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Our Rivers, Lakes And Streams Reports
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Executive Summary
From the Sugar River south of Madison
to the Lake Michigan shoreline,
the excess flow of runoff pollution into
Wisconsin’s waterways has led to serious
water quality problems, including impaired
drinking water quality, degraded wildlife
habitat and uncontrolled sewage overflows.
These problems extend downstream, from
contamination in the Great Lakes to the
dead zone that forms every year at the
mouth of the Mississippi River.
In 2002, the state took a major step toward
solving these problems by adopting a
set of the nation’s strongest stormwater regulations. The regulations set limits on
runoff from roads and developed areas and
require nutrient management plans for agricultural
land.
However, developers are not fully complying
with the law. To improve the health
of Wisconsin’s waterways, the state should strengthen its oversight of development
projects.
Polluted runoff degrades thousands of
streams, rivers and lakes in Wisconsin.
• The Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources (DNR) identified runoff as a
dominant source of pollution in over two-thirds of impaired river sections in
the state and over 50 percent of
impaired lakes in a 2006 assessment.
Development projects create runoff
pollution both during construction and
long term.
• During construction, development
clears land of vegetation, allowing
rainwater to carry loose soil into
nearby waterways. According to the
U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, a construction site of one acre
can release between 20 and 150 tons of
sediment per year.
• Sediment is the most common symptom
of water quality degradation in
Wisconsin’s rivers and streams— contributing to the impairment of
over 1,600 miles of rivers and
streams and nearly 200,000 acres of
inland lakes.
• After development, new roads and
buildings replace natural surfaces that
formerly stored and cleaned runoff
with hard, paved surfaces that divert
water and pollution directly into creeks
or into sewers.
• As a result, runoff increases the variability
of stream flow, eroding stream
banks, impairing wildlife habitat,
polluting drinking water, and contributing
to flooding and sewer overflows.
Without better enforcement of runoff
prevention rules, future growth in
Wisconsin could exacerbate runoff
pollution.
• In the next 14 years, Wisconsin’s
population is expected to increase by
over half a million people, or by about
10 percent.
• If development continues at even half
the pace as in the past, the amount of
built-up land in Wisconsin could
increase by about 12 percent by 2020.
To put that in perspective, imagine a
construction site covering a plot of land 1.5 times the size of Milwaukee
County, or nearly 250,000 acres.
• Much of this construction is likely to
occur in or around population centers.
(See Figure ES-1.) Municipalities
expected to grow by more than 2,500
people by 2020—and that also contain
waterways already impaired by sedimentation— include:
Milwaukee metropolitan area:
Germantown, Mequon, Sussex,
Menomonee Falls, Milwaukee,
Waukesha, New Berlin, West Allis,
Greenfield, Franklin, Oak Creek,
South Milwaukee, Caledonia, Mount
Pleasant and Salem.
Madison area:
DeForest, Sun Prairie,
Madison, Fitchburg, Watertown, and
Janesville. Green Bay area: Howard, Green Bay, Bellevue, DePere, Buchanan,
Appleton, Menasha, Grand Chute,
Greenville, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac,
and Manitowoc.
Central and Western Wisconsin:
Plover,
Onalaska, Eau Claire, and Hudson.
Green Bay area:
Howard, Green Bay,
Bellevue, DePere, Buchanan,
Appleton, Menasha, Grand Chute,
Greenville, Oshkosh, Fond du Lac, and Manitowoc.
Central and Western Wisconsin: Plover,
Onalaska, Eau Claire, and Hudson.
Weak enforcement policies allow
developers to subvert runoff prevention
law.
• Wisconsin’s runoff prevention rules
require builders to reduce sediment
runoff during construction by 80
percent at sites of one acre or larger.
Builders must also design sites to
prevent runoff after construction,
reducing sediment runoff by 80 percent, cutting peak runoff discharge
during storms, creating protective
buffers between developments and
waterways, and implementing practices
that allow water to infiltrate into the
ground rather than directing it off
the site.
• Flaws in enforcement allow developers
to subvert the runoff rules. A DNR
official has estimated 100 percent noncompliance
in at least one region of
the state.
• The Department of Commerce, which
oversees “commercial” construction
sites (an estimated 85 percent of all
sites), has weak enforcement practices
compared to DNR. Proposed Commerce
runoff rules, scheduled to go into
effect in April 2007, do not correct the
situation. For example, under the
proposed rules:
Developers are not required to submit
specific construction site or runoff
control plans to the Department of
Commerce. As a result, the department
is unable to conduct even basic
reviews of commercial construction
sites before construction begins.
Applicants will be granted automatic
permit coverage 7 days after submitting
a permit application—without
adequate time for review.
Commerce will charge a permit fee
of only $25 for all applicants, regardless
of the size of the construction
project—far less than would be
necessary to fund a meaningful
oversight program.
Commerce is not required to share information with DNR on a timely
basis. As a result, DNR does not know
even the location of a majority of the
construction sites it has ultimate
authority over—much less information
about violations that require
enforcement action.
• The difference in enforcement approaches
between DNR and Commerce
is readily apparent. While DNR
has referred at least 16 violations of
construction-site stormwater rules to
the Department of Justice for enforcement
in the last two years, the Department
of Commerce has not referred
any since it began monitoring commercial
sites in 1994.
To prevent growth from exacerbating
runoff pollution, Wisconsin should improve
oversight of development projects.
• The state should consolidate all construction
site stormwater regulation
back within DNR, the agency with the
legal authority and expertise to enforce
the Clean Water Act in Wisconsin.
• In the event that Commerce continues
to oversee commercial construction
sites, it should ensure that all developers submit a DNR-approved application,
including enough detailed information about proposed projects
to evaluate their compliance with
Wisconsin’s runoff prevention law.
Projects should not be automatically
approved without adequate review.
• Additionally, Commerce should share
permit applications with DNR on a
frequent and timely basis and make
them available to the public over the
Internet. Commerce should also share
information about site monitoring and
any identified violations to enable
DNR enforcement action.
• Permit fees (at either agency) should
be set at a level to ensure adequate
funding and staff for project
review, inspection and enforcement
action. Based on DNR estimates of staff requirements for optimal construction
site permitting and enforcement,
the average stormwater permit
application should be accompanied by
a fee in the range of $600, tied to inflation.
• Both agencies should emphasize lowimpact
development techniques, such
as minimizing the amount of impervious
surface on a site, as simple and
effective approaches to achieving the
long-term stormwater reduction goals
laid out in Wisconsin law.
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