Not Light, Certainly Filling

On November 1, Wayne Seidel, a conservation specialist for the Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District, reported to the Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) supervisors that an agreement had been reached with the City of Grand Marais to cease all road-building activity on the city’s west side pending the completion of a wetland delineation plan and a plan for wetland replacement.
For years the city has been “unofficially” and perhaps unwittingly, but certainly illegally, conducting a wetland filling program, mostly gradual in incremental dribs and drabs, but at times in robust truck loads depending on construction jobs the city happened to be engaged in at any given time and what need they had to dispose of unwanted fill.
This city hall approved practice saw workers dumping the offal of city operations – in some cases clean fill, but just as often nothing but junk and debris – at the ends of, or along city and private right of way of some of the city’s East-West roadways.
The city, only after BWSR (the state's Board of Soil and Water Resources) was made aware of the situation, in the guise of its administrator Mike Roth, was brought before the county’s SWCD and reminded that it too must abide by the law. This was the second time this year the city has been found to be operating in complete disregard to state and federal regulations meant to protect wetlands and both violations are significant and both find Mike Roth the responsible official.
How many more times must this happen before disciplinary action is taken? How tolerant should elected officials be when faced with such incompetence? Or, are we dealing with misfeasance? Considering the record of city administration, none of this should be a surprise to the taxpayers. What is surprising is that the city has not been fined, but then again, there are those who feel that BWSR and the SWCD has always tended to overlook violations and when pushed into enforcement action, to go easy on offenders. The facts are that the county makes it a point to understaff and underfund the county's SWCD team, putting an unreasonable burden on the SWCD board and administrative staff, but SWCD enforcement is separate and handled by BWSR, most recently by BWSR employee Wayne Seidel.
Seidel has now resigned his enforcement position, so perhaps BWSR's new staffer will bring to SWCD a new sense of responsibility. We’ll find out as the upcoming investigation of the very major violations allegedly going on along the Lower Poplar River proceeds.
Stay tuned.

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