary Grass (a highly invasive, non-native species) in just one season when exposed to these effects.

She displayed a map that showed how huge portions of the E-way and other Dane County wetlands were completely overrun with Reed Canary Grass and cattails, another invasive species.

Which Will Prevail: Parks or Subdivisions?

Then there was the whole curious matter of the clash between the Sveum plan and the Parks and Open Space Plan. Randy Christianson said that Sveum Enterprises had adjusted their plan to accommodate environmental corridors, and Anne Marie Kirsch (of Montgomery Associates, hired by Sveum Enterprises to do their water studies) showed a composite slide which I found confusing because, although I believe it was intended to reconcile the parks plan with the street plan, it didn't seem to show all of the proposed Parks Dept. areas on it. Jim Schreiber, a consultant for Sveum Enterprises, also showed a slide of the changes they had made to accommodate wildlife: I found them underwhelming.

Ed Bartell, City Forester, from the Fitchburg Parks & Forestry Department, showed a revised map of what they would like to have as parks and open space in the NE Neighborhood (NEN), and frankly, it doesn't leave a lot of room for houses! Bartell wants to have an assessment done on the tree line (~100 ft. wide) that goes north from Goodland Park Rd to the forest at the top of the hill. He said it may be a corridor for wildlife and may contain remnants of oak savanna.

They also want to preserve a diagonal band of recharge area in the northwestern part of Sveum's land, and to investigate if there is an Indian trail west of the tree line, as historical documents indicate.

Parks revised their map because at the last NEN Land Use Committee meeting on April 29, Jeff Kraemer of Natural Resources Consulting (hired by either Sveum Enterprises or Montgomery Associates) said that the soil tests that he had conducted showed that much of what the USDA maps listed as hydric soils (wetland soils) were not hydric at all. So Parks gave up trying to save them.

But a funny thing came to light at this meeting: Resource Conservation Committee Chair, Samuel Cooke, had shown the data to a soil scientist, and the scientist maintained that Kraemer was not accurately portraying the data. For example, Kraemer cited pit #14, located in "Lake Larsen" (the degraded wetland that held about 15 acres of open water this spring) as a site which had hydric soil. About a quarter mile west was pit #17, which he said was not hydric.

Cooke asked how Kraemer could be sure where the boundary was between hydric and non-hydric soils, using only two reference points. Kraemer replied that he had not mapped the hydric soils, but then expressed his opinion that they only existed in one area and not another, something that was not proven by his data.

I've noticed that it is very hard to pin consultants down. They are very smooth talkers and rarely (if ever) say, "I don't know," or "I see your point," or "I guess you're right about that." Instead, I hear things like "We are addressing those issues," or "It's very early to have that level of detail, we'll address that later," or "We are seeking to achieve a balance." So, Samuel Cooke deserves a lot of credit for following up and restating that the data did not reflect what Kraemer was saying.

Can Amphibians Read?

Jeff Kraemer also explained that the largest wetland buffer demanded by law in Wisconsin is 300 ft., for the Butler Gartersnake. But he said that it doesn't really have to be 300 ft. all around: it can be less in some places, as long as the total acreage in the buffer is equal to what it would have been had it been evenly laid out.

So, by extension, he felt it was all right if the western buffer of the "Lake Larsen" restored wetland were only 75 ft., because there would be ample open space to the north and the south. I wonder if they put up little signs in frog and toad language, reading "Go North or South and you'll find all the habitat you want. Don't try to cross this bike path 'cause you'll get crushed." And I wonder how well those signs work.

Eau Claire Shale and Infiltration

The question came up of whether or not the Eau Claire Shale Formation (an aquitard layer separating the upper and lower aquifers) exists under the Northeast Neighborhood. This was the subject of Dr. Cal DeWitt's presentation to the Common Council on Jan. 15, 2008. No one expressed any criticisms of Dr. DeWitt's logic or data, yet Rob Montgomery expressed his own belief that the shale does in fact exist here, and no one countered him.

Anne Marie Kirsch's explanation of the infiltration system, for the proposed Sveum development, didn't convince me of its short or long term effectiveness. She explained that the outlot raingardens (not necessarily on each block, as I thought I had heard before, but totaling five acres) would be maintained by the Neighborhood Association, and might have to be rehabbed in 10 years. If the raingardens stop working, and the Neighborhood Association stops functioning, will anyone care enough to rehab them? And how will that affect the wetlands, the groundwater, and Lake Waubesa?

She also said that the whole infiltration system wouldn't fully work until the upstream is stabilized, i.e. "some of the houses are built." (Why not all of the houses?) She explained that sediment running off a construction site could clog the system. This shocked me, because I know that the county has a stormwater ordinance that controls sediment runoff from construction sites very strictly. It's not supposed to happen.

Anyway, Kirsch conceded that the downhill retention ponds "may be a bit taxed at first." If the system doesn't work until the whole project is done, how much damage will have been done by the time the work is finished? Will there have been enough sediment, water and nutrients for Reed Canary Grass to completely take over the newly restored wetland.

If you care about how development decisions are made, you need to get involved. Please contact all of the Alders on the NEN Committee (Arnold, Allen, Potts and Horns) and tell them that you want decisions made for the good of the environment and the taxpayers. Developers perform a necessary function, but their monetary interests should not come before those of the city, the taxpayers, or the environment. If citizens don't call the alders, the only voices they hear are developers and their consultants!

Contact info for Alders can be found at http://www.city.fitchburg.wi.us/common_council/index.php

No Substitute for Water

Here’s a great line from one of my favorite comedians:

"You never know what you have until it's gone, and I wanted to know what I had, so I got rid of everything." - Steven Wright

Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. What would we really miss? What would we put in its place?

I certainly wouldn’t miss the closet full of project files that I ended up with after I sold my business. Come on… admit it… you also harbor a different, but equally useless, stash. Let’s face it; nobody alive today will ever ask for papers that are already 5 to 25 years old even if we did manage to remember we had them! (Exception: This excludes all documentation required by guys with guns… the IRS.)

In addition to the cardboard-clad “files” of paper, consider all those plastic-encased tubs of trinkets. It probably amounts to quite a pile of stuff weighing us down and not a collection of treasures that lifts our spirits. In fact, this assortment often distracts us from more important things. Oh sure, you have it closeted all right, but how many times are you going to move it from dwelling to dwelling or room to room over the course of your life?

Wouldn’t it be better to clear some of the clutter to create an opening for new thoughts and room for new interests (ok, new stacks of paper and plastic)?

I think Fitchburg residents have an equally useless and distracting set of clutter. (You knew I’d somehow relate this to the Blog’s theme… right?) We seem to shelter tattered ideas and drag them out from time to time instead of tossing them into the recycling bin. Sure we need to preserve some history (those breadcrumbs showing where we have been) but, above all, we need to pay attention to new information.

In case you haven’t guessed where I’m headed, this new input should serve as the basis for our revised vision of Fitchburg in the year 2030 or beyond. Instead of harping about the previous versions of the Future Urban Development plan, let’s listen to experts as they guide us in a new direction. We have more tools and more facts now than at any time in the past. This is both bad and good. We have more ways to destroy our habitat, our environment, our home. But, we also have more ways to measure this destruction and evaluate how to reverse the trend.

(1) One such reversal is to restore wetlands and protect streams and creeks through buffers and stream bank projects. (Water Quality)
(2) Another is to create (and live within) our Water Budget by knowing how much water we extract from the aquifer and how much we put back. (Water Quantity)

Although the Plan Commissioners have looked at farmland preservation and many other factors as they create a new Urban Growth Boundary, they have yet to factor in these two related concerns.

During his presentation on Sept. 4th (described in an earlier entry here), Professor Cal DeWitt recounted a conversation with someone at the Fish Hatchery. He described his research showing that adding a new municipal well probably reduced the flow of an old artesian well one mile away at Nevin Springs Fish Hatchery. The person responded to this discovery by saying “That well’s already built. Right? Then, we can’t do anything about it.” But, as Professor DeWitt pointed out, that’s the way our whole environment deteriorates, of course.

Let’s not destroy this wonderful area by a thousand tiny cuts to our support system.

Instead of only caring about the “top quality” wetlands, streams and lakes, we should be doing everything we can to restore all water resources to their original state. It is foolish to let some resources die an unnatural death at our hands just because we’ve let them degrade up until now. There are ways to protect them from further harm and also to slowly restore them to health.

Creeks and streams have a purpose and we need to appreciate their role. I was amazed to learn that once we’ve degraded a creek to certain level, the city no longer offers it the same protection as one that managed to escape that level of damage. Isn’t this backwards? Shouldn’t we be doing more to protect the one that needs it the most?

Wetlands help clean and regulate the water in our area and we need more of them not less. Our current guidelines protect the “high quality” wetlands more than those we’ve degraded to a greater extent. Again, this is backwards or at least short-sighted. Let’s strengthen the regulations to protect them all (when feasible). We should also identify areas that were once wetlands by evaluating the telltale hydric soils and restore them whenever possible to help prevent catastrophic floods and purify our water for decades to come.

A recent study, Strategic Watershed Restoration and Protection Plan for the West Waubesa Wetlands, by a UW–Madison class evaluated hydric soils in one watershed covering a large portion of Fitchburg along with parts of the Town of Dunn. The map below shows hydric soils identified in the study. For orientation, Hwy 14 runs north and south through the center of the map from McCoy Rd (top) to north of Hwy M (bottom). Click here to view a larger version of the map and for more information about the study, please email me at fitchburgvoices@gmail.com.

Although groundwater recharge has been considered by the Planning Commission, it has been analyzed under the assumption that we want the most “recharge” per acre so areas were considered more valuable if they scored in the top 25% based on infiltration criteria. Although their definition of good infiltration is debatable, even if it’s accurate it misses the point. Dr. Ken Bradbury, Groundwater Expert and Hydrogeologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, gave a presentation last week explaining the hydrogeology system which underlies the Yahara Basin, including Fitchburg, and describing how scientists model and predict underground water movements. During the Q&A discussion, he indicated that although some recharge areas may be considered more important than others, all are important because some areas recharge different water features than others.

See the problem? If we recharge areas that affect X and not those that affect Y, Y will suffer.

In addition to recharge, the quantity of water we pull from the aquifer is also a big concern. As reported in recent newspaper articles, Dane County is now drinking from a couple of its lakes because numerous high capacity wells in the area are drawing down the aquifer enough that the water is no longer flowing into some lakes and is instead seeping from the lakes into the aquifer.

Dr. Bradbury also stated that in all of Wisconsin there are two areas that are having serious problems with groundwater (Green Bay and Waukesha) and two others that are designated as Groundwater Attention Areas to be watched – the Little Plover River (which recently dried up for the first time ever) and… you guessed it… Dane County.

I recently saw the new documentary film The 11th Hour. Without giving away the “plot” (which you probably already know), I was struck by one very unusual and startling calculation; it would cost the world about $35 trillion a year to perform all of the functions that nature does for us free of charge. That’s something like twice the size of all the world’s economies! Talk about externalities! This free service includes things like turning carbon dioxide into oxygen and pollinating plants. I assume it would also include flood control and water purification.

So, shouldn’t we use the *Precautionary Principle as we plan for our city’s future? The natural world is not just priceless from an aesthetic standpoint but is way beyond reach in economic terms. Will we miss it when it’s gone? Of course! What would we put in its place? The truth is; we can’t afford to replace it even if we knew how!

Please let your Plan Commissioners and Alders know that you want them to protect all of our water resources as they plan for the future of Fitchburg.

Footnote:

* (From Wikipedia) “The Precautionary Principle is a moral and political principle which states that if an action or policy might cause severe or irreversible harm to the public, in the absence of a scientific consensus that harm would not ensue, the burden of proof falls on those who would advocate taking the action.”