DNR sticks to deal giving Kohler Co. piece of Kohler-Andrae State Park

By RT Both, Sierra Club-Wisconsin Chapter Lands Team

Sierrans were elated last October when the Wisconsin Court of Appeals upheld earlier court decisions revoking Kohler Co.’s permit to build its fifth luxury golf course in Sheboygan County. The land where Kohler wants to build the course is part of a rare and valuable ecosystem known as Kohler-Andrae Lakeshore, which includes both the state park and Kohler-owned acreage to the north. It is the habitat of rare, threatened and endangered species and a stopover site for 10,000 migratory birds annually. The old-growth forest on the Kohler site has not been logged for 150 years, according to naturalist Jim Buchholz, and the dunes on the Lake Michigan shore are globally rare.

Elation soon turned to anxiety when locals discovered PVC pipe, commonly used in the installation of plumbing, sewage and water systems, and wooden stakes indicting the location of future golf course greens, at the site.
Since then, the focus of organizing efforts to preserve the habitat at Kohler-Andrae Lakeshore has turned to the Department of Natural Resources, which continues to hold open the land swap it made with Kohler in 2018. In exchange for 9 brownfield acres of no conservation value, Kohler Co. was given almost 5 acres inside the state park to build a 22,000-square-foot maintenance facility and a four-lane road with a rotary to route traffic to the proposed golf course.

According to Mary Faydash, president of Friends of the Black River Forest, legal counsel for the DNR told Christa Westerberg of the Madison firm Pines Bach, who has represented FBRF in its successful legal challenges of the Kohler plan, that this land swap deal is legal. The swap was done without public hearings and constitutes a major change to the park’s master plan. Under Wisconsin law, a state park master plan cannot be amended without holding a public hearing.

The Scott Walker DNR, under the leadership of businesswoman Cathy Stepp, initially made the deal with Kohler and allowed a sloppy environmental impact statement and skewed wetland mitigation permit application to sail through with no bureaucratic interference. However, the current DNR – rudderless due to the Legislature’s refusal to approve Gov. Tony Evers’ appointment for  DNR secretary – continues to insist on upholding it.

In response, the Sierra Club Wisconsin Chapter’s partners at FBRF plan an educational session at the park Sept. 29. Stephen Davis, professor of political science and environmental studies at Edgewood College, who has conducted a study of an untouched Kohler-Andrae Lakeshore’s considerable value to the state, will speak.

Too many Wisconsin residents remain unaware of Kohler Co.’s destructive plan for the park, which the company has repeatedly described as “minimalist” – despite the fact that it calls for harming a beautiful state park, clear-cutting an old-growth forest, bulldozing rare dunes, and potentially poisoning an aquifer on which hundreds of people depend for clean water. A sign-on letter is being circulated to local and national environmental groups and other interested parties to encourage the governor to intervene.

Look for updates in the Great Waters Group e-letter.