Open Space Advocates Challenge Zoo Interchange Plan

The Reduced Impact Plan for the Zoo Interchange would take away far fewer tracts of developed private property and lower the cost of the project from $2.3 billion to $1.7 billion.

But not everyone is pleased with the impact of some of the changes the state Department of Transportation made to achieve those savings.

Parks and open space advocates were rankled by parts of the plan that would place three large stormwater detention basins outside the boundaries of the DOT rights-of-way and, in two cases, eat up parcels of public parkland.

A 5-acre basin would be placed on Underwood Creek Parkway land that is now part of the Oak Leaf Trail route, and a 4-acre pond would replace a woodland along Honey Creek Parkway.

“I don’t feel that’s a proper use of public parkland, and there are alternatives for them,” said Jim Goulee, executive director of the Park People of Milwaukee County and a Wauwatosa resident. “The loss of parkland to detention ponds – that would be polluted at the least – is not in the best public interest.”

The DOT needs to manage additional stormwater because the freeway expansion project increases the amount of paved surface in the area, increasing runoff.

“You can’t increase the flow off the site,” said Tim Anheuser of Forward 45, a consortium of three engineering firms under contract with the DOT. “We’ve done the stormwater analysis to size these ponds, and there just isn’t a lot of room in these areas to put them.”

Anheuser acknowledged highway runoff to the ponds would carry pollutants, but he said that was the purpose of the ponds or any other stormwater management methods.

“When things wash off the roadways, we want to have these sediments settle out,” he said. “Is there sediment in there? Yes. We have to keep those sediments out of the streams.

Goulee agreed but he said the DOT was proposing the simplest, cheapest and least-effective solution rather than the right one.

“The use of public land is the easiest thing, but it is not the best thing,” he said. He and other groups, including the Sierra Club, have proposed alternatives that include collection swales and more, smaller ponds sited along the linear outline of the freeway project.

“You need to put in on your own footprint,” Goulee said, referring to the land already owned or being acquired by the DOT for the expansion plan. “Put it along the roadways where the need is and where it’s most effective.”

The DOT will continue to take public comment on the plan through Monday. E-mails can be sent to dotdtsdsezoo@dot.wi.gov.