WisDOT Can't Find Wetlands To Fix As Compensation For I-94 Wetlands Damage

The Daily Reporter's Sean Ryan (just give him the 2008 award for best continuing reporting right now) brings us yet another bizarre twist on the $1.9 billion state transportation department plan to rebuild and widen I-94 from Milwaukee to Illinois:

The agency is obligated to compensate the public for damage to wetlands the project will entail - - at least 76 acres - - by repairing or improving wetlands in exchange, but darned if so far the agency can't find any available.

I've always been suspicious of these wetlands remediation exchanges: you pave one over here, then clean one up over there - - but, really, to what standard, and for how long, while the former wetland is gone under concrete forever.

Put this wetlands SNAFU on top of these issues - - driving is down, so the already not-congested corridor needs the new 70 miles of lanes even less, and the agency's refusal to swap the new, not-needed lanes for a commuter rail line ready to go parallel to the freeway corridor.

This project is shaping up as one of the goofiest highway projects ever planned in Wisconsin.

Regrettably, it's pegged as the most expensive state road project in history.

More regrettable, its cost represents only 30% of the entire 25-year, seven-county, $6.5 billion freeway reconstruction and expansion (127 miles of new lanes) plan served up by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission in 2003 - - when gasoline cost $2.30-a-gallon.

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