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Commission reviews Scheidegger Forest history, remediation and management
Summary
Staff and commissioners reviewed the property's donation history, purchase timeline, lead-remediation work, timber-harvest practices used to build on-site features, and how the estate gift was applied to acquisition and development.
Commissioners and staff reviewed the history and management of Scheidegger Forest, a county forest property acquired with donation dollars and conservation funds. Tom Thorsen and Alex D. Smith described Walter Scheidegger’s bequest language directing residue of his estate to Dane County Parks for land acquisition and maintenance in the Riley/Verona/Mount Vernon area; staff said the county received a donation in 2001 and purchased the property in 2006 from the sheriff’s department.
Alex D. Smith, park planning manager, outlined remediation and development work: lead remediation occurred in 2007, staff recovered 53 barrels of bullets in 1992 during earlier work, and the county brought in about 22,000 cubic yards of fill to cap contaminated soils rather than excavating all impacted material. Smith said shelter timbers were milled from locally harvested timber and the site was developed with minimal infrastructure — parking, a vault toilet, a gravel approach and a small shelter — to illustrate sustainable forest management. He also noted Dane County manages over 19,000 acres across its park system and that forests like Scheidegger are a limited classification within that system.
