THE RRNA
The RRNA is composed of individual citizens who have voluntarily come together in the best tradition of the United States in order to protect their property. Sadly, we must band together to protect ourselves and the Lake we love from an agency of the Government which is sworn to protect our wetlands and lakes from environmental damage. The Board of Directors is made up of volunteers who care deeply about our Lake and our neighborhood. The President of the Board is Rob Moebius. The other Board members include Jim Smith (an environmental engineer), Fritz Hanson, Doris Lattos, Dave Draeger and Jim Wozniak. Bill Gleisner, a retired litigator, is both a member of the Board and the RRNA’s chief legal counsel. In fact, Gleisner has come out of retirement to work full time on the defense of North Lake at no charge.
Of course, our membership has a particularly important stake in preventing the Kraus Site from becoming a public boat launch. Especially for those who live along Lower Reddelien Road face challenging times whenever it rains. As you can see at the right, our neighborhood is prone to flooding. Since the DNR plans on a 24/7 year round facility, the noise and the year round lighting will significantly diminish the quality of life on Lower Reddelien Road.
And it’s not just the folks on Lower Reddelien Road that will suffer. As you can see from Exhibit J at the lower right of this page, the entire Reddelien Road neighborhood lies at the end of a narrow dead end country road. The DNR proposes changing the character of that road dramatically. There will be heavy boat traffic which will necessitate major road improvement work and which will inevitably over flow in the narrow unlit private roads that make up our neighborhood. These private roads team with elderly citizens, children and pets.
However, the citizens of Reddelien Road are also good citizens of North Lake and they are fighting to protect North Lake and the other citizens of the Lake from harm. The proposed Kraus Site is next to a sand bar and shallow area where fish breed. It will effectively destroy the filtering effect of the wetlands thus allowing large amounts of farm nutrients to flow directly into North Lake from the nearly 100 acres of farmland now served and filtered by the wetlands. In rainy weather, the asphalt parking lot and launch site will cause the wetlands to overflow and fill the lower Reddelien Road where leach beds and septic systems will be compromised, thus causing E-Coli pollution of North Lake.
Make no mistake, the RRNA does not oppose a public boat launch; quite the contrary. It welcomes public access. It’s only quarrel is public access on the West side of the lake. The proposed boat launch on the Kraus Site will be located in a rural residential area bounded on the West by farm fields and on the South, North and East by residential property. In fact, the Kraus Site will be dropped into the middle of pristine wetlands, located approximately at the area where the red arrow is pointing on the map at the lower right.
By contrast, there is a perfectly suitable launch site available at the Kuchler Site, located across the Lake on Highway 83. This site is located in a business district which will benefit considerably from the business which will be generated by placing the site there. It is easily accessible at all times of the year and will furnish fishermen and other public boaters with easy year round access to North Lake. In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved a general permit for the Kuchler property, and a number of years ago the DNR even tried to buy it for a launch. Now the DNR is not interested in Kuchler because they are trying hard to hide the bad investment they made in the Kraus Site.