Edgwater Pier Hearing Today

24 hours notice, informational hearing tonight . . . sigh. You have 10 days to get your written comments in to wendy.peich@wisconsin.gov. Hearing is “5:30 pm on Wednesday, June 25th, 2014 to be located at the WDNR Fitchburg Service Center, 3911 Fish Hatchery Road, Fitchburg, in the Gathering Waters conference room.” Sweep, sweep, under the rug. Equity and public participation . . . looks good in a report, no need for it in real life. I’m sure no low income or people of color are affected by this . . . move along . . .

More lazy blogging, but when community members write this stuff so well, no need to redo . . . this was sent out yesterday.

In 2010, when the Edgewater debate was raging in Madison’s city hall, the developer showed renderings of the project that included a large pier – much larger than was previously there.

At the time, there were questions about what size pier the DNR would actually allow. See:
Developer: Edgewater Hotel Will Have Signature Pier
and
Laptop City Hall: DNR weighs in on Edgewater pier issue : Ct

Just today, the DNR issued a news release that there’s a public hearing tomorrow (lots of notice eh?) for an Edgewater pier (see links at bottom). The news release says:
“Edgewater Hotel, LLC, is proposing a 42-slip pier associated with the Edgewater Hotel redevelopment project. The proposed structure includes a 150-foot long fixed permanent pier and two 210-foot long floating docks. The structure is designed to provide docking slips for hotel guests and public access. ”

The pier sounds like it will be quite a large affair on the bed of Lake Mendota.

Does the DNR consider big piers more in the public interest than they did in 2010?

Back in 2004, John Gard et. al. pushed through the so-called “Job Creation Act” which attempted to ease the difficulty in getting permits for large piers, especially permanent piers. While Governor Doyle seemed to go along with Gard (remember the dust-up when Peg Lautenshlager filed a public request of Doyle for drafts of the act?), one area where Doyle didn’t cave was in pier permitting which Doyle slowed with administrative rules. Caryl Terrell of Sierra Club and George Meyer of WWF opposed much of Job Creation Act which was a giveaway of the public trust to realtors.

Now there’s Cathy Stepp and the public has a one day hearing notice for a major pier on the bed of Lake Mendota.

As of tonight (and contrary to the DNR info in the Greentier link below) there does not appear to be any information on the DNR’s permit search site (https://permits.dnr.wi.gov/water/SitePages/Permit%20Search.aspx) regarding an application for an Edgewater pier. I wonder if Doyle’s DNR provided only the minimum notice for a big projection into the public trust like this pier.

John Jacobs

You have 10 days to get your written comments in to wendy.peich@wisconsin.gov.