Lake and State Park Threatened by Golf Course AGAIN

The City of Sheboygan still unethically connected to the Kohler Company, is back at it ignoring city ordinances and state statues to extend an expired, 2020 Conditional Use Permit (CUP) for a proposed Kohler golf course in an ecosystem with state and globally significant ecological characteristics. The City's CUP has expired, the State Wetland Fill Permit was revoked, however, Kohler wants to use this old permit for a newly designed course whose site plan it will not show the City, the Army Corps of Engineers or the public. And the City Plan Commission gave this maneuver a yes vote. FBRF is addressing the City's violations, and incompetent ruling in the courts.

Friends of the Black River Forest scored a major victory in preserving a Lake Michigan Coastal ecosystem in 2019 and 2024. The Kohler Company's permit to devastate an ecologically significant landscape using state park land was revoked in 2022 by an Administrative Law Judge with a Wisconsin Circuit Court affirming the revocation.

Now, the same threats are here with Sheboygan's Plan Commission granting an expired permit an extension. Contamination of the Lake and groundwater, deforestation of a 180+ acres of Black River Forest including an old growth stand, fragmenting an Important Bird Area and Migratory Bird stopover are just some of the destruction. The bulldozing of Native American burial sites and remnants of their habitation in this area is unconscionable.

We have been at this for 14 years and we will not give up trying to preserve this fragile, important Lake Michigan landscape and Kohler Andrae State Park which will be negatively impacted by this course.