EDITORIAL: Don’t let Lake Park slide away

It’s a historical oddity that large, imposing public utility buildings stand at the entrances to both of the City of Port Washington’s beaches, the wastewater treatment plant at north beach and the We Energies power plant at south beach.

Residents are inured to the juxtaposition, but at first look visitors are prone to be asking rhetorically of past city officials, “What were they thinking?”

There is no need to answer that question because the buildings aren’t going to move. Besides, the beaches are beautiful and residents and visitors alike are fortunate to have them.

For the north beach, however, access is a problem. Reaching it requires either a rather long walk around the wastewater plant and its ponds of discolored water awaiting treatment or the use of an 83-step stairway on the steep bluff between Upper Lake Park and the beach entrance. Neither is an attractive option for some beachgoers, such as parents with small children and beach toys in tow.

And at the moment, there is no access at all. A mudslide has totally blocked the narrow entrance to the beach between the wastewater plant revetment and the park bluff. The tons of saturated clay soil came with a message: It’s time to get going on stabilizing the bluff that is part of the nearly 10-acre park overlooking Lake Michigan. That project should include improved access to the beach below it.

City crews will be clearing the mud from the beach entrance and fashioning a temporary two-way road in the park to replace the northbound road along the bluff that is in danger of going over the edge in the next mudslide. These are necessary stopgaps, but they do not satisfy the need to control the erosion that is progressively claiming chunks of the city’s signature park and public amenity.

Saving the lake side of the park will require sacrificing land at its bluff edge to create a more moderate slope that will support vegetation that will prevent clay-turned-to mud from sliding to the beach. A preliminary plan designed by the shoreline preservation experts at Miller Engineers & Scientists of Sheboygan is waiting to be refined and executed.

The reconfigured park will have a new road, walking path and lake-viewing sites that will no longer require the “Caution—Severe Drop Off” signs that have been posted for years along the park’s eastern edge. It will also have a bluff with a gentler slope that could accommodate a walkway to the north beach.

When Concordia University Wisconsin in 2007 stabilized its eroding bluff on the Lake Michigan shore in Mequon, which was much like today’s Port bluff, it created a walkway to the beach. The walking path zig-zags across the slope with switch-backs so that walkers are always on a fairly gentle climb or descent.

A similar feature on the face of a stabilized Upper Lake Park bluff would give residents and visitors the easier access to the enjoyment of north beach they deserve.

Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke has— properly—cited Lake Park bluff stabilization as a city priority. He also included it in his justification for the approval of the Vantage Data Centers. Tax revenue derived from the development’s billion-dollar valuation added to the tax base will pay for the project as well as other needs, he said.

That could be true some day. But because the data centers development was granted tax incremental financing, its stupendous valuation will not yield tax revenue for general city purposes until 2044 or later. 

But there is good news in the fact that the same TIF district that is funding infrastructure for the data centers also includes Lake Park and its eroding bluff. A total of $6 million is earmarked for bluff stabilization.

Where exactly that money will come from remains to be seen, but it should be spent as soon as its available.

Protection of the splendid resource that is Upper Lake Park can’t wait.