'Exploring' the wetlands

Local news just before the Memorial Day weekend is that a group called "Friends of Wisconsin Avenue Wetlands" proposes to raise money to buy and save the swamp that's proposed as part of the Lake Cabins and Boardwalk development.

Since 1958, several of our family members have owned and occupied the residential properties west of the swamp and Wisconsin Avenue and bordering Whitefish Lake. We are the closest residential property owners to the so-called swamp, and our almost 50 years here gives us considerable background knowledge.

This proposal should be limited by the realities:

1) Margaret Murdock years ago put about 200 acres of conservation easement on her property just north of and upstream from the swamp, and this property will forever be conserved for the public.

2) Natural drainage in the area of perhaps two or three small streams, and from intermittent snow melt and runoff water, creates perhaps 20 acres of swamp on property acquired by developer Bob Bowden.

Bowden and his associates and advisors have worked with the Army Corps of Engineers, who are in control of wetlands, and have come up with a plan whereby the almost impenetrable swamp may be cleaned of many of the dead fall and snags, and a boardwalk will be installed, so that the public can walk through the swamp and enjoy its natural features.

3) During the past almost 50 years, it has been next to impossible for one to walk through the swamp. At various times, several of our adventurous children, nieces and nephews have gone swamp exploring, and I personally have joined in several of those expeditions.

The ground of the swamp can be described as clumps or strips of land surrounded by water, and there are clumps of brush and dead branches most everywhere, and the area is crisscrossed with larger branches and the remnants of dead trees.

A couple years ago, our area was hit by a major birch die-off, and many of those dead birches are still standing, with falling branches and falling trees that will create a hazard for many years to come.

It is impossible to walk through the swamp without walking in water, and unless one walks both slowly and very carefully, one can easily sink in knee deep or worse, or stumble and fall over the snags and the unstable ground.

4) When we came here in 1958, all of the little streams on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue went under Wisconsin in a culvert and in a lovely stream from Wisconsin Avenue, about 300 feet to the west, and into Whitefish Lake.

5) When Sverre Askevold built his Viking Lodge, he wiped out the little stream and constructed an underground culvert that carries the stream from Wisconsin Avenue to Whitefish Lake. The huge Averill three-story hotel has now replaced the old Viking Lodge, and what used to be the little stream from the swamp to the lake now runs underground through their culvert.

6) Publicity is that somehow the swamp "filters run-off water" and helps maintain the quality of Whitefish Lake, and this is not correct.

Yesterday morning, the lake was calm, and I went next door to look at the discharge from the Averill culvert, where all of the swamp water dumps into Whitefish Lake. There was a plume of muddy water and floating dead leaves, small broken branches and a few dead insects, all coming from the swamp and then into the culvert to the lake.

7) Perhaps three or four times while I have personally been here, and apparently other times as well, the high-water run-off has been more than the culvert under Wisconsin Avenue can carry, and the flood water from the swamp, together with all of its debris, has run over Wisconsin Avenue, and across our properties.

And of course, every one of these occasional floods carries the dirty water, leaves and branches, and an occasional dead animal, into the lake.

8) Over these past almost 50 years, our family members and persons who rent from us have been the only persons close enough to the swamp to observe the area on a daily basis. We certainly haven't monitored the area every day, but I have made inquiry of the other family members, and of some of the renters we've had over the years, and it is significant:

Through the generosity of Mrs. Murdock, her 200 acres just north of the swamp are forever preserved in their natural condition.

Robert Hurly is an attorney living in Glasgow who owns land in Whitefish.