6.1. SR 02-01-1993 - Laserfiche WebLink

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, ,r:.;,' I, :r Slar Tribunel Sunday/January 311993 .13A .. ~DRYING - -~~, UP ~Wetlands-rich Anoka County in the thick of constant clashes' By Mike Kaszuba "StafTWriter The bulldozers came rumbling through the wetlands in the city of ~Ramsey one morning last August, and developers Gilbert Menkveld llnd his son. Jack, had embarked on two idyllic-sounding subdivisions .,rknown as Ramsey Meadows and Sunny Ponds, -~:." Even though ~linnesota's new wet- ;Ii-rands conservation act was in place, ". both projects had gone through the Itity Council without raising an eye- '~brow. And the city's engineer, Steve ';'Jankowski, hadn't gone to any of the training sessions on how cities were to enforce the new law. :.s isn't a great tragedy." Jan. kowski said of the 1.3 acres of wet- lands filled in the Menkvelds' two projects. Throughout Anoka County. old hab- its, development pressures and a wariness toward wetlands protection 'are clashing daily with the move to preserve wetlands. Of the seven ;counties in the metropolitan area, Anoka has not on Iv the most wet- ;'.}ands acreage but also the highest percentage of wetlands - 27.5 per- cent of its total land. Sometimes the attitude toward wet- lands in Anoka County is bluntly -:Stated. When the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) an- nounced that Andover couldn't ex- tend Eldorado 5t. across a wetland, a local newspaper announced the deci- -sion in October with the headline, ," Wetland Threatens Street Project." ',- '. fOne DNR studv said that Anoka Countv had 4 t d of the 581 acres of I ~\M etlan'ds slated to be lost to develOP_j ment in the metro area from mid- .}988 to early last fall. fI' : .er DNR survey of the most e natural arC:lS in Anoka County showed th:lt between 1985 and 1990 dozens of wetlands sites Were harmed by draining. housing developments and even ofT-road vehicles. The contlict is likely to escalate as cities in the county'simultaneouslv try to attract economic development and enforce new wetlands laws. "Have vou ever driven around Ano- ka Cou~tv?" asked Pat McGuire of the DNR: "Nothing but wetlands. . . . We're going to have real problems there as development happens:' Much of the county'S land is flat and sandy, so few wetlands have distinc- , tive boundaries or lie in more tradi- tional bowl-shaped low spots. That, however. does not make them any less worthy to preservationists. "It's time we put our Iimitcd natural resources before the monetary ~ins ofland dc\dopcrs," s;ud Carol Del- monico. one of 27 ICller .....riters against a recent proposal to fill ~et- lands in Coon Rapids for development. The skirmishing over the county's wetlands has at times overwhelmed regulators. Cathy Brehm, a state con- servation official working in the county, wrote at least seven cease- and-desist orders against developers building in .....etlands in a four-month period ending in November. "Thank God. everything's freezing up." she said as cold .....eather heralded the annual slowdown in construction. Building permits have jumped in Co- lumbus Township as homeowners push north into a township whcre . nearfy 50 percent of all property is wetlands. . But the new state law. which focuses i on preserving or replacing wctlands ofless than an acre, has left home- owners such as Robert Jeukens c1ear- : Iy frustrated. He's trying to sell a 5- I acre property with two wetlands and says the law has scared ofTbuvers and will probably force him to reduce! his price. "They're going oyerboard:' he savs of wetlands protection. . In Coon Rapids. one of the most controvcrsial cases bt:fore the L.S. Army Corps of Engineers involves a permit requcst by dcveloper William Cooley to put a 100-room hotel. res- taurant and stores on a 26-acre plot. 14 of which are wetlands. Coole\'. who once co-owned the Mall or" America land in Bloomington. is mum on what he'll do if the Corps of Engineers denies a permit. "I think they really struggle with it:' Tim Fcll of the Corps of Engineers said of Anoka County's overall ap- proach to wetlands protection. "They want to attract development. . .. It's close to downtown Minneapolis and St, Paul. . . [but] it's gOt a lot of wetlands. " The county consistentlv ranked third in building permits. behind Dakota and Hennepin counties, from 1987 through 1990 before being nudged into fourth by Washington County last year. Since 1989, Coon Rapids has ranked either first or second among 132 municipalities in the met- ro area in the number of housing units built. Filling wetlands has been an issue in many of Anoka County's splashier projects, such as the National SportS Center in Blaine, which obtained a permit to fill about an acre of wet- land in 1988. But the more mundane projects have taken the larger toll over time. Per- mits have been matter-of-facth' is- sued to fill wetlands to make room for everything from a driveway in Coon Rapids to the upgrading of 2nd Av. in Lino Lakes to handle more traffic, Although all projects, at least on pa- Ii per, call for creating new wetlands to replace what's being destroyed, many projects don't have a happy ending. And often the smaller projects lead to I the biggest headaches.