Tom Olsen states that 100 years ago the Lake Hiawatha wetland "could handle the full brunt of annual rainfall" ("It's time for a land-use transition," Oct. 26). But, 100 years ago the rest of the watershed wasn't heavily developed; it retained its own water.
Today the surrounding area sheds huge volumes of water through Lake Hiawatha. South Minneapolis neighborhoods along Minnehaha Creek are being inundated with this water and Minnehaha Creek is being torn apart. Minneapolis also uses Lake Hiawatha as a dumping ground for water rather than building appropriate infrastructure to handle the increasing level of stormwater.
This neighborhood should no longer be the scapegoat for all of these communities.
The direction that the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board takes is also important to homeowners. The Park Board has stated that if the pumping is stopped at Lake Hiawatha, the groundwater levels between Lake Hiawatha and Powderhorn Lake will go up underneath homes by up to a foot and, pumping would be moved into the neighborhoods, with increased pumping at Powderhorn Lake.
So, pumping will not stop; it will just be moved into the neighborhoods. This will affect hundreds of low-lying homes and is frightening to residents. Also, why should homes in the south Minneapolis neighborhoods be demolished? Maybe the Park Board should defend residents of its own city and ask other communities to take out some of their developments so that they can retain their own water.
Saying that addressing pollution "can be accomplished only by devoting land in the surrounding area to the filtration of the watershed" misses the main problem. Anyone who compares the size of the watershed to Lake Hiawatha immediately sees the real problem. Lake Hiawatha is ridiculously small compared to the amount of water flowing through it. It is delusional to think that increasing this lake by a third is going to make any difference. Plus, Best Management Practices state that pollution should be mitigated at the source, not the destination.
Olsen says that the golf course is "routinely battling the effects of settling, poor drainage, flooding and pollution caused by the course itself." Park Board documents state that there is no data proving that the golf course is settling. Regarding "poor drainage," it is a flood plain. Meadowbrook, Columbia and Wirth golf courses are also built on a flood plain. And the golf course has "flooded" only three times in the past 60 years: 1965, 1987 and 2014. Plus, the golf course pumping contributes less than 1% of the phosphorus coming into Lake Hiawatha, with the trash coming almost exclusively from the storm sewers and Minnehaha Creek that dump directly into the lake.
And instead of increasing amenities, the plan would remove two highly valued parks on the northwest side of the golf course, while the rest of the property would be golf course and water. Nothing else. The new, 9-hole golf course would require tons of dirt to raise the new golf course above the level of the lake, thus dramatically reducing the flood plain storage that currently protects homes.
