Great Lakes Article:

21 lakes, rivers off impaired list

But state adds 10 others because of polluted water

By JESSICA HANSEN
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Last Updated: Sept. 10, 2002

The state plans to remove 21 river segments from its proposed impaired waterways list, but 10 lakes and rivers are expected to be added to the list this year because of poor water quality.

Impaired Waterways Proposed Additions Otter Lake in Chippewa County Lake George in Pierce County Mason Lake in Adams and Marquette A 3-mile stretch of Red Cedar River in Barron County Grubers Grove Bay of Lake Wisconsin in Sauk County A 1-mile stretch of Honey Creek in Sauk County A tributary to Bower Creek in Brown County Gunderson Valley Creek in Grant County Rock River, from Watertown to Lake Koshkonong, in Jefferson County Lake Koshkonong in Jefferson, Rock and Dane counties Proposed Deletions A two-mile stretch of the Baraboo River in Sauk County Spring Creek in Rock County The Sturgeon Bay ship-building channel in Door County A 1-mile stretch of the Mississippi River in Buffalo County Clack Creek in Dunn County A 11/2-mile segment of Gilberts Creek in Dunn County Knights Creek in Dunn County Little Bear Creek in Buffalo County Sand Creek in Crawford County An 8-mile stretch of Rowan Creek in Columbia County A 15-mile stretch of Killsnake Creek in Calumet County A portion of Badger Mill Creek in Dane County A 0.6-mile stretch of the East Torch River in Ashland County A 6-mile stretch of Crazy Horse Creek in Sawyer County East River in Brown County Duck Creek in Brown and Outagamie counties Trout Creek in Brown and Outagamie counties The Trempealeau River from Arcadia downstream to the Mississippi River in Trempealeau County Crawfish River at Columbus Millpond in Columbia and Dodge counties Rock Creek at Hoopers Millpond in Jefferson County Sheboygan River from Franklin to the dam at Sheboygan Falls in Sheboygan County List of Waterways To get a copy of the impaired waterways list call (608) 266-9277. Written comments may be submitted through Oct. 4 to Wisconsin DNR, P.O. Box 7921, Madison WI 53707. List: Impaired waterways

Five creeks in Dunn, Buffalo and Crawford counties were dropped from the list after the state Department of Natural Resources, which compiled the list, found better farm management practices led to improved water quality.

An additional 12 waterways were removed because the DNR found redundancies or mistakes in an earlier list.

"The fact that we can take more waters off the list than we're putting on it is where we want to go in this state," said Jim Baumann, a special assistant with the DNR's bureau of watershed management in Madison.

However, Baumann added, the addition of 10 water bodies to this year's list, anticipated at 540 lakes, bays and waterways, means more work must be done.

Three lakes and a creek were added to this year's list because of "non-point source" pollution with nutrients such as phosphorus.

Agricultural runoff is a leading source of non-point pollution, adding phosphorus and other substances to water bodies that can encourage algae growth, which in turn can reduce dissolved oxygen.

In other cases, waterways were added to the list because of a blend of point and non-point source pollution. A three-mile stretch of the Red Cedar River in Barron County near Highway W made the list for this reason, as did Lake Koshkonong in Jefferson, Dane and Rock counties and the Rock River from Watertown to Lake Koshkonong.

Two other waterways were added to the list because of contaminated sediment: Gruber's Grove Bay of Lake Wisconsin in Sauk County, where mercury has been detected, and a tributary of Bower Creek, a waterway southeast of the city of Green Bay, with contamination by polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs.

Last year, all state waterways were placed under fish consumption advisories, largely because of mercury contamination, Baumann said. In many places, the advisories suggest limits on how many fish should be eaten from the same lake over a period of weeks or months. In other cases, eating fish is banned completely.

Many Wisconsin lakes are becoming increasingly susceptible to mercury contamination, which is deposited into the lake from the atmosphere by way of rainfall.

"Mercury can travel hundreds of miles. We may have mercury falling into a lake in northern Wisconsin that came from the western part of the U.S., Mexico or even China," Baumann said.

Bower Creek drains into the East River, which in turn empties into the heavily industrialized lower Fox River near its mouth in Green Bay.

An estimated 24 paper and pulp mills line the lower Fox River, which probably has the highest concentration of impaired water bodies in the state within its watershed.

"Many tributaries to the Fox River are also impaired. I would be hard-pressed to name a tributary that's not," Baumann said.

Grubers Grove Bay should be on the list only a short time because of a nearly completed sediment removal project, Baumann said. Others could be on the list for years, he said.

Changing definitions of impairment have caused the list to grow since it was first issued in 1996, when it had 102 waterways. Still, Baumann said he is encouraged by the progress made so far.

"This is actually a relatively small percentage of waters that are considered significantly impaired. Even 540 some waterways are a fraction, considering we have 10,000 lakes in the state and 40,000 miles of streams," Baumann said.

But that's not enough for Rebecca Katers, executive director of the Clean Water Action Council based in Green Bay.

"In this day and age to have 540 water bodies still impaired is an outrage," she said.

She blames the state Legislature for not giving the DNR the power to punish polluters.