Dear Editor,

In June, I drove down 1st Street to go fishing at the Barker Inlet. I found an excavation and signs about a wetland restoration project instead of a gravel lot. Hmmm, I thought, this must be mitigation for someone’s wetland development. After reading the celebratory article in the July 6 Mountain-Ear, I think I understand what happened. There is an alternative narrative about this project.

No doubt, Eldora Mountain Resort (EMR ), the Town, and USACE provided notice of every public involvement opportunity required by law. I certainly hadn’t paid attention to any NEPA processes, or BOT actions on this project in 2019, or 2022. You snooze, you lose.

Developers seeking permits to drain or fill a wetland, follow a path of Avoid, Minimize and, as a last resort, Mitigate. Did anyone ask EMR why they could not have designed their new facility to avoid wetlands? If “great environmental stewardship” is an EMR core value, why didn’t they avoid wetlands in their design? Maybe there were valid reasons, maybe not. If the mitigation ratio was 2:1, the wetland EMR needed to avoid was pretty darn small.

I’m saddened that $60-80K are being spent for what we are getting. The high cost must be associated with consultant fees, and intensive management to attempt to turn a hole in the ground into a “wetland.” I assume this is Town land since no one else was identified with a real property interest. I cannot fathom why the BOT, beyond providing a free location, put $10K of town money to facilitate a private company’s destruction of a natural wetland? While the “Ignite” facility sounds wonderful, it’s really not taxpayer/Town business to fund. EMR is the responsible party and should’ve paid Nederland to use town land - that’s the way wetland mitigation usually works.

Rea Wroebel was right to call this project a creation, not a restoration. Apparently no wetland soils were present in the soil profile. A soil scientist had to confirm there were 8 - 10 inches of “topsoil” (imported?) in the basin. There appears to be no connectivity with surface waters in the adjacent creeks. There is no watershed to feed the basin with run-off. The “wetland” relies on groundwater and irrigation. It will not participate in a dynamic hydro-period, with floods and dry periods that are essential to provide all those wetland functions and values espoused by the proponents in The Mountain-Ear.

I respectfully disagree with Ms. Wrobel’s and Mr. Tregaskis’ assessments that the parking lot project was a better option than buying into a mitigation bank. The project enhances public relations benefits to EMR. From an ecological perspective, payment into the mitigation bank was surely a better option. For this kind of money it might have been possible to restore hundreds of acres of native wetlands in South Park, or playas on the eastern plains. Restorations are vastly preferable to creations. Plugging an old drainage ditch, or busting a tile doesn’t cost much and restoring hydrology to drained wetlands with a dormant seed bank of native wetland plants has very fast and rewarding results.

I’m disappointed that the Town is providing long-term maintenance of the “wetland”. Good grief, the Parks Department is supposed to continue irrigating the “wetland” - I assume in perpetuity! Artificially irrigating a “wetland” is the antithesis of sustainability, yet it seems our Sustainability and Parks advisory Boards were all over this. Can the Corps come back in 20 years and compel the Town to spray weeds or irrigate?

It is what it is. To be fair, the project, at excessive cost, will have some minor ecological value - more than a gravel lot. Kudos to the project ecologist for involving young people in a conservation project. However, describing this project as an “Ecological Paradise” is a gross overstatement.

We all got snookered, or fooled ourselves on this one - myself and fellow citizens, BOT, Advisory Boards, The Mountain-Ear, and maybe even EMR and Corps.

Dean Rundle

Nederland