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As one of those adjacent landowners, I feel that this question is somewhat misleading without knowing all the facts that have prompted this La Crosse County staff survey.
This question has nothing to do with selling Swarthout Park or the South Shore Park, or any other valuable shoreline land to developers or anyone else.
What this question refers to is 15 very small pieces of land on both sides of Lake Neshonoc. The properties in question are basically the front yards of some of the cottages on the lake. None of these small parcels have any public easements or access except from the water. In our case, it is 50 feet of our front yard.
The reason these properties are in question is due to an inaccurate survey that was done in 1940 prior to the new dam flooding the east end of the lake. In the survey there were “flowage lines” drawn with little accuracy that were intended to delineate where the water would rise when the new dam was finished.
More than half of the properties on both sides of the lake have this flowage line jutting out into the water, and so they are not deemed as public or county lands.
The problem is that, based upon the new DNR shoreline regulations, private citizens cannot
put a dock on public lands.
If the adjacent landowners cannot buy these tiny parcels, they cannot put out docks and use their boats on Lake Neshonoc.
In our case, we have had our dock in the lake since 1986.
Most of the property owners, have already spent thousands of dollars to rip-rap the shoreline to protect it. You only need to walk the county’s shoreline to see that the county needs to do a lot more to control its shoreline erosion or to rip-rap the shoreline in their “public trust.”
The county staff cover letter said “you have a good understanding for the issues of public trust, land ownership, and riparian rights,” yet the staff made no attempt to explain the facts regarding this issue and only assumed that people had a “good understanding” of this dock issue from reading the newspaper.
How can anyone make an intelligent decision on this issue without having all the facts? One could even question the whole validity of this survey based upon how the question was worded.
I believe that La Crosse County and its staff could have spent their funds in a more beneficial way than to conduct a survey assuming that people were aware of the facts regarding this issue. They should also have provided all the facts to them along with this survey so residents could make an educated decision.
By selling these small parcels of land, the county would get much needed revenue and successfully rectify a surveying inaccuracy that is more than 66 years old.
Jim Leicht is a land owner and chairman of the Lake Neshonoc Protection and Rehabilitation District.
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Darin Martell wrote on Oct 8, 2006 3:48 PM: