OPP (Other People’s Pavement)

Shoreland  Zoning  rules are one of those things that feel seemingly impossible to talk about (though we sure have written about it a whole lot ).

They are obtuse rules filled with jargon like impervious surface standards and non-conforming structures but for all that, they matter a lot for a couple of reasons: they dictate what may or may not be done with developing private waterfront property and they serve to protect waters that belong to all of us. So it’s no surprise this is a sensitive topic. It also explains why it took nine years for DNR to create a rule that most stakeholders could live with and why more Wisconsin residents sent in comments for these rules than any other rule ever drafted by the agency.

This is also why it feels so patently unfair that the agency re-opened this rule two years later and has effectively rolled back those hard-fought compromises under the weak guise of “making small tweaks”. River Alliance staff recently presented an overview of the proposed changes to a watershed groups in the Wisconsin Dells to lay out the implications of these coming changes. You can read about it in this article covering Helen’s presentation: Stewards talk shoreline zoning, Wisconsin Dells Events.