URGENT: Save the Watten Ponds Environmental Review

City Staff has rolled back much of the Environmental Review. Ask the Council to do a proper review!

Monday's Council Meeting: October 26, 7:00 PM, Shorewood City Hall.

Trees Will Fall Soon

The City Council approved an environmental review for the Watten Ponds developments. City Staff says that the review doesn't apply to 3 of the 4 properties that the developer controls, even though it's all the same woods. The developer has combined properties to build and City Staff won't tell us if they've issued building permits for those properties. Assume they have. That means bulldozers could be in the Big Woods tomorrow.

Staff says the left is under the environmental review but the right isn't and can be clear cut at any time. Does that make sense?

Why it matters

The woods and wetland behind Watten Ponds don't stop at a property line. The water crosses it. Frogs spend the winter frozen in the leaf litter under the trees and walk to the marsh in March. Wood duck hens nest in hollow trees and walk their broods down to the water. Turtles leave the water in summer and cross upland to lay eggs. Deer cross the road at the same two places, year after year. Some of the oaks out there came up before the Civil War.

The development goes through the middle of it.

A review that looks at one parcel can only tell you about one parcel. It simply won't have asked the question that matters, which is what happens to the whole thing when you cut it in half.

And there's a reason it has to be Monday

While an environmental review is pending, the City cannot issue permits or allow work to begin on the project under review. That protection is real. It is also exactly as wide as the review itself.

Whatever is left outside the scope isn't protected by it. A narrow scope is not just a narrower study — it's a narrower shield.

What we're asking for

That the environmental review cover all four properties — the full connected woods and wetland, not one lot in the middle of it.

That's the whole ask. One sentence.

It's what the Council approved, before City Staff decided to roll it back.

What we're not asking for

We are not asking the Council to deny this project. That is a different question for a different night. Nobody has to be wrong, and nobody has to be a villain, for the Council to say: look at all of it.

How to help

Come Monday. Monday, October 26, 7:00 PM, Shorewood City Hall. Being in the room is worth more than anything else you can do.

Speak, if you want to. Two minutes is plenty, and you don't need to know any law. Say what you've seen out there — what crosses your yard, what you hear in the spring, why you chose to live in Shorewood instead of somewhere else. Firsthand beats general every time. Then end with the one sentence above.

If you'd rather not speak, come anyway and sit down. A full room is an argument.

More on what's actually living out there: It Isn't Just Trees

See more about this topic: The Amazing Shrinking Environmental Review