[Above: People fishing at Monona Terrace over the Law Park Landfill. Photo-Maria Powell]
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[W]hen government shifts from merely presenting the facts on a public project to an orchestrated campaign that avoids any negatives, Joe Taxpayer never knows if he’s getting the truth or another sales job from someone looking to get into his wallet.” – Mike Ivey, The Capital Times, October 23, 1993 writing about the Monona Terrace decisionmaking process.
Preface: The City of Madison is paying three consulting firms $75,000 each to come up with proposals to redesign the Lake Monona waterfront, which is an old municipal landfill known to be leaching toxic chemicals into the lake. It already spent $260,000 for a consultant to produce a preliminary report. The chosen finalist will get up to $200,000 to come up with a “preferred master plan.” So, hundreds of thousands of public dollars (our money) will go to consultants before the redesign even starts–and that will costs millions. Wow. Aren’t there social, educational, housing, environmental and other needs the city could use this money for?
But wait! This IS an environmental project! According to today’s Wisconsin State Journal article by Dean Mosiman, one consultant promised their redesign will “restore a cycle of culture and ecology” and another said almost the same thing–that their plan will “restore nature and ecology.”
Amazing. So these consultants have figured out how to “restore nature and ecology” at an unlined, unremediated landfill leaching toxic chemicals into the lake? And how to “redesign” the entire shoreline–building new structures, cafes and restaurants, amphitheatres, expanding Monona Terrace and lots of other things included in their grand visions–without releasing more of these poisons into our public waters? Incredible. These consultants must be brilliant environmental engineers!
Or maybe they plan to remediate the landfill before enacting these lovely plans?
Well, no. But that’s no problem. The “lipstick on a pig” approach works just fine here in Madison.
In line with the pig lipstick approach, the word “landfill” didn’t appear in the WSJ article, though Mosiman wrote that one consultant called the waterfront “ecologically compromised.” Toxic chemicals? Oh no. Definitely not mentioned. That would be verboten. It’s a bit harder to put lipstick on poisons after you name them. It’s even harder to put lipstick on the Black anglers eating the poisons in the fish they catch from leaching landfill under Monona Terrace. It’s much easier to just ignore them.
Brilliant doublespeak and magical thinking by all–city, consultants and WSJ! Perhaps they are all the same team? Hmmm. Perhaps the same Chamber of Commerce Juggernaut team that got Monona Terrace built back in the 1990s, with a few different actors? The same Juggernaut driven by the Giant Triplets that have guided Madison’s leaders from its beginnings? Yup…
Anyway, this snarky “preface” has rambled on too long already. My apologies. Now on to Part III…
“What Else Can Hurt Lake Monona?” Part III: “Unimaginable toxic horrors” remain unmeasured
First, here’s a bit of recap, from Part II. On November 3, 1992 a narrow majority of Madison voters said yes to this referendum question: “Shall the City of Madison construct the Frank Lloyd Wright Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center at Law Park…provided there will be no significant adverse environmental impact on Lake Monona.”
After reviewing the Final Environmental Impact Statement, apparently assured by its repeated “no measurable effects” claims, on Nov. 16, 1993, the Council passed another resolution: “NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Common Council finds that the construction of the Monona Terrace Convention and Community Center will have no significant adverse environmental impact on Lake Monona.”
The resolution, however, was contingent on 13 items requiring stormwater reduction actions and other mitigation.** It also required that center proponents get a DNR exemption to build over a landfill and a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) permit to build on pilings in a navigable waterway.
The Republican-Democrat-Chamber of Commerce Juggernaut that wanted the center to happen had tons of political clout and a bottomless pot of financial and political resources to assure that it did—opponents, environmental pollution and environmental laws be damned. And they were.
The Juggernaut’s PR machine ridiculed and vilified center opponents. The WSJ mocked their concerns about “unimaginable toxic horrors” leaching from the landfill–even though they were well-informed and legitimate–and helped convince enough Madison voters (narrowly) to vote “yes” on the Monona Terrace referendum.
After this, the Juggernaut then had to assure that the DNR and USACE found no significant adverse environmental impacts–to agree with the resolution citizens had already voted on–so that these agencies would then issue the required permits.
If this seems like an absurd and backwards process–political, rather than scientific– well, that’s because it was.
But it worked. After many months of controversies and tireless, impressive resistance by center opponents, the required permits were issued in 1994, center construction began in early 1995 and was finished in 1997.
**What about the stormwater pollution reduction requirements the 1993 Common Council resolution included–and the claim by proponents that Monona Terrace would actually improve water quality?
Here’s the quick and dirty: After the permits were issued, but before the center was built, the required stormwater reduction goals in the resolution were deemed unfeasible by DNR and city engineering, and most of the planned stormwater management control approaches were found to be undoable and eventually abandoned. There has never been any stormwater monitoring at all at Monona Terrace as we can tell since the center was completed. But not to worry! Greg Fries, Madison’s Deputy City Engineer and head of the city’s stormwater program told me a few weeks ago that he doesn’t think Monona Terrace causes any worse stormwater runoff than what was there before–mostly grass and trees. Though he first told me there were no stormwater laws at the time, Fries actually co-wrote the legally required Stormwater Management Plan for Monona Terrace in 1995 with his boss, lead city engineer Larry Nelson, to fulfill the city resolution and WPDES requirements. He said he forgot. That story is coming up…
How were the DNR permits approved? Below is the “long story short” (If you have the interest and attention span for “the long story long”—you can read the blow-by-blow here).
The DNR knew that there was a contaminant plume in the shallow groundwater beneath Law Park that was leaching into the lake, and the sediments there were also contaminated. Contaminant levels exceeded several existing standards. Agency documents stated this in writing several times. That wasn’t disputed.
But likely with considerable “push” behind closed doors from members of the state and city center proponents (and other members of the Chamber of Commerce Juggernaut), DNR’s Southern District Director James Huntoon informed DOA in August 1993 that it was “impracticable” to do any remediation there and that “no downstream users” would be affected by contamination leaching from the landfill (see the end of Part II). Also, he argued, the lake was already very contaminated and building the center wouldn’t make it worse. Huntoon’s rationale was very familiar by this point (hence, the name of this series).
Having deemed remediation of the landfill “impracticable,” and concluding that no one would be affected by the contaminants leaching into the lake anyway (really?), confirming there would be no further adverse environmental impacts (in order to get the required exemptions and permits) depended largely on showing that the 1,725 pilings that would be driven into the lake bed to support the center wouldn’t result in even more contaminants leaching into the lake and deep groundwater aquifer that municipal Well 17 draws from.
Community members who opposed the center waged an admirable, epic battle against the Goliath Juggernaut. But Republican Governor Tommy Thompson and his right-hand man James Klauser worked to assure that the city and DOA would get their permits from DNR and USACE. Klauser removed a lead DNR staff on the project who asked critical questions in the EIS process. Thompson wrote letters to USACE urging them to quickly issue the permit. Exemptions were issued for the contaminants that exceeded standards. And more. Behind the scenes, who knows many phone calls and meetings were held to move the project along.
Even as center plans were barreling forward, a limited “Aquifer Study” was done by DOA’s consultants Woodward-Clyde in spring 1994 to inform the DNR and USACE permit processes. The study confirmed (likely to the DOA’s chagrin) that, in fact, contaminated shallow groundwater was leaching into the lake and both the shallow and deep aquifer under the proposed center site were contaminated. In other words, contaminants were being drawn from the shallow into the deep groundwater. Pump tests on Well 17 also showed that the deep groundwater under the site was within the area Well 17 draws water from.
But as always–no worries, DOA’s consultants concluded! Contaminants were at “relatively” low levels and would stick to soils, slowing their movement into the deep groundwater; the report estimated that it would take 342 years for them to reach Well 17. (Hmmm. Even though they had already reached the deep aquifer within 60 or so years of the landfill’s creation? Go figure). When the exemption to build over the landfill was issued, DNR required the city to test groundwater at a few wells and Well 17 while the center was being built–through 1998. Based on just a few years of testing, the city and DNR concluded that contaminants wouldn’t reach the well. Makes a lot of sense, no?
Also, the DNR and consultants knew that Well 17 draws in Lake Monona water, which dilutes any contamination there. (Shhhh…)
There’s much more to this story, but it would take volumes to tell it.
In any case, nobody ever measured what contaminants were leaching into the lake or building up in fish. Nobody tested sediments in the lake to understand the fate of the contaminated sediments that the FEIS said would be “scoured” from under the center. Nada. Since the center was finished, none of these things were measured again as far as I can tell. There are no DNR or city environmental files on Monona Terrace past 1999.
So, Voila! No measurements, no problem! The center was built and nobody knows if it has had any “adverse environmental impacts” on Lake Monona—even though saying it wouldn’t was the basis on which it was approved.
In other words, Ignorance is Bliss.
How many times have I written the same story here in educated, privileged Madison, home of a major research university, government agencies, abundant resources, and many PhDs? Too times many to count.
To be continued in Part IV…
