Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series examining the impact a new regional shopping mall could have on the Ketelsen Marsh. Monday’s article discussed the man for whom the marsh was named and the push for a new regional shopping mall.

Natural purifier and cradle of life

As director of the Story County Conservation Board, Steve Lekwa knows Ketelsen Marsh well. His daily efforts maintain it, and work he began nearly two decades ago was instrumental in creating it.

He pauses here and there on an breezy afternoon to point out a few signs of life in the marsh: spindly sandbar willows are gnawed at their base by foraging rabbits, clumps of mud built up by burrowing crayfish and nests of goldfinches from the past summer are still anchored in the crooks of those willows.

His efforts in the coming months and years could preserve its wildness as a new commercial development moves in next door.

The goal when Lekwa rallied the hunting and outdoors groups of Story County to support the marsh’s creation is the same as the goal today: Restore the land to its original form.

“This place is not unique, just unusual,” Lekwa said. “It’s a remnant of what once covered all of Story County.”

Returning the space to wetlands had a twofold benefit, said Jim Pease, assistant professor of natural resource ecology and management.

“Ketelsen, from a wildlife perspective, is an extremely important island of habitat in a sea of agriculture, and it’s important from an environmental standpoint, helping clean runoff from fields and the freeway,” Pease said.

More than a century ago, most of the marshlands of Iowa were systematically drained by dividing the ground into tiles bordered by underground pipes. With tiling, water flowed off the land, through the pipes and into rivers much faster, lowering the water table and drying the natural potholes that were once filled with shallow standing water. It is estimated as much as 99 percent of Iowa’s geography has been altered by tiling or other development, Pease said.

Such development left the land exceptionally farmable, with the nutrient-rich earth that had collected under the marshes now exposed for planting, Lekwa said.

“Marshes were considered worthless land until they were drained to make money for someone,” he said.

But all the farming and money-making had environmental impacts reaching as far as the Gulf of Mexico, Lekwa said.

With tiling, nitrate and phosphate nutrients are not filtered out of water before it reaches streams, often resulting in the nutrients showing up in larger water bodies thousands of miles away. This feeds algae blooms, which deoxygenate the water and kill fish.

“In recent years, we’re seeing a new attitude — maybe wetlands are not such a bad idea; they’re a marvelous way to purify water,” he said.

Beyond its geologic value, the marsh’s 65-acre tract (about the size of 50 football fields) represents the animal variety and liveliness that used to be the norm in Iowa.

Under Lekwa’s guidance, the marsh has become a habitat to all manner of native species that have little chance of survival in the dry, exposed fields of the surrounding countryside.

Animal life, ranging from butterflies to Canada geese and from deer mice to deer, call the marsh home for at least some part of the year.

For migratory birds, the marshy potholes and the freshwater invertebrates inhabiting them are crucial to seasonal travels, Lekwa said.

“Ducks and geese depend on spots like these to build reserves as they migrate,” he said. “Without wetlands, they can’t build up their strength.”

Though the ducks’ and other animals’ habitats are not threatened with elimination, civilization is inching closer — and in a form potentially more destructive than the tiled agricultural lands that have surrounded it since it was created.

Concerns for a habitat

Now, less than 15 years since the marsh’s dedication, it may become the backyard to a regional shopping mall and neighbor to all its attendant traffic, artificial light and garbage.

“To think it could be negatively impacted by a mall … that’s something we never thought about,” said Kathe Ketelsen, the widow of the conservationist for whom the marsh was named. “We didn’t think an outside entity could ever come in and jeopardize it.”

A mall could pose a major threat to both the function and beauty of the marsh, Pease said.

“I think there’s a number of very negative effects and no upside to a large commercial development,” he said. “Whenever you take an existing wild area and put something, especially a large mall, there, you create concrete instead of soil, which has no upside for wild land.”

Ketelsen’s greatest concern, she said, is the trash blowing in from a mall.

“[The marsh] isn’t going to disappear, but we’re afraid of what’s going to happen,” she said. “It’ll still be here, but we’re concerned that it won’t be in the same state, won’t be as peaceful. We’re concerned it won’t be clean, with shopping bags and pop cans everywhere.”

In January, the city approved a Land Use Policy Plan map change, giving developer James “Bucky” Wolford the right to pursue building a mall on the site.

On the day of the public hearing, Wolford and his associate, Jamey Flegal, met with Lekwa and the Ketelsens. At the meeting, Wolford, a hunter himself, detailed his commitment to the marsh’s preservation.

“We met with Bucky Wolford and Jamey, and they assured us they would work with us,” Ketelsen said. “They said there would be a fence barrier at their lot and a tree-line buffer.”

Further, the Ketelsens requested that mall employees participate in cleaning the marsh, especially in the early years, before trees and shrubs along the barrier grow in enough to adequately catch blowing garbage.

At the meeting, Wolford suggested the mall set up a trust fund to provide the Story County Conservation Board with money to clean the marsh.

“We talked to them about possibly contributing to some endowment to clean the marsh up if problems occur,” Wolford said. “It was briefly discussed, and no number was decided on, but we’re surely not opposed to working with them on something of that nature.”

Both the Ketelsens and Lekwa supported this idea, and Ketelsen asked for it in writing. Her request has not been granted yet, more than two months after the conversation.

Since Wolford has not followed up, Ketelsen now wonders whether maybe the January meeting was a political maneuver, she said.

“We haven’t been contacted other than the day after the meeting and the decision,” Ketelsen said. “Jamey Flegal called and said [meeting with us] wasn’t a political move and that they were impressed and moved by our story and the history of the marsh.”

While blowing garbage is a concern, Lekwa said, the lighting for a large commercial structure and its parking lots could be even more detrimental to the marsh’s role as a habitat, Lekwa said.

Insects such as moths are often attracted to lights and could leave the marsh to pursue them. If the insect population is reduced by such lighting, it could mean problems up the food chain, Lekwa said. Amphibians such as salamanders and frogs, which feed on insects, could experience a drop in populations, as well.

“It’s something to monitor, and there are indicator species to do that,” he said. “We’ll just have to see.”

Ames City Planner Joe Pietruszynski said the options for regulation of lighting were almost limitless.

“Regulations could most certainly come out of the design process, regulating where [lighting] is placed, where it focuses and its intensity,” he said.

In addition to lighting and trash, increased traffic could also be a concern, Pease said.

“The difference between [agricultural or] light industry and commercial is traffic, no question,” he said. “Flow, the number of vehicles moving by, causes road kills. You have more vehicles, you’re going to have more road kills.”

One environmental effect associated with new development that is unlikely to affect the marsh, however, is runoff. The marsh is upstream from the mall, ensuring flow of water, oil, salt and other chemicals from vast mall parking lots and roofs would not soil its potholes and prairie grasses, Wolford said.

Further, runoff from the mall site would be treated and siphoned through oil skimmers and filtration systems before release into the storm sewer system, he said.

There is little doubt, from Lekwa, the Ketelsens or the city, that the marsh will be affected in some way by a new neighbor, no matter how wide the buffer zone, how advanced the lighting or how much money is transferred from developer to conservationists.

A new commercial development is the latest example of business interests winning out over environmental ones, Lekwa said.

“I can’t see how wild lands can ever compete as long as land values are based solely on the ability to create revenue,” Lekwa said. “We’ll always be on the short end.”