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Keeping it natural The Milwaukee River corridor, a leafy retreat bisecting the
city's east side, found a guardian this week in the Milwaukee Common Council. By WHITNEY GOULD
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Photo/Michael
Sears The green belt along the Milwaukee River begins just
south of North Ave., where a footbridge spans the waterway at the site of a
150-year-old dam that was demolished a decade ago. |
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Photo/Michael
Sears The stretch of river north of the North Ave. dam
includes: 33 species of fish; ospreys (shown above); black-crowned night
herons; eagles; river otters; muskrats. |
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Photo/Michael
Sears Ken Leinbach, director of the Urban Ecology Center at
Riverside Park, walks a nearby trail. Riverside is one of eight parks
lining the river south of Silver Spring Drive. |
About 70% of the 800 acres on both sides of the waterway is
already publicly owned, mostly by Milwaukee County, and laced with trails.
Now, with condos creeping northward as housing booms downtown, activists hope
to protect the remaining and largely unregulated 30%, creating Milwaukee's
linear version of Manhattan's Central Park.
The goal, they insist, is not to stop development altogether but
rather to minimize its impact with scenic easements, setbacks and
restrictions on building height that would preserve views. The state enacted
similar regulations in 1989 to protect the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway.
With gas prices soaring, it's important to safeguard natural
areas close to home, the advocates say.
"Plenty of people in Milwaukee will never make it out to
Yellowstone," says Ann Brummitt, a volunteer coordinator for Milwaukee's
Central Park. "For them, this is their wilderness experience."
Ken Leinbach, another organizer, puts it more bluntly.
"Someone canoeing down the river should not have to look up
and see someone brushing their teeth off the back balcony of a condo,"
says Leinbach, executive director of the Urban Ecology Center in Riverside
Park.
To developer Bob Monnat, such comments smack of elitism.
"You shouldn't preclude the enjoyment of the river for
people who aren't going to canoe it," says Monnat, chief operating
officer for the Mandel Group.
Mandel has been building condos along the river and hopes to
redevelop a former gas station property north of the North Ave. bridge,
probably for housing and retail.
In what is perhaps a foretaste of the debate to come, Brummitt
shoots back: "To say that only those who can afford condos will get a
view of the river is a different sort of elitism, it seems to me."
For the most part, though, the tussling has been civilized so
far. Monnat says his firm supports the objectives of the Milwaukee River Work
Group, the environmental coalition behind the plan, but fears that rigid
rules on setback and height would inhibit innovative design.
"They're saying, in effect, that you can design an ugly
building as long as we don't see it," he says.
Jim Plaisted, executive director of the East Side Business
Improvement District, says he generally likes the plan as long as it doesn't
stifle all development.
"This city was built on commerce along the river," he
notes. "Are we going to ignore that history? They talk about a Milwaukee
Central Park, but what do you see when you're in Central Park?
Buildings!"
Others criticize the plan for not going far enough.
"We should be looking at protecting all the void space
around that parkland that has the potential for development," says Kevin
Haley, a landscape architect with the Milwaukee County Parks Department.
Ald. Mike D'Amato, who represents the east side and sponsored
the special zoning district (the "Interim Study Conservation Overlay
Zone"), thinks there is a middle ground. But getting there, he admits,
will be tricky.
"There are people who will latch onto this and try to stop
all development," he says.
Like the spread of riverfront condos, the debate over the future
of the shoreline is itself a measure of the waterway's improving health.
In 1994, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District began
operation of its deep tunnel project, to hold sewage overflows during periods
of heavy rain. For years, such waste had been routinely dumped into the river
and Lake Michigan.
Three years later, an 1846 dam spanning the river at North Ave.
was removed, flushing out pollutants trapped behind it and exposing mud flats
that soon began to revegetate.
"It was a double whammy," Will Wawrzyn, a fisheries
biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, says of the two
forms of pollution control. Dissolved oxygen in the river went up, odors went
down and game fish such as walleye and smallmouth bass returned.
Today, he says, the waterway supports 33 species of fish,
compared with just six (mostly bottom-feeders such as carp) before 1997, and
attracts anglers from as far away as Iowa and the Dakotas. Ospreys,
black-crowned night herons, eagles, river otters and muskrats are regularly
spotted along the banks.
Yes, there are still some toxic hot spots, including PCB
deposits near Estabrook Park in Shorewood. But to Wawrzyn, who grew up in
Riverwest, the waterway's comeback is "just wonderful." It shows,
he says, how resilient the river is.
"You just have to give it a tender push," he says.
Advocacy groups have helped the process along. Friends of
Milwaukee's Rivers monitors water quality and encourages canoeists and
kayakers; the River Revitalization Foundation has bought up land for trails;
and the Urban Ecology Center provides hands-on education in river ecology to
30,000 youngsters each year. New footbridges on the site of the old North
Ave. dam and underneath the Holton St. viaduct have brought more people down
to the water.
The influx has been a double-edged sword. Pieter Godfrey, who
owns a building-reclamation business on the riverbank north of North Ave. and
lives there with his family, says dog-walkers, hikers and bicyclists have
made the riverfront much safer.
"There used to be a lot of vagrants and a lot of problems
down here," he recalls.
But more people have also meant more erosion.
"If we don't manage it, the riverfront will be loved to
death," warns Leinbach, of the Urban Ecology Center.
Another challenge: creating better defined access. Now, you can
get in at Caesar's Park, Riverside Park, Riverboat Road and a handful of
other spots, but the network of ad hoc trails crisscrossing the banks,
including some on private land, shows how problematic it can be to get down
to the river. Workshops this summer will help identify new access points,
says Lynn Broaddus, executive director of Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers.
Exactly how Milwaukee's Central Park will be managed isn't clear
yet. But Kimberly Gleffe, executive director of the River Revitalization
Foundation, says a likely vehicle is creation of a private, non-profit group
that would supplement work of the county Department of Parks, Recreation and
Culture. Interest from a $1 million endowment, which has yet to be raised,
would support that work.
No one is talking about manicuring this wild stretch of green;
the focus would be on maintaining and improving trails.
Sue Black, the county parks director, supports the plan
wholeheartedly. "It's part of what makes a livable city and an active,
healthy lifestyle," she says. "I don't see any downsides."
The stretch of river north of the North Ave. dam includes:
33 species of fish;
ospreys (shown below);
black-crowned
night herons;
eagles;
river otters;
muskrats
From the June 1, 2007 editions of the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
