Kewaunee
County Update, by Ron Heuer, Kewaunee County Chairman
Kewaunee
Co. Groundwater
As Abraham Lincoln so
appropriately said, “You can please some
of the people some of the time, all of the people some of the time, some of the
people all of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the
time.” All my life, I have
understood this, but I think there is one element of this axiom that is
missing, that being, “some people are just never satisfied,” no matter
what. But, we keep on trying because
that is our responsibility.
On Friday, May 23rd, our County
Conservationist, Andy Wallander, Board Member, Ron Paider and I went to Madison
to meet with both the Secretary of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Cathy Stepp and Secretary of Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade
and Consumer Protection (DATCP), Ben Brancel along with an impressive 14 members
of their staff members. The purpose of
the meeting was to request assistance in dealing with our Kewaunee County groundwater
issues.
This meeting came to fruition as a result of my call
to Governor Walker’s office who subsequently had a DNR staff member call me
directly and set up the meeting. We want
to thank the Governor, his staff, Secretary Stepp and Secretary Brancel, both
for taking the time for the personal meeting with us. And we thank them for
including and engaging their staff members to the issues we face in Kewaunee
County with our groundwater.
The mission of our meeting was to update the DNR and
DATCP as to the challenges we have in Kewaunee County with our Karst topography
and how our groundwater is being adversely impacted with our current state
mandated manure handling rules and regulations.
We presented a short PowerPoint presentation on Kewaunee County that
included; a county overview focusing on our businesses, our tourism, our physical
size, our county Land and Water staffing, population, acreage, number of farms,
number of CAFOs, number of cattle, etc.
Throughout the presentation, we impressed upon them
the idea that, “the one size fits all in the State” with regard to regulating the
handling of liquid manure does not work for a unique county like Kewaunee.
Why you ask? Because it seems
Kewaunee County has a challenging environment, that being about 1/3 of the
county has soil to bedrock being 20 feet or less and approximately 1/10th
of our land having 5 feet or less to bedrock.
And we have a large number of cattle in the county.
Secretary Brancel took issue with my description of
Kewaunee County being “unique” and he ticked off the names of several other
counties that have similar topography and cattle counts. However, I maintained that Kewaunee Co. is
unique, in that unlike those counties he mentioned, not one of them has an
entire side faced with Lake Michigan frontage and rivers that flow from the
county to the lake where, one sees the impact, first hand. In those counties cited by Secretary Brancel
there may be tributaries, but they flow through the county and merge with
another river taking most pollutants past those counties.
The tone of the meeting was very cordial and both
Secretaries and their staff members were engaged throughout. We made a number of requests of the DNR and
DATCP, with our primary request being support of both agencies in the
implementation of an approved manure handling ordinance that is unique to Kewaunee
County. They did get that message and
both the DNR and DATCP will work with our County Conservationist and the Land
and Water committee over the next 45 days to finalize a revised, unique manure
handling ordinance. Secretary Stepp made it very clear to her staff that she
wanted them to be focused in working with our staff to complete this ordinance
in a timely manner.
What does the creation of this unique ordinance mean
to the county? As you may know, the DNR
and DATCP at State level control water management and set the rules that govern
water management. A county can pass its
own ordinance but would have no way of enforcing that ordinance. By having both DNR and DATCP co-op in the
crafting and implementation of this ordinance, Kewaunee County will have the
authority to enforce it. Although this animal
waste water ordinance is yet to be finalized, the first drafts of the ordinance
showed the intent of the ordinance would deal with the application of any
manure to certain Karst topography soils through the winter months of the year.
Another take-away from the meeting was an offer of
help for us to properly and completely communicate with the farmers in our
community with regard to the new ordinance.
Also, the fact we had a total of 16 of the top management people of the
DNR and DATCP sitting in that meeting room for two and one-half hours listening
to our presentation and dialogue will certainly be a help going forward. Those staff people heard both Secretaries
express interest in assisting Kewanee County to better their environment. This meeting was only one step in changing
the direction of our county. Another
step will be to pass a joint Health / Land & Water Committees Resolution concerning
our ground water which will both inform and impress our legislators to step
forward and assist us in our endeavors.
Other
Issues
The new board was sworn in on April 14th
and over the following month, the new committees held their first
meetings. I attended all but one of
those meetings and I am very encouraged these new committees are up to the task
of managing our county business. Some of
the meetings were a bit long, but that is the typically the case when you are
installing new committee members and bringing them up to speed to the issues
they will be dealing with.
What I really enjoyed seeing are the new board members
asking probative, pertinent questions, as to why things are being done the way
they are. We have big challenges in the
county, and I am confident this board will make the right decisions.
Mr. Dorner, the county administrator, has announced
his retirement, and he will do so at the end of 2014. I appreciate him giving us ample time to find
a qualified suitable replacement. Mr.
Dorner will help us with our budget process for 2015 which will be quite
challenging. In 2015 we start to feel
the effects of the loss of revenue from the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant. We will have to find a way to manage through
the loss of some $3M in revenue in the next 5 years. That whole process will become more
challenging as Dominion, the owner of the plant, faces new assessment of the
facility and that facility then goes on the tax roll. Those taxes may mitigate some of our
exposure, but that remains to be seen.
County employee health insurance is a big cost to
the county as we pay about $2.4M in premiums for the 150 or so employees we insure. We are looking at options to change the way
we are handling insurance and we will have a group of employees involved in
helping us to define a program that is equitable to all.
Our Highway Department is under new management with
a new Commissioner, Todd Every. He is
charged with redefining the mission of that department. This is not an easy process as first one
needs to establish a number of possible directions for the department to take, and
then analyze each of those scenarios, to determine which scenario is best for
the county.
Our Human Services area continues to try to manage
its way forward while the State and Federal Governments continue to mandate services
without providing us the funds to pay for them.
I would like to see a county-wide tourism effort that pulls together resources
to focus on the promotion of tourism.
By the way, last week I was notified by a land owner
in West Kewaunee Township, that Element Power will be pursuing the construction
of 84 wind turbines in 2015. This land
owner, along with about 40 others have had their land in a contract with
Element Power for the past five years.
Element Power have an automatic renewal clause in their contract
allowing them to keep this land available for their wind development. This wind farm will start at Highway 29 and
extend south to Hillcrest Road north of Two Rivers. In Kewaunee County, it will be bounded on the
east by Highway 42 and the west by Townhall Road.
Once again, the State has enacted PSC128
which takes away any local siting authority.
So here we go again!!
These are but a few of the issues at hand, we have a
lot of work that needs to be done!
