About 60 citizens attended each of two public input meetings held on Thursday, Jan. 18 about the USDA-Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) proposal to decommission the PL-566 flood control dams in the Coon Creek and West Fork Kickapoo watersheds.
The Coon Creek meeting was held at the Coon Valley American Legion Hall, and the West Fork Kickapoo meeting was held at the Cashton Community Hall.
USDA-NRCS State Conservation Engineer Steve Becker told meeting participants that the $1.6 million study, begun in July of 2020, had yielded the conclusions that:
1. The fractured sandstone geology where the dams abut the hillsides caused five dams to fail in one night in August of 2018, and because of the bedrock, all of the dams have high potential to fail. 2. The economic cost/benefit (c/b) analysis of the flood control benefits provided by the dams does not justify the cost of repairing or replacing the existing dams with more modern techniques that would make them safer given the fractured sandstone in the hillsides. To have been built originally, the dams were required to have a 1:1 c/b ratio ($1 of flood protection for every $1 spent). The retroactive computed c/b ratio in Coon Creek was 0.9:1 (90 cents of flood protection for every dollar spent), and in West Fork Kickapoo, the ratio was 0.3:1 (30 cents of flood protection for every dollar spent). The ratio was better for Jersey Valley Dam at 1.6:1 ($1.60 of flood protection and recreational value for every dollar spent). The West Fork Kickapoo ratio was also affected by the cost of repairs to the Klinkner and Jersey Valley dams undertaken in recent years. NRCS is offering 100 percent cost share to decommission 14 dams in Coon Creek, and eight of the nine dams in the West Fork Kickapoo.
Adding perspective
To put this in perspective, we all saw what happened in August of 2018 when three dams in the Coon Creek Watershed and two in the West Fork Kickapoo failed in one night. In total, when full, the impoundments behind the Coon Creek dams hold 462,579,147 gallons of water. The dams in the West Fork Kickapoo hold 1,566,910,699 gallons of water. The main stem of the Kickapoo River was never an area where NRCS could operate because the watershed is too big, and was under the oversight of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. There a project was abandoned to build one big dam just north of LaFarge. That dam, if it had been built, would have been anchored to the same fractured sandstone hillside, and if breached, would have released 10,752,350,400 gallons of water into the watershed catastrophically.
A bitter pill to swallow
The study results were a bitter pill for some residents in both watersheds to swallow given the fear of what might happen with the increasingly intense rainfall events in the future. The flood event of August 2018 was on everyone’s mind - estimated to have been a 500-year rainstorm. In that event, 11 inches of rain is believed to have fallen in an area near Cashton in just six hours.
Nancy Wedwick, President of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council (CCCWC), expressed her concern with a process she sees as being too focused on the safety of the dams and too little on what the community can do to protect itself after the dams are gone.
“After the 2018 flood, our group came together around the topic of what we can do to help ourselves,” Wedwick said. “We have the inspiration of having seen how the community came together with federal and state partners and the universities in the 1930s to solve our problems. Now, in 2024, we have a sense of just being left to deal with the problem of increasingly severe rainfall events and without the protection the dams offered. The original watershed study was about flood control and mitigation, not just the dams.”
CCCWC board members Tim Hundt, Tucker Gretebeck and Eric Weninger also weighed in.
“In recent years, I’ve watched as communities like Ontario and Viola have taken steps to get out of the way of future flooding,” Hundt said. “It seems now, at a time when things are getting worse that we are getting less.”
“I’m hearing that the decommissioning process for the dams will take about five years,” Gretebeck said. “Is there funding for land use measures that can help to make up for losing the dams like farm ponds – is there any way to accelerate that funding?”
“Your preferred plan is to decommission the dams,” Weninger said. “Can that plan be coordinated with the funding we’re going to need to offset the loss of the dams?”
Dr. Eric Booth, a UW-Madison hydrologist who assisted NRCS with parts of the study offered the following suggestion.
“Your report may need to include the community voices saying that they need more from the federal government before the dams are decommissioned,” Booth observed. “Could something like this be included as an addendum?”
Becker responded to this suggestion.
“Your points are well taken, and an addendum may be a good idea,” Becker said. “The need to create a new vision for land management will be a likely outcome of this study, and it may be that the weaknesses of this report will be just as important as the strengths.”
West Fork comments
In the West Fork Kickapoo meeting, the discussion ranged in a slightly different direction, with most comments focusing on NRCS’ proposal to rebuild the Jersey Valley Dam because of its recreational value which altered the cost/benefit analysis for that structure alone.
One citizen who lives just below the failed Mlsna Dam in that watershed was quite irate.
“Who was in charge of overseeing the maintenance of the dams, because they did a poor job,” Paul Conrad said. “The Mlsna Dam failed because there were no dry dams located above it. The federal government has millions to send out of our country, but nothing for us – this is bullshit!”
Becker agreed with the citizen that the outcome for the Mlsna Dam might have been better with more dry dams upstream. He said, however, that the counties had all done a very good job of maintaining the dams.
The comments about the idea of rebuilding Jersey Valley Dam were grouped around the water quality of the lake behind the dam, the impacts to the trout fishery, and whether it could be guaranteed that even the new dam would not breach.
“We don’t have as much recreational use of Jersey Valley as we used to, and its water quality is often not very good,” one citizen observed. “Why spend the money on the extra feet required for the recreational use? If we rebuild the dam without that, we could still have a 20-foot-deep lake.”
“Since the dam’s breach, trout fishing enthusiasts have seen temperatures in the waters downstream that are not healthy for trout,” another citizen said. “I think you either need to replace it right, or get rid of it altogether.”
Another citizen pointed out that three of the dams (Jersey Valley, Seas Branch and Bishop Branch) are actually creating a barrier,which supports efforts to reestablish native brook trout. He pointed out that if the dams are removed, the brown trout would move into those areas and take over.
“Can you guarantee that if rebuilt, the new Jersey Valley Dam won’t breach?” another citizen asked.
“No, we can’t guarantee that,” Becker said. “But there have been many innovations since the original dam was built that would make the new structure much safer.”
Decision timeline
Becker outlined the timeline for the decision about whether or not to decommission the dams. That timeline is as follows:
1. Comments on the draft study are open until February 20 at the project website at www.wfkandccwatersheds.com
2. All comments submitted will be addressed in a 30-45 day time frame after the comment period closes on February 20
3. The goal is for the final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to be published to the federal register by April 1
4. NRCS will then have 30 days for a record of decision
5. If all goes well, NRCS and the three counties could sign off on the proposal by May 1
6. The next step would be to request funding for the project
7. Decommissioning would be accomplished in 2025 and 2026 after all the plans were finalized.
The decision about whether to decommission the Coon Creek dams will be made by LaCrosse, Monroe and Vernon counties. There are two dams in LaCrosse County, seven dams in Monroe County, and five dams in Vernon County.
A recommendation will likely be made from the Land Conservation Committees in each county to their County Boards of Supervisors.
The decision about whether to decommission the West Fork Kickapoo dams will be made by Vernon County alone, with a process similar to that for the Coon Creek dams. Vernon County will also have to decide whether or not to rebuild the Jersey Valley Dam.
Depth of floodwaters
With citizens facing the reality that the flood control dams that captured stormwater runoff behind and released it slowly may be going away, many are starting to talk about what kind of changes in land use could help make up for the loss.
To put it in perspective, the dams in the Coon Creek Watershed only controlled 27 percent of the acres and runoff, and the damsonly controlled 35 percent of the acres and runoff in the West Fork Kickapoo Watershed.
Nevertheless, from a rainfall increase study by UW-Madison, it is estimated that the recent increases in storm size and intensity mean that the rainfall definition for the 100-year storm has increased by about six-tenths of an inch. There is no guarantee that this trend won’t continue to worsen.
This means that with the dams decommissioned, the depth of floodwaters in the watersheds will likely increase because the dams will no longer be holding percentages of that stormwater runoff back and releasing it slowly. This raises questions for public safety, and property and infrastructure flood resilience.
In the Coon Creek Watershed, the size of the floodplain is expected to increase by 228 acres over the 30 miles from Cashton to Chaseburg. This is expected to put two more homes in Coon Valley and one in Chaseburg, and two businesses and one garage with living space in Coon Valley in the 100-year floodplain.
In the West Fork Kickapoo, the size of the floodplain is expected to increase by 239 acres over the 35 miles from the headwatersnear the Monroe/Vernon county line to Liberty. This is expected to put three homes in Bloomingdale and two in Avalanche in the 100-year floodplain.
Because USDA and the U.S. Department of Transportation funding come from separate buckets, the same funding sources cannot be used for protection of homes and property as for protection of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and culverts.
According to NRCS, a total of 49 crossings in the Coon Creek Watershed between Cashton and Chaseburg would lose some protection, and eight public crossings would begin to be flooded by smaller storms by decommissioning the dams. The most impacted crossings would be at Olstad Road and Oakland Road/Rognstad Ridge Road.
According to NRCS, a total of 14 crossings in the West Fork Kickapoo between its headwaters and Liberty will be threatened to various degrees (depending on the severity of the rain event) by decommissioning the dams. Private crossings are likely to be flooded by smaller storm events. The crossing on Highway 56 near Liberty is considered to be of particular concern. The water depth at the bridge in Liberty is projected to increase from 11.4 feet with the dams in place to 12.6 feet in a 25-year storm event, and from 14.8 feet to 16.4 feet in a 100-year storm event.
The study area was limited to where the dams are judged to have the most direct impacts. This is not to say that areas in the Kickapoo Watershed from Readstown and south will not be affected by greater floodwater depths after dam decommissioning. These areas experience floodwaters from the combined Main Stem and West Fork Kickapoo River, with the dams only controlling a total of eight percent of runoff from the combined West Fork and Main Stem Kickapoo River Watershed. Land use changes in the Main Stem Kickapoo River could also have a beneficial impact on flooding outcomes above and below Readstown.
Trout Unlimited has conducted stream crossing surveys in Richland and Crawford counties in the summer of 2023, and the publicly available data could be used to identify high priority crossings, and used to go after funding to improve flood resilience and fish passage.
In addition, FEMA has funds available through the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program that could be applied for to address imperiled crossings. FEMA has funding for structures that are in harms way. For the Tainter, Reads,and Upper Knapp’s Creek watersheds, and for the Middle Kickapoo Watershed, that is enhanced at 90 percent cost share (up from 75 percent) for these areas currently listed as ‘Community Disaster Resilience Zones.’
Land use changes
According to Becker, this study did not go into depth on what land use changes could make the biggest difference after dam decommissioning. This is because those changes would be adopted on private lands. This makes it difficult to predict, and difficult to ensure they would be maintained for the long haul. Those kinds of measures would primarily serve to increase stormwater infiltrationand decrease the runoff that can lead to flooding.
“What we did do is try to create ‘bookends’ to show the difference between having the dams with current land use, current land use without the dams, and a scenario where all agricultural lands in the watershed were converted to pasture with the dams removed,” Becker explained. “This is intended to demonstrate that there is room for improvement between these two ends of the spectrum.”
Becker explained that this model shows that land use changes in Coon Creek could result in water infiltration and runoff reduction that would equal the protection that the dams provided. He said that this would be true in the West Fork Kickapoo Watershed only for 25-year storm events and smaller. Nevertheless, for all storm events, the model with all agricultural lands in pasture showed lower runoff amounts than the scenario with current land use and the dams removed.
“When evaluating the effectiveness of land use changes on flood control in the Coon Creek and West Fork Kickapoo Watersheds, it's important to consider that a greater portion of the West Fork Kickapoo's drainage area (35 percent) is currently dam-controlled compared to Coon Creek (27 percent). This factor makes achieving comparable flood reduction to the dams more difficult in West Fork Kickapoo Watershed,” hydrologist Megan Lush explained. “Variations in watershed characteristics also play a role. Key factors influencing the land use change modeling outcomes include time of concentration, watershed form factor, and drainage density. While similar in both watersheds, West Fork Kickapoo is characterized by a shorter time of concentration, a more elongated form factor, and greater drainage density. These attributes mean runoff reaches channels faster in West Fork Kickapoo than in Coon Creek, reducing the window for effective flood mitigation through infiltration during overland flow. Nevertheless, strategic land use changes can contribute to reducing flood risks in both watersheds.”
Becker explained that because all of the changes that might impact infiltration would occur on private land, funding for them would better come from other NRCS programs like the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP) or the Regional Conservation Partners Program (RCPP).
“If we were to go after funding for land use changes through this process, the county would have to secure easements and a 50-year commitment would be required on the part of the landowner. Further, beyond land use, this study also didn’t address issues of water quality” Becker explained. “However, I believe that decommissioning of the dams in these two watersheds will be a catalyst to other NRCS funding being made available.”
Coon Creek Community Watershed Council President Nancy Wedwick weighed in on the topic.
“People would feel better if this study contained a vision for a beneficial solution,” Wedwick said. “Lives and property will be affected by decommissioning the dams beyond the floodplain.”
