Climate panel signs off on Lakefront Protection Ordinance

The Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP) Implementation Task Force, a subcommittee of the city’s Environment Board, signed off on the current draft of a Lakefront Protection Ordinance on Wednesday night.

The long-discussed ordinance would set a unified policy to regulate development and protect natural habitats and shoreline along Lake Michigan. The city would create a special district, where sale of public land and certain long-term leases would need to be approved by referendum. It would also include extra environmental protections.

Task Force member Jerri Garl has been working on the plan with three councilmembers and city officials, but the group didn’t want to go further without perspective from the task force and the Environment Board.

Last month, the board agreed to postpone discussion until Nov. 20.

Wednesday, Garl told the task force that she wanted to get a consensus on whether the ordinance would support CARP goals. Members broadly agreed that it did — the few objections they had concerned the way the document was formatted and some language they thought was unclear.

Lakefront Protection Ordinance

Garl said the ordinance has been in the works for about 10 years. The city wanted to create a unified policy around development, protect lakeshore ecosystems and make sure historically significant properties are preserved. There is broad interest in “defending what we have, maintaining it and making sure it’s not [harmed], intentionally or unintentionally, through the development process,” she said. The plan would influence planning, zoning and permitting decisions.

Garl said that Northwestern University and the Evanston Parks and Recreation Board would most likely be involved in developing the policy. She said that she doesn’t expect anything to come before the council until sometime next year.

The current draft ordinance would apply to what it calls the “Lakefront Protection Zone,” which would encompass “all publicly-owned structures, beach and Green Space, east of Sheridan Road” (except Lighthouse Park District, the Evanston Water Plant and a few other properties), all publicly owned property and green spaces around Sheridan Road, all properties zoned U3 (or any future equivalent) within 200 feet of Lake Michigan, all existing lagoons, and “land below the Ordinary high water mark subject to the City of Evanston’s authority to protect public health, safety and welfare.” The city would be required to survey the zone within a year of the ordinance’s adoption to get a sense of conditions. This survey would be used as a “baseline” to track how well the city protects the lakeshore.

The ordinance would require the city to work with Northwestern and lakefront stewards to generally make the protected zone more hospitable to plants and animals and more environmentally sustainable. Any public land can only be sold if approved by a voter referendum, and at least two-thirds of the City Council must vote to place it on the ballot. The same referendum requirement would apply for “any lease of public property within the Lakefront Protection Zone that may restrict public access, diminish public amenities or fail to preserve or protect Green Space.”

The ordinance describes steps the city could take to protect the shoreline against erosion, creates protections for properties held in public trust and requires the Environment Board to sign off on any long-term temporary structures along the lakeshore.

Changing of the guard

Wednesday’s meeting also marked a changing of the guard for the CARP Implementation Task Force. The term of its current chair, Katarina Topalov, will expire Dec. 1. Topalov became the Environment Board co-chair this summer, and said she simply didn’t have the bandwidth to chair both.

“Chairing the [task force] and chairing the Environment Board is way too much and I’m not just giving enough [attention] and energy,” she said. “I feel like things are slipping past me, and I have to step down.”

Topalov said she intends to stay on as a regular task force member.

Since task force chairs must also sit on the Environment Board, the pool of candidates was limited to fellow Environment Board co-chair Paula Scholl and Jim Cahan. Scholl immediately took herself out of the running, leaving Cahan as the only choice. He will chair the task force’s next meeting, Dec. 3.

Topalov said she will invite Environment Board members who might be interested to join the task force.

For the past few months, Cahan has pushed for more information about how the city is implementing CARP goals. During Wednesday’s meeting, he argued that the task force’s focus has drifted away from overseeing implementation — something that he intended to reverse.