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| 9/21/2007 5:05:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article | Pull the DNR zipper, out pops Jack the Ripper
Things have been pretty quiet on the property-rights streets for a while now. Seems like the wholesale butchering of property rights - what amounted to a serious assault on the ability of homeowners to use their property as they should constitutionally be able to do - has quieted down in the past few years.
Oh sure, somewhere in the backwaters the DNR was still hunting down individual homeowners and slicing and dicing them up, a serial killer no one could quite catch and put away, but their screams have been far away and about as faint as a distant neighbor in the middle of the night: You hear her, slightly, through the pillow, and it sounds like she's screaming, but in an instant she has signed off from the current that carried her to you.
You aren't really sure it's another attack, and, after all, some say the serial-killer DNR is long gone, cured. A new DNR is here, they say. A kinder, gentler, more friendly and law-abiding DNR.
Sorry to break the bad news, but it might still be wise to sleep with one eye open if you're a property owner, for in the early fall of 2007 our property-rights serial killer is still among us, and its victims' screams are just as blood-curdling. It's just that the DNR, after having been public enemy number one for so many years, has tried to go underground with its agenda of aestheticism and environmental terror.
They have not tried to change, or listen to the people. The only lesson they've appeared to learn is that they must be even more deceitful than before.
The problem with any such strategy is that it cannot possibly be concealed for long, and so it was no surprise to see our old DNR deceivers and appeasers - our very own bureaucratic Jack the Ripper, with its venomous hatred of democratic values - back at work in their attempts to change the operation orders of Rest Lake Dam on the Manitowish Chain of Lakes.
The allegations against the DNR are familiar ones. For example, the Manitowish Chain Defense Fund, a coalition of entities opposed to the DNR's attempts to change water flow through the dam, has accused the agency of becoming confrontational and manipulating data to get its way.
The DNR wants more water flowing through the dam and out of the lakes - it says to revive the river's sturgeon population - but those opposed say the increased water flow the DNR wants (and has already made happen without any actual changes in the dam order) far exceeds any rational level and artificially forces too much water out of the chain, lowering lake levels drastically.
To get their way, the DNR has forced Xcel Energy, which operates the dam, to violate the current dam order, which mandates that the chain have a minimum water level of seven feet, three inches between July 1 and Sept. 1. The lake levels this past summer were more than a foot below that minimum.
Then, too, the DNR resorted to its old modus operandi of voodoo science to come up with a statutory water flow requirement exactly equal to - you guessed it - the very number the agency had decided they wanted, 50 cubic feet per second. That this new math contradicted the agency's old math (in May 1974 the DNR maintained that 25 cfs met the statutory requirement) mattered not to the DNR chiefs, even though, in practical terms, it meant that the water flow into the chain would have had to have doubled in just 33 years - an incredible contention, to say the least.
To top things off, it was discovered that the DNR knew from its own water flow measurements that Xcel Energy was inadvertently already putting more water through the dam than the DNR was trying to achieve.
They didn't say a word.
Nor did they mention to the public an internal DNR email obtained by the defense fund's attorney, Michael Fitzpatrick, in which a DNR official admitted the agency didn't have a clue what effects the increased flow of water would have on the sturgeon population.
In the words of Ronald Reagan: Well, there they go again.
All this begs several important questions.
First, where is the new secretary of the DNR, Matt Frank? Many of us have been wondering about this fellow, and whether he will attempt change inside the agency or go along to get along.
It now looks as if he is going to go along with the bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy's favorite puppet, Jim Doyle, and go wherever they tell him to. They sure didn't tell him to go to the DNR's recent Rest Lake Dam open house, a gathering that was attended by a minimum of 500 concerned residents.
What a great chance that would have been to talk with actual DNR consumers (that's what the bureaucrats like to call real people) instead of just being spoon-fed by the bureaucrats themselves. But, unlike his ice-cream eating public relations junket with the governor to the Northwoods several weeks ago, Mr. Frank was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe the DNR should borrow a page from First Lady Jessica Doyle and sponsor a Where is Matt Frank? contest.
We really want to know. (Maybe the former corrections' chief only likes such large crowds if they're locked up.)
Then there is the question of motive. What is really behind the DNR's action? It's obvious the agency isn't listening to public opinion, and it's equally obvious they aren't listening to their own scientists. In addition to the aforementioned email, Jeff Roth, a DNR fisheries biologist who is an advocate for the sturgeon DNR project, says they only need enough water to go over the dam and into the river during spring spawning - a period of about three weeks in May, not all the time, as the DNR is doing.
What's more, as Fitzpatrick notes, the agency hasn't done a thing to gauge the effect the increased water flow might have on other plant and wildlife species. Just think about the potential damage (which, by the way, the DNR staff won't think about because they could care less about the environmental consequences of their actions so long as the result is either "natural beauty" or the satisfaction of its political power agenda).
To wit, the water flow earlier this summer of 67 cubic feet per second was was more than four times mandated by the statutory requirement, which specifically sets the dam flow at 25 percent of the natural water flow into the chain. As of July 25, that would have translated into about 14 cfs, not 67.
In other areas of the country, studies have shown that such abnormal and continued high-water flows from dams can approximate such adverse damage to plant habitats as that caused by repeated recreational overuse. Sustained high-water flows in the Ocoee River in Tennessee have also exceeded the capability of many species to survive them.
They are gone, and probably forever.
That's not to suggest that's the case here, but where are the studies to determine what the impacts of these sustained high-water flows are?
They don't exist, and probably never will.
So, again, what is the motive behind the projects if it's not public sentiment or science or even aesthetics?
One possibility comes to mind, and that's revenge. Think about it. What is the one obvious impact the high-water flow is having? What is the one outcome we know this project will have and is already having?
Ruination, that's what. Ruination for homeowners. Ruination for tourism.
Over the past several years, the DNR has had several run-ins with homeowners and officials on the chain, and they have even had their science carved up and served to them on a platter a time or two in court.
Certainly the one thing the DNR hates more than any human involvement in the natural habitat is any human involvement in their business. It's their way or the highway, and if you take them on they are not apt to forget.
By the looks of it, they haven't. As Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote in a letter to the DNR, the agency's actions have rendered many homeowners' piers and boat lifts useless, isolated large parts of the chain, which are not now reachable by typical boats, and made boating a hazard because some areas cannot even be reached by safety patrols.
Property values and lives have been slashed by the knife of an unfettered agency, Jack the Ripper-style.
After all, back in foggy London, the most popular theories about Jack the Ripper's motive revolved around revenge - mostly that, after some real or perceived hurt by a prostitute, he went criminally insane and began murdering other prostitutes.
Sounds about right in this case, except that instead of the DNR's victims being prostitutes they are average homeowners. Certainly it is insane, almost criminally so, to drain the Manitowish Chain of Lakes for no good reason.
For my money, then, chalk this one up to payback - to an insane impulse for revenge - because otherwise none of this makes any sense. This agency, it knows what it is doing.
Which makes Matt Frank's and Gov. Doyle's absence even more peculiar and disturbing and, well, obvious. Perhaps attorney general JB Van Hollen might want to take note, since he's going to have to handle the huge lawsuit that is no doubt soon coming his way.
In the end we have all learned a valuable lesson. Despite the quietness of the past few years, it's not safe to sleep at night. The DNR has not changed. It's still confrontational and bullying. It's still manipulating and dishonest. It still manufactures its own science out of the thin reeds of "natural beauty."
It still needs to be broken up, once and for all. As the poor victims of Rest Lake Dam know well, there can be no rest for any of us.
Not as long as Jack the Ripper is still on the loose, insanely stalking the innocent, obsessively looking for prey.
Richard Moore is the author of the forthcoming book, "How the DNR Stole Wisconsin."
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Reader Comments
Posted: Saturday, December 22, 2007
Article comment by:
Brent Gustafson
I believe the most telling part of this article and the entire situation is the following excerpt:
Jeff Roth, a DNR fisheries biologist who is an advocate for the sturgeon DNR project, says they only need enough water to go over the dam and into the river during spring spawning - a period of about three weeks in May, not all the time, as the DNR is doing.
Why would the DNR continue to allow water to flow out of the chain at 4 x the mandated amount for the entire year? If this situation is not corrected soon, tourists will not be returning to the area and thus the economy will greatly suffer. I have personally spoken to several people who have stated, "If the water level isn't back up, we're goign elsewhere next summer." Perhaps more importantly, fish and plant species ABOVE the dam will most assuredly be affected as well. As also mentioned, studies have shown that the increase in outflow may actually be NEGATIVELY affecting fish and plant species below the dam, too. The DNR's actions simply make no sense.
Posted: Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Article comment by:
Evan Jones
Gee.... I guess not being a right wing nut, I couldn't truely understand, but I always thought the DNR was what protected Wisconsin's Beauty....
I've been all over the country, and the environment is better protected in Wisconsin than anywhere else I've seen. That's good for tourism, and generates extra dollars for Rich Republicans as well as environmentalists.
Mr Moore isn't entirely wrong though, as the DNR does (occasionally) make me shake my head in wonder...
To denegrate them continuously though, as Mr Moore does, is somewhat ignorant of the facts.
DNR Right or Wrong ???
Sometimes it's both, but they are better than any other state's Natural Resources agencies.
Posted: Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Article comment by:
John Foster
Very nicely written. You need to wonder why the DNR would take on a project like this. There are so many battles our DNR could take on with the support of the citizens of Wisconsin like invasive species for instance. With the MW dam situation they now know that they’ve been caught in a trial of documented lies and deceptions. They know that the public opinion of the DNR is in a tail spin and the longer this goes on the worse it will get. So why take on a long drawn out unpopular battle?
Posted: Saturday, September 29, 2007
Article comment by:
John Bentley
Richard,
You are "right on the money" Keep up the good work! - John Bentley, President, Clear Shores, Inc. Clear Lake, Manitowish Chain.
Posted: Friday, September 21, 2007
Article comment by:
Matt Dahlquist
I think Mr. Moore needs to be given an award for this article. It is fantastic. It is not fair what the DNR is doing to us. And hopefully this article will open some very important eyes.
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