May 4, 2023 at 1:32 p.m.
Pelican River Forest committee slogs toward opposition resolution
Roach: Mining is the new 'boogeyman'
It appears opposition to the easement purchase is solid and the coming resolution will reflect that sentiment. The consensus was that it will not be a correction of the resolution presented at the February county board meeting, but an entirely new one, perhaps based on resolutions of opposition passed by the Sugar Camp and Monico town boards.
That resoluteness comes at a time when supporters of using the state's Stewardship fund to pay for the DNR's purchase of the easement - the state would pony up $4 million of the total $15.5 million price tag - are continuing their efforts to complete the deal, despite a vote by the legislature's Joint Finance Committee to kill the Stewardship funding.
If the proponents succeed, they would swoop up 56,000 more acres into an easement that would preclude any development of the land forever. The entire project boundary would encompass 70,000 acres.
To be sure, the prospect of the easement purchase is anything but dead - the JFC could change its mind; Gov. Tony Evers could find other funds; and the DNR has even floated the idea of fundraising-and recently easement supporters have come up with a new reason to block economic development within the project boundary forever: the prospect that mining companies will mine and plunder the property if the easement bid fails.
The issue has been raised in Langlade County as that county considers a resolution about the easement, and it surfaced at this week's Oneida County easement committee meeting. For one, Oneida County supervisor Linnaea Newman said that was the main concern her constituents were expressing.
"Just one thing that the easement would change is that mining would occur on that property in perpetuity," Newman said. "And I think that means a lot to a lot of my constituents. I don't know if all of yours have been filling up your inbox as much as mine have been filling up my inboxes. But that's the main concern that I'm getting, is that we don't want the mining."
Mining rules might be in place to provide for safe mining, Newman said, but the mining industry routinely ignores them.
"Mines invariably tend to break the rules," she said. "That's their history. So what we're looking for in the future is pretty much the same thing we've got from them in the past. And if you're a mining company and you pollute, well the only thing you have to do is close your doors and you're no longer responsible because the business no longer exists and you can start a business tomorrow in Canada under another name, and you continue to do what you've always done. So that is a significant difference that a lot of people are concerned about."
But during the meeting supervisor Mike Roach called the mining issue just a new tactic to scare people into supporting the easement.
"It's a boogeyman story," Roach said. "I worked at mines. ... Some of the cleanest water comes out of a mine. So that's a boogeyman story."
There have been problems with mining, Roach said, but those issues were addressed and there are rules in place to protect the water. And, at another juncture, Roach said even environmental solutions are mining-dependent.
"You want electric cars and you have all these batteries," he said. "Well guess what? We're mining them over in China and there's people dying and there's all kinds of bad stuff, but it's not in our backyard. I don't want a gravel pit next to my property anymore than anybody else does, but I like driving on paved roads."
Roach said people should not be misled by the boogeyman tactic.
"I won't fall for that because it just hasn't been proven," he said.
Supervisor Bob Almekinder rhetorically asked if Newman could name one thing in her life that was not affected by mining -the love of her dog, she answered, just as rhetorically - and he suggested mining was safer here because of the rules in place.
"But we'll look the other way, and we'll get our stuff from all around where there are no rules and that's okay cause it's not in my backyard," he said. He also pointed to Eagle Mine operations (owned by Lundin Mining) near Marquette, Michigan, as an example of safe mining.
Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski said he was not aware of concerns about mining until recently.
"First of all mining is a part of this and it didn't get talked about until I was down in Langlade County and then all of a sudden they're talking about strip mining and it's another scare treatment," Holewinski said.
Holewinski urged other supervisors to read the county ordinance governing the process by which any mine must be approved because it is a rigorous process.
Lack of communications
Holewinski said mining was just one of the things being baked into the easement structure that he had not been aware of - the agreement would forbid mineral exploration, limit the size of gravel pits, 2,000-acre logging blocks - and he said the problem was a lack of communication.
"The problem we've had with this is nobody's talked to us," he said. "They know this is going on. [DNR secretary] Adam Payne called and talked to me about it, but nothing's happened since but a lot of apologies from the DNR."
Holewinski said DNR real estate chief Jim Lemke apologized that town resolutions of opposition never made it to the Natural Resources Board (NRB) before the board voted to approve funding for the project, claiming he was unaware of their existence at the time of the NRB board meeting.
"Jim said he didn't lie to the board, but he certainly didn't go check," he said. "The statute says that you have to inform the counties and the affected towns, and he didn't go check to see if one town or one county said we're for this, we're against this. But he didn't lie to the board. What we're looking for here is to get a meeting with people and sit down and give our thoughts."
At the committee meeting, Oneida County Economic Development executive director Jeff Verdoorn reiterated his belief that the easement purchase would not boost Oneida County economically. For one thing, Verdoorn said the easement would not only lock everything in place forever, it would lower the value of the land.
"The appraisers from the Wisconsin DNR determined the highest and best use of the property is industrial forest, so that's really maintaining the status quo," Verdoorn said. "These same appraisers estimated that the easement would reduce the market value of the property by as much as $570 an acre. The appraisers also estimate the easement would reduce the value of the total forest by between $14.5 million and $17.7 million. The DNR uses the lower value in calculating the value of the easement itself and then they're adding a million dollars for the endowment for the roads and that's where the $15.5 million comes from. So again, the Conservation Fund is not providing an endowment. The DNR is with the tax dollars. So if you look at all that from an economic development standpoint, locking the land in place would mean it would stay exactly the way it is in terms of income now and forever."
Verdoorn also addressed the issue of low-density tourism, which he says is the type of tourism the easement purchase would drive.
"From the standpoint of hiking and hunting, that's low density," he said. "There's just not a lot of people that are using the land ... and typically they're also local. So people are up here. So by opening up these 70 miles of roads, I don't expect there to be an improvement in tourism. There'd be the tourism you have now. So again, there's just not a lot of economic improvement that easement would provide."
Roach agreed.
"I've always said I like mountain biking, but from an economic standpoint those kinds of sports I don't see bringing the same money to the community as snowmobiles," he said. "When a snowmobiler goes out riding, he goes to taverns, he has breakfast, lunch, and supper, he spends his money in our community, and maybe hits a tree on the way home and he goes and buys a new sled in the morning. That guy dumps money into our community."
But despite what supporters say, Roach said, there's no evidence there's going to be a stream of snowmobilers and four-wheelers coming in, spending a lot of money.
Verdoorn said he did not believe things would change one way or another.
"I think the way I would describe it is that it's just not going to change with or without the easement," he said. "It's because the way the land is configured."
Verdoorn said it has been appraised as a working forest for a hundred years.
"There's no driver to make it any different at this point," he said. "So from the economic development standpoint, at least now and for the foreseeable future, I don't see any difference with or without the easement, and you're spending $15.5 million."
Roach said low-density tourism was a different creature.
"It's not like building a marina or something," he said. "There's something about a restaurant that people are going to come into our community. This is seemingly more and more low density for those who don't have land to hunt on."
Roach cited public comment that some people believe the government should supply a place to hunt.
"And that's not right," he said. "I saw a gentleman speak here from Pelican River Forest the first day and he got up and he said, 'I traveled around the world and trust me, I've been in all these countries and there's places people can't even hunt now and they have to buy their own land.'"
Roach said that is exactly what they should do.
"Don't rely on government so you can have fun," he said. "We have state parks, we have federal parks, we have all that stuff. People should be able to buy their own land to hunt. It's a bonus if I can hunt on county land or state land, but it's something I don't hang my hat on and say, 'I wish the government would buy more land so I could hunt.' I don't believe in that."
Supervisor Steven Schreier said the committee should draft and approve a resolution that focused on the biggest thorn in the county's side - the lack of communication with state officials and the inadequacy of details about was actually being purchased.
"I don't see any value in reintroducing the resolution that we looked at in February," Schreier said. "Frankly, I think the best thing you can do is focus on what were the things that made you unhappy about this whole process, and the process was no communication. That's probably supposed to be the main purpose of what's going on here today or your past meetings was you have an open discussion, open communication."
Schreier said he had no problem wording a resolution to say that certain things needed to be mandated.
"We need these things to be written in stone," he said of what could be included. "They need to happen. ... What are we not happy with?"
Toward the end, Roach said that, after multiple meetings on the matter and multiple public comment sessions, he had heard nothing new to change his mind opposing the project.
In the beginning, Roach said, when he first heard about the proposed easement purchase, he had thought, like many people, that it was a good idea.
"That was my first thought, that I love the Northwoods," he said. "I love clean air, clean water. I don't want any more buildings. Most of the people I talked to, they felt the same way."
But Roach said he realized that that attitude was selfish.
"That quickly changed," he said. "And then after you talked to [other people] about it, that 'hey we have state forest, we have federal forest, we have hunting areas, we have county land. How much more do you want them to keep doing?' Is there phase three next year? Is that going to be okay too? Where do you end?"
Committee chairman Robert Briggs will draft the resolution and send it to committee members ahead of the next meeting on May 9.
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