Lake pumping proposal stirs emotion
Photo by Jeremiah Tucker / Sauk Prairie Eagle
Dane County Land and Water Resources Department Director Kevin Connors listens to complaints from two lake residents unhappy with the way the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has handled flooding around Crystal, Mud and Fish lakes after an informational meeting at the West Point Town Hall on Nov. 17.
By Jeremiah Tucker, Sauk Prairie Eagle
Nearly 100 people packed the West Point Town Hall to learn that a state agency plans to allow water from three lakes to be continuously pumped into the Wisconsin River to alleviate flooding.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources will issue a 5-year permit to the Crystal, Mud and Fish Lake District, allowing it to continuously discharge its lake water into the Lower Wisconsin River Basin.
State Sen. Mark Miller, D-Monona, hosted the meeting and read written questions directed to the DNR, the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board and Dane County from the audience.
Residents and concerned citizens who attended the meeting were not allowed to address the assembled officials, visibly angering some in the audience.
A representative of U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin also attended the meeting.
"We can't guarantee homes won't flood again, but we believe continuous pumping will help," DNR Director for the South Central Region Lloyd Eagan told the crowd.
The DNR representatives, which in addition to Eagan included Supervisor of the Lower Wisconsin Basin Andy Morton and South Central Water Leader Ken Johnson, said opponents of the permit have until Dec. 6 to file objections.
If no objections are received, the permit will be issued as proposed, but there are plenty of people who don't support the permit.
In a letter made available by the Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway, a watchdog group that opposes the permit, DNR Water Resource Specialist Jean Unmuth wrote that she was "opposed to compromising the water in the Wisconsin River, an Exceptional Resource Waterway by State Statute, that should be protected as such."
At the meeting, Johnson said water samples showed that the Wisconsin River has slightly higher quality water than Mud Lake.
"They're close, but the Wisconsin River has slightly less suspended solids," Johnson said.
Johnson said with this permit, the DNR lowered the water quality standards for discharging into the river to correct a public health problem.
After Miller read a question from a lake resident asking what he should do with his ruined home that was still sitting in stagnant water, Eagan said the resident's situation was an example of a public health problem.
Eagan also pointed to septic systems that aren't operational because of the high water.
The DNR's proposed permit comes three years after the lake district began pumping water to a quarter-acre infiltration pond in an attempt to lower the rising water levels of the lakes, which have no natural outlet.
The DNR shut down the project a few months after it began when water from the pond ended up in the Wisconsin River, and the lake district wasn't able to secure another pumping permit from the DNR until earlier this year.
After a winter of record snowfalls and intense rainfall in June, many homes around the lakes flooded and the DNR began issuing short-term "emergency" permits allowing the lake district to pump water directly into the Wisconsin River.
Many residents didn't think the infrequent stop-and-start permits were enough, and after the intervention of Baldwin's office in July, the DNR issued a longer-term continuous pumping permit that has since been extended to Dec. 15.
The continuous pumping permit that the DNR is proposing will require the lake district to install underground pipe from the pump at Mud and Fish lakes to the river.
Currently, the water is discharged into the river through a combination of pipe and open areas.
None of the people who crowded into the town hall were given an opportunity to speak.
Miller said all the questions were to be written down so that the DNR could have a written record of the questions.
Darlene Hacker lives in Schoepp's Cottonwood Resort, a community along Crystal Lake hit hard by the flooding, and she said if the DNR wanted a record, someone should have taken notes or set out a sheet for speakers to sign.
"They should have let us get up and talk," Hacker said.
Hacker and her friends, who also live along the lakes, were skeptical that the permit will go through because it sounded to them like the DNR would back away from the permit if it received any complaints.
After the meeting, Kevin Kessler, a West Point resident and former groundwater specialist for the DNR, said he opposed the pumping permit because he believed it was a waste of money.
"Crystal Lake isn't going to lower from the pumping at all," Kessler said.
He said if the water levels at Crystal Lake fall at all, it will be due to evaporation, but that it was too far away to be affected by pumping at Mud and Fish lakes.
During the meeting, Johnson cited a 2002 United States Geological Survey that showed the lakes were connected through underground aquifers and that pumping from one would drain the others.
Tim Astfalk, a consultant for Mead and Hunt that designed the pumping project, said that since its high point over the summer, Fish Lake has dropped 1.4 feet and Crystal Lake has dropped 0.85 feet.