NR 115

From the Lakeland Times

Vilas zoning to investigate legal rights on proposed shoreland changes
Standards are impossible to enforce, zoning administrator says

"...to look procedurally where we go if this becomes an administrative rule in April. What avenues do we have in joining with other counties in class litigation against the DNR - if it's even possible? We've been pleading with the Legislature for months and months and months not to absolve our rights and duties under state law. Now is the time to start looking into this and knowing what our rights are, because we've got an administrative rule that's giving us hemorrhoids."

...The proposed rule includes changes to vegetation management in primary shoreland buffers and changes to the regulation of nonconforming structures.

There are also new requirements for minimum lot size and density for multi-unit residential developments, mobile home parks and campgrounds, new formulas to calculate the reduced shoreland setbacks, an impervious surface standard and mitigation standards (restoring natural functions to balance those lost through development and human actions).

...Ahlborn added that he could not understand why the DNR had continued on this course in the face of such huge opposition.

"It's unfortunate that taxpayers have funded this nonsense," he said, "in the face of 72 counties saying no. Even without the wetland determination, how much land is there in Vilas County that's not 1,000 feet from navigable water? It's got to be 95 percent and, if you add in wetlands, it's 100 percent."

Glenn Schiffmann of Cornerstone Custom Builders Inc., who used to sit on the NR 115 advisory committee, said that the proposed rule amounted to a taking.

"It's a taking of people's property," he said. "There's no solid science to support this. Vilas County zoning has always been at the forefront of protecting its waters, and this does nothing but create additional hardship and non-conformity of existing properties. It's ridiculous, and the county needs to be flat-out opposed to it. This is hand-me-down legislation that will disrupt everything."