KEWAUNEE COUNTY

Residents rate concerns for Kewaunee/Ahnapee watersheds

Karen Ebert Yancey
Kewaunee County Star-News

More than 100 county officials, residents and conservation group representatives attended a Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) meeting at the Luxemburg Fairgrounds Tuesday night to provide input into the federal agency’s plan to address environmental resource issues in the Kewaunee and Ahnapee watersheds.

“We are here to document the public’s resource concerns in these watersheds,” said Jimmy Bramblett, NRCS state conservationist.

After several presentations about the planning and implementation processes used by the NRCS, Bramblett said that it would take several years to develop and implement plans to address problems in the watersheds.

The meeting attendees were asked to rate from high to low the importance of 10 resource issues in the two rivers’ watersheds.

After the results were tabulated, Davina Bonness, Kewaunee County conservationist, reported that water quality degradation from both excess nutrients in surface and groundwaters and excess pathogens and chemicals from manure, biosolids or compost application had been rated as the foremost concerns for the watersheds.

Water quality degradation from excessive sediment in surface water was the second concern expressed by the group.

Air quality and inadequate habitat for fish and wildlife tied as the third most important concern, Bonness said.

Public input on concerns for the watershed will allow the NRCS to better address these natural resource problems and integrate them with economic, social and other environmental issues in the county, Bramblett said.

“You have a gold mine in Lake Michigan,” Bramblett told the audience when discussing the county’s assets. “This can bring in tens of million of dollars in tourism.”

He noted that in Kewaunee County more than 80 percent of the agricultural land was managed by nutrient management plans and that 11 of the county’s 16 CAFOs were in these two watersheds.

“We are going to require a lot more documentation for nutrient management plans,” he said, noting that the agency would require that one goal of nutrient management plans would be to ensure less phosphorus runoff. Segments of the Ahnapee River were listed on the EPA’s Impaired Waters List in 2014 for excessive phosphorus. Both the Kewaunee and Ahnapee rivers are also listed on the EPA list for PCB contaminants in sediment and fish tissue.

Bramblett said that addressing “old” pollution problems from PCB contamination would not be a focus of the process.

Andrew Craig, nutrient management specialist for the Department of Natural Resources (DNR), said after the meeting that the Kewaunee River may also qualify for the list because of excessive phosphorus but the DNR has not been able to complete the six months of required testing needed to determine its phosphorus levels.

The rivers’ listing as EPA Impaired Waters means that Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) studies will be completed, Craig said. A TMDL is a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a waterbody can receive and still meet water quality standards, and an allocation of that load among the various sources of that pollutant.

Craig said that TMDL studies have not yet been completed because other watersheds, including those of the Fox River, have had priority.

The Kewaunee County Land and Water Dept. sent a letter to the NRCS in May requesting assistance in addressing resource issues in the watersheds.

— kyancey@kewauneestarnews.com