Water, snakes delay hospital

Site may house threatened species

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mar. 8, 2006

By DARRYL ENRIQUEZ
denriquez@journalsentinel.com

Waukesha - Progress on opening a new acute care hospital has ground to a halt as developers wrestle with two unexpected developments: the potential presence of the threatened Butler's garter snake and the inability of the Water Utility to serve the site, a hospital official said Wednesday.

The city Plan Commission was to examine preliminary plans on Wednesday evening for a 62-bed, single-story hospital on 40 acres in far northeast Waukesha. But the item was pulled because Water Utility and hospital officials were scheduled to meet this morning on the water issue.

Utility manager Dan Duchniak said a lift station is needed to get water to the site for drinking and fire protection. The hospital developer, not the city, will have to pay for it, he said.

Steve Schultz, administrator of LifeCare Hospitals in Milwaukee, responded that a lift station "would be a significant expense" but added that Life Care still wants to use the site.

The cost of a lift station was not immediately available.

As for snakes, Schultz said the firm and the state Department of Natural Resources were working to protect the snakes and develop the land.

"We'll do whatever we can to make it go forward," Schultz said. "I'm confident we can work something out."

Because of its decreasing population and habitat, the Butler's garter snake was declared a protected species by the state in 1997, meaning in most cases that it's illegal to kill the snakes.

Bob Hay, a DNR endangered species resource officer, said the site has not been checked for the threatened species, but the snakes are known to inhabit adjacent sites.

While the common garter snake can be found across the state, the Butler's is confined to parts of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, Hay said.

The Butler's was once found in Kenosha and Racine counties, but development wiped out the snake in those areas and poses the same threat to remaining habitat, he said.

If LifeCare sets aside habitat for the snakes, preferably the wetlands and river on the site, a deal may be struck, Hay said.

At issue is whether it can be done quickly enough to suit LifeCare, which wants to open a 60,000-square-foot hospital by March 2007. Hay could not say how long the approval process could take.

The site will need an environmental survey, and the state would like to expand it onto adjacent undeveloped land owned by GE Healthcare. GE is selling the 40-acre site to LifeCare, but it still has large tracts of wetlands and woods "that protect a lot of snakes," Hay said.

"I think there's a pretty good potential for making this work," Hay said.