Guest blog reminder: Kohler golf course to take state park land

We've had this sign in our yard for years. 

It was made by Friends of the Black River Forest, the Sheboygan-area grassroots organization trying to stop the construction of a privately-owned golf course along Lake Michigan which will clearcut tens of thousands of trees, tear out wildlife and migrating bird habitat, destroy rare sand dunes, fill wetlands and desecrate ancient Native American relics and burial grounds, a government evaluation shows.

People often stop by as did a group Friday night when I was tending to the yard to ask what the sign's all about. 

When I explained it, and said the plan - which public agencies have already approved - requires taking acreage inside Kohler Andrae State Park, a woman in the group said.

"Kohler Andrae?," she asked, incredulously? "I don't need to hear anything more."

And this is the problem; people still don't know this could happen because the site is just outside major media markets, and perhaps because such a possibility is simply unthinkable when we now know so much about preservation, open space, clean water, sustaining forests, and their relationships to climate change, and other pressures on Lake Michigan.

And because most large Wisconsin environmental groups are headquartered in Madison and Milwaukee and have not had the focus or resources to get this project on their priority lists.

So to continue expanding the discussion and keeping a record let me today add three things:

1. This recent commentary about the project among scores of blog posts on this site  dating to 2014:

Project opponents, Mother Nature make the case vs. shoreline golf project

2. This very important piece posted Saturday by the investigative media site WisconsinWatch: 

Ancient human remains unearthed at proposed Kohler golf course site in Wisconsin

The rapidly eroding Lake Michigan shoreline is also raising questions about the future of the controversial project adjacent to Kohler-Andrae State Park  

3. This guest post submitted by Erik Thelan, a project opponent and activist with Friends of the Black River Forest.

Tear a corner off your park sticker, because you've lost the northern hunk of Kohler Andrae State Park to the Kohler company for their fifth luxury golf course.   

Yep, the DNR gave them 6.47 acres of our state park -- that's the size of five football fields -- so the golf folks could build a roundabout (like we really need one more of those) and a 22,000 square foot maintenance shed (picture a warehouse that takes up half a football field, then fill it with herbicide, fuel, and lawn mowers).  

While you're trimming your park sticker, think about how much you're going to miss the sand beach at the state park. Because when the golf folks armor their mile of Lake Michigan shoreline to keep their greens and fairways from washing away, the adjacent state park beaches will disappear. 

How do we know this?  Because the same thing happened when the geniuses at Concordia University armored their shoreline: the sand transport cycle was disrupted, and neighbors to the south suffered a scary amount of erosion as a result. The Journal Sentinel reported on the lawsuits: just google Concordia University Bluff Failures.  

Right now the Kohler folks insist that they are going to leave the shoreline alone. The current plans show silt fences along the Lake Michigan shoreline.  No kidding. That's like using a paper towel for a parachute. Rest assured, once construction starts, the feigned ignorance will vanish, the developer will declare an emergency, and they will drop boulders along the shoreline. 

Why this feigned ignorance now? Because if the golf course proposal had included the inevitable revetments, the permit process would be even more controversial and more bogged down. 

Finally, if your cousins are planning to camp at Kohler Andrae, tell them to expect to wake up early, because Kohler Hospitality will be firing up their mowers at the crack of dawn to get the greens and fairways looking nice for the early golfers.  

Go ahead and tell me that the DNR traded our state natural area fair and square, and that in this country people can do whatever they please with their own property. We'll talk again when your billionaire neighbor builds a Nascar short track alongside your patio. Or maybe you'll tell me that I only paid $28 for my park sticker, so what did I expect would happen when someone came along with a better offer? 

And there it is: the state park belongs to all of us...until it doesn't.