Airport Commission - Noise Abatement Subcommittee - Regular Meeting

I've 32 little bit of technical stuff getting sorted out, but I'm going to call the Wednesday, August 5th Lakes and Watershed Commission meeting to order. Jeremy, would you call the roll?

Yeah. Supervisor Andre is absent, excused. Ellen Levin. Yes. Supervisor Blasquitz.

Here.

Supervisor Downing. Is here. Supervisor Engelberger is on.

Oh, there he is.

Just popped on. Yeah. All right. D. Larson Converse, absent and excused. Sherry Grutter.

Here.

Bill Gabler.

He's on. He's there.

I'm here. Yep. Brett Schumacher.

Present.

All right. Thank you. Next on the agenda is B, consideration of minutes. What's before us are the minutes of the July 1st, 2026 Lakes and Watershed Commission. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

Moved by Levin. Yeah. Any discussion, questions, or concerns about the minutes?

Yeah, I'm sorry. I wasn't there last month, but we were out of country. But I was the one who had been trying to push the neonic conversation. And I know you had this presentation last month. And I apologize for not being here after pushing them to do this. And I didn't get a lot out of the minutes. I wasn't sure what the follow-up was, or maybe you can help enlighten a little bit.

Did you see the attachment to the slides?

Did you get the whole presentation? Oh, I saw the presentation, but okay. But yeah, well, maybe you can just briefly tell me what's going to happen or what was discussed as far as future steps.

There were no discussion in terms of future steps. It was treated as a presentation to the commission, and that's where it was left. I guess when we come to other business, you could perhaps request some kind of action to happen following that.

Okay.

Good. Thanks. All right.

Any other questions?

Sorry. I was just going to add, there was the discussion that Dane County has required those renting and planting crops on land rented from Dane County, right? Neonics are now banned.

Yeah, that's correct.

That's one thing that's out there. I don't know if that was a new action or something you're looking for, but I just wanted to make sure. That might not have been in the presentation, but was part of our discussion.

Noted. Thank you. Any other discussion or questions regarding the minutes? All right, then all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? So ordered. C, fund transfers, none. D, referrals, none. E, items requiring committee action, none. F, presentations. We have one item, background and history of the Lakes and Watershed Commission.

Would you possibly entertain allowing Amy to go first?

Oh, want to move that one all the way up? Yeah. Without objection, we'll do a G. Number two, reports to commission chapter 49 ordinance amendment. Seeing none. Excuse me.

All right, this is just a quick update. I am, if you don't know who I am, I'm Amy Piaget. I am the County Conservationist for our Land and Water Resources Department. I manage our Land Conservation Division and we work with farmers and provide planning and technical assistance on conservation practices for farmers. The ordinance that we oversee is Chapter 49, which is our Agricultural Performance Standards and Manure Management Ordinance. And we are going to be coming forth with some proposed ordinance amendments in the coming months. So this is just kind of a precursor to that action. A little history, originally the manure management prohibitions, manure storage permitting and winter spreading permitting were in chapter 14. Chapter 14 is now solely our erosion control and stormwater management ordinance. And in 2019, we created Chapter 49. And at that time, based on recommendations from the Healthy Farms, Healthy Lakes work group, we added all of the agricultural state performance standards to the ordinance. We obviously continued our manure storage permitting requirements. We expanded our winter spreading permitting requirements. to include both liquid and solid manure. And then we created what we call a certificate of use program for all manure storages in the county, which requires landowners to have a certificate of use to operate a manure storage. So that's a little history. Just to kind of give you some implementation metrics since 2019, since we've had the ordinance. We've issued 59 permits under our manure storage ordinance, 19 of those were new construction. One was what we consider a substantial alteration, meaning an existing storage was altered somehow or expanded. And then 39 were closures of old storage structures that are no longer being used. For certificates of use, we've identified 356 storages that are required to have certificates of use. 235 have been issued. 21 of those were closed, meaning they either didn't meet the standards or the landowner was no longer using them and wanted them closed. 79 we're still working on assessments for. And then 22 were identified as not actually meeting our storage definition. So the landowner submitted an application to be on the safe side. And when we went out and did the assessment, we said, no, you don't actually need a certificate for what you're doing.

Can I just ask a question?

Is this based on volume or what? The ordinance has a definition of what a manure storage facility is, and it has to have walls and store a certain volume, not volume, but a rain event, 24-hour, 24-year, 24-hour, whatever, storm event. year storm event. Excuse me. Yeah, but they have parameters there. So some people were like, they might have an area outside their barn that when they're cleaning the barn, they push some manure out, and then they load it into a truck and put it into manure storage. And they identified that loading area as a manure storage, and that's not a manure storage. So that's mostly what those would be, kind of temporary kind of management areas on a farm. Winter spreading permits, we have 204 permits right now for covering winter spreading. And then from an enforcement or a compliance standpoint, we received since 2019 about 105 complaints. And from those complaints, we've issued 25 notices of noncompliance. We've had 14 notices of violation, two stop work orders, three citations, and one referral to corporation counsel. So as far as enforcement goes, we do enforce the ordinance, but we rely a lot more on voluntary compliance than we do enforcement. but we do enforce when required and needed. So why are we updating the ordinance? This originally stemmed actually from supervisors. We had some web links in our ordinance that were broken and no longer worked. And in talking with Corporation Council, they've decided that you no longer put web links in ordinances because they break quickly. And so we wanted to go in and clean some of that up. We also, as Corporation Council was looking at the ordinance, they wanted to reorganize things to make it more readable. And so one of the items that they are reorganizing is the cropland standards and livestock standards that farmers have to follow before they were kind of listed in the same way they're listed in state statutes and codes, and that's not in any particular order. And so we wanted to clarify it and make it clear that these are the cropland performance standards and these are the livestock performance standards. So if you're a landowner looking at this and trying to figure out which ones apply to you, it's a little more readable. Not that ordinances are really fun to read, but at least it's more organized. We also wanted to go through and include the technical standards that can be used to meet those performance standards and prohibitions. And we wanted to update the nutrient management plan submittal deadline. Currently our ordinance has a submittal deadline of June 1st. The state went through a survey process of all of the agronomists across the state and all of the counties across the state and determined that everybody had a different due date. Every county, all of our neighbors, everybody had a different due date. And that was really challenging for private agronomists to get plans in, especially when they work in multiple counties or bordering counties, or even hard for landowners who have land in two different counties. And so the state made the recommendation that we standardize this across the state to be an April 15th deadline. So one of our proposals is to update to that new state deadline. Other reasons to update the ordinance, we'd like to add some procedural clarity to our manure storage permitting and certificate of use programming. We are proposing to reorganize the sections to flow a little better. When we first drafted this, we didn't We didn't really know how to implement the certificate of use program because it was brand new. And so we've gone through and cleaned that up and added some more procedural clarity. Like what happens if you have to renew? We didn't have a renewal process in the ordinance. So we're proposing like what is an approval? What is a conditional approval? And how do you renew a certificate of use? We also cleaned up a number of typos that we discovered after the fact. The final thing that we're proposing with the ordinance is to actually discontinue our winter spreading permit program. This is primarily to reduce redundancy. So when our winter spreading permitting program first started in 2006, nutrient management was silent about winter spreading and didn't say anything about it. So the county created their own standards through a task force of what farmers should follow winter spreading. Later, the technical standard for nutrient management was updated by the state and federal government, and they added criteria using some of what Dane County created and added that to nutrient management. And so now a nutrient management plan not only includes the time of year when you're growing your crops, but also includes a winter spreading plan. And so now we're kind of redundantly asking a landowner who's already required to have a nutrient management plan to also submit their winter spreading plan, which is embedded into their nutrient management plan. So it confuses a lot of landowners because they're like, I already sent you that. And they did, but We need another document saying that you sent it in again. And so it's quite a bit of staff time and redundancy on our part, on the agronomist part. It doesn't mean we're not following winter spreading requirements. It just means they don't need to have a permit from us is what we're proposing.

Who do they get the permit from? Pardon? Who do they get the permit from?

Right now, they get the permit from the county.

Nobody. What do you propose?

Our proposal is no longer having a winter spreading permit program and that they focus on supplying us with their nutrient management plan that includes the winter spreading plan.

It's already a subset.

It's a subset of the existing nutrient management plan. It wasn't originally when the program started in Dane County. I remember. Yeah.

But at that point, then you can say your plan complies or it doesn't comply. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Because that really is the crux of the problem is the winter spreading, manure spreading, right, for our lakes. A big part of it because the land is frozen often.

Right. And winter spreading plans don't eliminate winter spreading. They just reduce the risk.

This is what we did in Healthy Farms, Healthy Lakes. Right.

Yeah. We talked about this in Healthy Farms, Healthy Lakes. So It doesn't eliminate people from winter spreading, and they have to have a plan no matter what. So if they're going to spread in the winter, they need to have a plan. A nutrient management plan requires you to do that. So our requirement of safety to do that is redundant, because they already need a nutrient management plan, which covers the entire year and not just a subset.

But it does specify somewhere in there about spreading during the winter.

Exactly. Yep. The other component that we're looking at for those folks that maybe don't want to spread in the winter or don't have land base that is able to meet the standards to spread in the winter, we want to incorporate a headland stacking requirement where instead of spreading your solid manure out in the farm field, we find appropriate places to stack it and wait until spring or when times are less risky to spread it.

So when you're referring to winter, a lot of times the ground is frozen in March and that's when they're spreading. And how is that?

Winter is defined currently as frozen or snow covered ground. And frozen and snow covered have definitions. So typically snow covered would be more than two inches of snow. Frozen is a complicated definition, but you need to be frozen deeper than about an inch down.

So that will vary annually.

It will vary annually.

Yep.

Because we have had, especially now that we've seen climate shifting a little bit, you know, we didn't want to put... Nobody has wanted to put dates in there because if you just say from these dates, we've had some marches where they're planting corn because it's been so nice. We've had other marches where we have two feet of snow. So we don't want to put dates in there. And so this addresses it during frozen or snow covered ground. That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So just to kind of go a little bit into nutrient management just a little bit, because we want to focus more on getting everybody coverage with nutrient management, which includes that winter spreading plan. In 2014, we had about 27% of the county covered by nutrient management. And in 2024, so 10 years later, we're at 69%. So we've had about a 41% increase in nutrient management coverage in the county. And when we say coverage, that means a landowner or a producer is sending us and giving us as the county a copy of their nutrient management plan that we can document that meets technical standards. I would say every farm in the county is probably implementing some version of nutrient management if they're working with a co-op because they're not buying fertilizer in excess or things like that because it's just too expensive. But anybody with manure at this stage has some version of nutrient management that they're operating under. But we've shown quite a bit of increase in the coverage in the county since 2014. And the Department of Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection pulls this data for all the counties in the state, and they don't have the 25 data report yet, even though we're in 26. they don't have the 25 report yet. So I think our number has increased even more than this.

I know.

No, each year they choose a different color. I don't know why. But just to kind of give you an idea, this is the Yahara watershed. And just to give you an idea of coverage in the Yahara, because I know that's an area that's of special interest It's kind of a busy slide, but the main thing is if you look at the dark green areas, we have almost 86, 87, 89% coverage of nutrient management in those areas. And some other areas are closer in the 70, 75. So that northern part of the watershed, we have a lot of nutrient management. applied in that area and documented. So I would say in that part of the watershed, most people probably, even the ones that we don't have documented, excuse me, are still doing something, but we just don't have it documented. But if you're looking at like the Token Creek, or excuse me, the 100 Mile Grove, we're at 86%. You know, so there's in that watershed, over 9,000 acres of nutrient management documented in that watershed. You know, you look at Waunakee six mile, we've got over 10,000 acres of nutrient management covered. So we have put a pretty major focus on the northern part of the watershed, and we've had a good response there.

Who decides the amount, the numbers? Because you said you don't have last year's numbers. So how do we know what would work for a plan by April for the following year?

I just don't have statistics for the total numbers because I was using the data from Department of Ag. They actually, the Department of Agriculture gets their numbers from us. So... I do have a giant spreadsheet of over 700 nutrient management plans that we're tracking for acres all over the county. We don't have all of it mapped in the county because we're a large county. We have nearly 500,000 acres and already over 700 nutrient management plans. So it's a lot of... data analysis. So we targeted areas like the Yahara watershed to focus our mapping on. So that's where we can get this finer scale detail than at the countywide scale. So just to kind of give you an outline of what the ordinance updates are going to be, we did a public informational kind of opening. There's a website out there right now that has draft language. We did an informational meeting back in June, and we accepted comments through June 30th. We didn't receive any comments. I've also gone out and presented to our producer-led watershed groups in the county to make them aware of this. The goal is to have an ordinance amendment introduced to county board in September, and then it'll be reviewed by committee in September, maybe October, depending on when your committee meeting schedules are. And then anticipated approval is hopefully in October with publication in November. Mostly we're trying to hit this before we get into this next winter cycle to save a little staff time is the big thing. Because it is a pretty significant workload for us to track down everybody, make sure that they have the paperwork, and to review what we've already received to make sure that we've received it. And the timings, like I said, our nutrient management plans are due in June. Winter spreading was due in October. But it's a lot of times the same information that they're sending us twice. So this will streamline some of that for us quite a bit.

Is there an annual percent of those who submitted that actually get audited?

We do status reviews for all of our farmland preservation participants who are required to have nutrient management. And that's roughly 1,000 participants in the county. And we do one quarter of those each year. So about 250 are reviewed each year. So we do look at this fairly regularly. And then any time if we were to receive a complaint or a concern or if we would see something, we would then also flag that for review. Yeah. And that's all I have as an introduction. So if you're curious about the ordinance language, it is out on our website as a draft. And I can provide that to Kyle if he needs it.

Any questions from the Commission?

Amy, may I set up a meeting with you at some point in time? I've got as part of the Blue and Clean Lakes Alliance, I'm leading one of the teams that's dealing with ag nutrient management, and we're putting a charter proposal together for projects and that. But I think you may have some, based on this, you may have some of the data that I'm looking for.

Maybe. Sure. Yeah. Anytime you can get my contact info from Kyle. I don't think I have a business card anymore. No worries.

Are we supposed to look at this and then approve it?

There's nothing that you have to look at today. What will happen is the ordinance amendment has to be introduced to county board and then they refer it to committee. One of the components of Lakes and Watershed Commission that one of the powers that you have is you have the ability to make the ordinance applicable countywide. And that's one of the things that we utilize for Chapter 49 so that it applies countywide. And so my guess is that it will probably be referred to you, probably referred to Land Conservation Committee, probably referred to ENER. So this is just an introduction, just so you're not like, what is this?

What's the timeframe on that?

Probably September or October.

Supervisor Downing, I see you come off mute. Do you have a question?

Yes. Hang on just a minute. Are you hearing me yet?

Yes.

Oh, okay. Amy, are there fee changes coming along with this also?

No additional fees would be coming with this. We do have a winter spreading permit fee that would then go away, but The way that fee works is that if they submit their plan in an electronic database through SNAP+, which is the planning program that they use, we waive the fee. Because us receiving it in that SNAP-plus file is easier for us to review, easier for us to map, and easier for us to administer the program. If they want to submit it to us as a PDF paper copy, then they had a fee. So most people were submitting us the electronic copies to avoid the fee. So we're not really losing any revenue from that standpoint because people were taking advantage of the fee waiver.

Any other questions? I just have one. You mentioned that there's been no public feedback or you put it up for public comment, but there hasn't been any. That includes no positive feedback either, right?

I have presented to farmer groups. They haven't like publicly gone onto our website or anything and said, yes, we're in favor of this. But in their meetings, they have all been supportive of this and understanding and they... We've worked with agronomists in the county as well who have also been supportive of this and said it will help streamline some things and make it easier to understand for the farmers and for the agronomists. But they haven't gone onto our website and put a comment.

Are there plans for any additional requests for public comment on what's been there already?

Not at this time, other than through committee. Through committee, yeah.

Any other questions? All right. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah. Thank you for adjusting the schedule too.

Yes. Understood. Yeah.

Appreciate that.

All right. Moving on. Well, we're going to jump back to having presentations then. And we're going to start with, there's only one item, background and history on Lakes and Watershed Commission.

All right, I'll start out by introducing myself because some of you are new faces to me. My name is Jeremy Belucic. I'm covering for Kyle. I'm the Water Resource Engineering Division Manager for Land and Water Resources. Our division does a lot of things with design and conservation design and that, but our primary focus is implementing the countywide erosion control and stormwater management ordinance. So we're going to touch on that quite a bit in here because we use the Commission's authority on a daily basis to implement our stormwater program. So I'll just asterisk this presentation with, it's not mine, it's Kyle's and he gave it to me like a day before he left. So I have looked at it, and one of the benefits is that I've been around almost 30 years with the county, so I actually lived a lot of the things that he had put into this. Alan's got a different date, but what Kyle had put in here is that in 1988, Wisconsin State Statute 33 was adopted which formed the Dane County Lakes and Watershed Commission. You are the only such commission in the state that has this kind of authority. So it is specific to Dane County. It was adopted by the county and almost immediately the commission started their Take a Stake in the Lakes program that's been going on ever since. Yes, sir.

There is one in the Fox Valley. It's listed right after this. Is that a commission or not?

I am not aware of any other authority that, any other commission that has the authority to implement countywide standards. It lists Dane County and then it lists countywide standards. Yeah, it might form a commission, but it definitely doesn't have the authority. So you're all here. The composition of the commission is a county executive designee, a mayoral designee, two supervisors, county supervisors from within Madison and two from outside of Madison, a representative from the Yahara Lakes Association, a citizen representing Madison, and then a citizen representing towns, along with another one representing cities and villages outside of Madison. So it's kind of a diverse committee. And the idea is that water resources don't follow municipal boundaries. So it's got to be a composition of everyone in the county. So the goals are to improve water quality. talking both about economic benefits, but also the environmental value that that provides to the county and protecting that. And also along with the environmental stuff is the recreational uses of our navigable waterways. So all of the issues that come up and before this commission are touching on one of those subject areas. So what has the commission done? Early 90s was the Dane County Water Quality Plan and Implementation Plan. I was not here for that. I started in 97. But the countywide wetland protections and construction site erosion control standards, there was the precursor to our modern ordinance. There were standards that were being put in place at the time. lot of activity in the priority watershed program, the Lake Mendota Priority Watershed that implemented erosion and stormwater issues, but I would call that, you know, just the initial startup of thinking about regulations for both construction and stormwater management. The Commission implemented the 200-foot Slow No Wake on the Ihara Chain and established Chapter 72. In the 2000s, a lot of activity happened. In 2001, it was a result of a lot of work prior to that, but the county implemented their countywide stormwater management ordinance, which is Chapter 14. Amy alluded to that a little bit, but it's been around now for, it was effective in 2001. It's been around for 25 years now. As I mentioned in the beginning, it's effective countywide. So if we believe that City or Village is not acting in a way that they're implementing our standards, we can go in and implement them. Happens rarely because a lot of people share the interest of protection, but once in a while. We started our aquatic plant harvesting program, working with the DNR and figuring out where we could harvest, when we could harvest, those kinds of things. Some bigger actions that came directly out of the commission was the county-wide phosphor span in lawn fertilizer, and establishing chapter 80. I'll just mention that the state fell to pretty shortly after that, after the county did it and was successful. Cotar sealants were banned also within Chapter 80. Also had some working groups that the Commission was part of, including the Manure Spreading Task Force, Yahara Clean. in the Yajara Lakes Advisory Groups, which met a couple of times in the 2000s. And then in, I believe it was 2008, the Office of Lakes and Watershed, which staffed the commission, was merged into the Land and Water Resources Department. 2010s, the commission participated in SaltWise, Dane County is probably 90% of Wisconsin salt wise and the work that gets done here. We've held some strong water technical advisory groups. The modern performance standards that are implemented through the county ordinance were developed through advisory committees that were formed with the Commission in mind, either in partnership or the Commission actually was leading the way on those. The Healthy Farms, Healthy Lakes Task Force Commission was involved in that, expanded aquatic plant harvesting. As I mentioned, a lot of those technical advisory groups ended up in having ordinance amendments. So Chapter 14, our stormwater ordinance, and then Chapter 49, which Amy went over in detail with the agricultural performance standards. 2020s, the commission helped establish a countywide illicit discharge ordinance, chapter 50. That's also an ordinance that my group enforces. And for those of you that weren't around for that, an illicit discharge is anything that gets into the stormwater system that is not stormwater. So in fact, on Friday, we're going out to a farm and they're getting manure into their stormwater basin. We're going to be enforcing it through Chapter 50 on that. It could be concrete washout down a storm sewer inlet. It could be a car wash not using effective floor drains and it's running out into the street or poor storage of cooking oil. Those are all common things that we deal with. One of the initiatives that came out of one of the technical advisory groups was looking at a stormwater fee-in-lieu program. So a fee-in-lieu program is, all right, maybe we can't possibly do certain stormwater standards on certain sites, but what if we still made you pay for it? And then we did it somewhere else that made more sense. So that was quite an effort to look at a feasibility study for that. The commission actually was successful in getting me an engineer that was hired with that focus, at least initially. And we came to the conclusion that it didn't make sense. So sometimes you have to go through all those motions just to figure out that it's not a good idea. But we did look at it very, very closely. Um, obviously has come up a lot recently and as far as regulations, what to do with it. And then, um, currently, I believe the commission's been working on regulations of ice bone inland waters chapter seventy one. So can't harp on this enough, but the unique authority to pass county rules county wide and. primarily establishing performance standards and bars that everyone has to meet countywide creates an equal playing field no matter where these activities, whether agricultural or development purposes occur, they're going to be subject to at least the county minimum standards. The commission's also, like I said, supported a lot of other things too, like our Yahara sediment removal projects, Renew the Blue was mentioned tonight, Yahara Clean, Yahara Winds. These are all collaborative group efforts to help with countywide water quality. You've supported our ordinance amendments and you've been advisory to a lot of other committees as well. Stormwater Technical Advisory Committee was a joint effort of the Regional Plan Commission and the Lakes and Watershed Commission together. And that was fairly recent. And then supporting the work that we do as county staff throughout the county and supporting our positions when needed. So that's what Kyle had. Are there any questions?

I have one suggestion. Looking around the table, I guess I've been here forever. But a lot of you who most likely went around through this, we had in the past as a group going around to, could you put up the last slide? Sure. To some of the items. In other words, we went out to the farms, specifically a couple of farms that are active in the WINS program. We went out to it. the manure digesters. And I don't think any of you had the wonderful opportunity to go with us. Nothing like a manure digester. But anyways, so it might be worthwhile, Jeremy, to have mentioned to Kyle to try to, and maybe you would like to arrange, you know, to do some of these things in the fall. It's a good time. Get the idea of what the cover programs are.

Actually, I had already, when I joined recently, I asked if we could do a field trip.

Yeah. Oh, no, we had field trips everywhere. Yeah. Even last year, Chuck, when Chuck was doing, he did field trips of all the dams and things like that. And it mostly is worthwhile to do it again, get an idea what that is.

Thank you. I think that's a good input. Appreciate that.

And if you really want to look at the history, I just know by people, the original, that public inland waters chapter 33 was a Lucy, a governor Lucy. And most likely maybe his wife. I don't know if you remember her, but she was sort of very aggressive in everything. No double bottom trailers. Okay. And she didn't like the lakes because they were not well kept. So if you look at the somewhere, I had the addendum or the introduction when this was first, the bills were first put out and they, you know, this glowing thing of what the lakes could be and what they are.

Supervisor Downing.

Thank you. Jeremy, will you please put this presentation in our minutes?

Yeah, I will make sure that both Amy's and this presentation are attached to the minutes.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments from the commission? I have one. that it might be something to make a note of, Jeremy, is I know when I first joined the commission, there was some discussion about that fee and lieu program. And it was just when I joined, I think maybe my first or second meeting is when you presented on that. Is there any Are the findings easily available that it's something that we could talk about as a commission again? In summary?

Yeah, well, there was a report that was written as an executive summary if you don't want to read the whole thing. We could definitely bring it back if you want to look at it and see what some of that reasoning was.

Yeah. It used to appear in the budget all the time, and then it dropped from the budget because the Matter of fact, you, Jeremy, I think, said it was taken care of. I remember that those days. The budget. It used to come in when we used to... I put a budget together. There was always a topic.

Yeah.

And then that was taken care of somehow. It was settled or paid or whatever happened. And so it went out of the budget.

So what was in the budget was a position. Your recommended budget had a position. We were successful a number of years ago in getting that position. So that's how we got the report written and the presentation that you guys saw eventually.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead. I'm just wondering about erosion control. Is that anything that also dovetails with what you're doing? I know DNR sets the standards, and especially on construction sites. I don't know what the role is of the county or this commission.

Erosion control on construction sites is 100% under the commission's purview. Chapter 14 is very specific. We have a number of performance standards that are required on all construction sites. Whereas the state only requires an erosion control plan and permit at one acre of land disturbance, we're 4,000 square feet, so less than one-tenth of what the state requires. The state leans on us pretty heavily because we have the capacity to enforce our ordinance. We do over 3,000 inspections a year. So if that's, I mean, if you're looking for topics in the future, if you want an overview of our rose and stormwater program, I'd be happy to do that too. If you want a field trip, we could definitely show you some of the things that we're doing.

Show me next door because I've got just there all the time. Yes.

Especially now because there's so much building happening, you know, apartments everywhere.

It isn't even that it's everyone taking their, land and trying to cut it down a bit, putting in new driveways without permits, chomping down trees, putting in concrete.

I've made a note of that. I think that is something that the committee or commission would be interested in learning some more about. Any other questions or comments? All right. Thank you, Jeremy. All right, moving on. Back to G, this time number one, Lakes and Watershed Commission budget recommendations. I believe we have one member of the public looking to speak on the...

Yes, I agree. Okay. All right.

Yeah, you're welcome to speak from there if you speak up so everyone can hear you or scoot up to the table, your choice. You have five minutes to address the commission.

Okay, yes. Thank you, Supervisor Wiesewitz, Chair. Yes, I'm Steve Brooks. I live over by Manoa Bay, Bay Creek neighborhood. This year I decided to volunteer to help out on cleaning up a Bernie's Beach. And Bernie's Beach has been, I guess, invaded with invasive lakeweeds. I think it's the invasive Eurasian milfoil, mainly. And I started kind of wondering about this while picking up litter back in March. Well, anyway, it kind of evolved in that the lake level at that the bay level was really low. And that's what kind of brought me down to the lake, the shoreline, because it was 100 feet out at that time. I think the winter was, we were short on water. And so the bay was really low at that time. So it kind of got me thinking, wow, this is a good time to clean it up. So I started to do that since beginning of April. So we have a once-a-week volunteer cleanup at Bernice Beach, and we call it Break the Lake, kind of going off that Take a Stakes in the Lake theme, I think, that I heard a long time ago. Well, anyway, okay, I'm here okay to – you were addressing the – budget recommendations for the Lakes and Watershed Commission. And I agree with all your recommendations. I think they're excellent. And the only thing I would like to say for the flooding and lake management is that it does state about invasive species and aquatic plants. And year number three, kind of down at the bottom of the first page there, that it mentions flooding on the O'Hara Lakes and more funding for equipment And I would just like to say they had aquatic plant harvesting equipment. I don't know how old the old harvesters are, but yesterday I met this guy at this meeting for the Land and Water Conservation Board, and he happened to be a salesman for this weed equipment that you can use on the lakes. And I'm not sure if the county would be, I sure hope it would be maybe interested if some of those machines are getting older and need to be phased out to get one that can go a little closer to the shoreline. Because I think that's what's lacking with the plant management is the shoreline crew or having the machines possibly go into, you know, more of the shore a little bit farther to get the lake weeds on properties You know, properties that people maintain, such as South Shore Drive or along the bay, people who live across the street do maintain some of that lake shore, the shoreline area, where they get their piers out. And then, okay, what happens there, harvest the lake weeds and put them on the street. I mean, then the city of Madison picks them up. And in fact, the city of Madison does a lot of pickup on lake weeds at all the parks. I'm thinking Olbrich Beach Park, they have this blue dumpster that, oh, and I sent out pictures. I hope people take a look at those pictures after you work. Might take a little time to load up. But anyway, the one picture showed four Four young men picking up the lake weeds out of Obreg Beach, July 3rd, the day before birth in July. Four of them getting the weeds out. And then they have a two-wheel wheelbarrow, too, that they use. Okay, the city of Madison has dumpsters at Esther Beach, Bernie's Beach, Obreg Park. I was down at Goodland Park. I didn't see a dumpster. I mean, if somebody wanted to pick up the lake weeds out of the park, where do they put them? And that beach, I don't know. That beach is kind of, I don't know if I'd go swimming in that beach. It looks like it's not safe looking at it.

I didn't register. Is it possible for me?

Hold on a sec. Are you good? Yeah, that's pretty much it. Thank you, Mr. Books.

Any questions for the speakers?

Other than I do see under flooding and lake management number three, that it does include equipment for plant harvesting equipment. Right. Is in there, you're just saying. Yeah. Consider new equipment.

Yeah, if like an old one needs to get renewed or something happens, maybe think about Maybe purchasing one or so that one of them they can go into water that's shallower than three feet because the current ones can't go into shallow water.

You might get some answers from David Rowe. Did you talk to him at all? Not yet, no. That would be a good place to talk. He's the one that controls everything and he is very knowledgeable on what we have, what we don't have. And I think it was last week, or the last meeting rather, he brought up the idea that basically when you go out, even though the water is low, if you're below the water line or where the water line should be, you're dredging that you need a permit for. And there's all sorts of things. So he would be just an excellent, excellent resource. to get for you and all your friends and the whole group. Maybe he would come out and talk to the group. Yeah, great. Thank you.

I would just follow up. We had our family reunion at Cleveland Park on Saturday. We had 12 kids in the water there. So the county actually was very good about coming out, I think, on Friday and raking it all and cleaning out that little swimming area. Kids had that at the time of their life. No one got sick, but I don't know. Again, I like... kids can use the beach and water that they should instead of, you know, pools. But good points. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions for that speaker? Yeah, I don't, I think without objection, if you would like to address the commission for up to five minutes, that'd be great.

Thanks. My name is Lynch Trabelson. I also live on the lake. I live where Hawkeye hits Monona Drive. So I think everybody knows that part of the lake, it's super shallow and it's getting shallower by, and it seems like it's really a problem for us. We had a really bad blue algae bloom. I mean, it was just unbelievably stinky and horrible and lots of people coughing, et cetera. But I guess I would reiterate the request, if there's anything that can be done to get something to come in We do not have weeds in our area that are growing from the bottom of the lake bed. We have floating masses of decaying weeds, leaves, horrible amounts of trash that come in and it just stays there. And because of the prevailing winds, it does not leave. So, you know, we do everything we can do within our power to put weeds on the pier and haul them away. But it is, I mean, it is not feasible, really, for us to do anything to make the most minute dent in this. You know, I see the harvesters go by. I know David Rowe. He's been super helpful to us. I mean, I've called him sometimes when I've said, I just want to make sure you're coming back to get the pure pickup. And he's always been responsive. And I know they will not bring those harvesters in there. But the stuff we have is not, it's floating on the top. We would not, we would like not, we don't want to dredge the bottom any more than anybody else because one, you know, it's expensive, et cetera. But there must be some equipment that could skim off this top stuff. That is, we know it's super, it's mulch. I'm a gardener, I do. This is super rich organic material. And if there's anything that you could do or put in the budget to consider to help our area, I mean, I think it's happening in other parts of the area, but I think we're the worst. We understand that for years, there was a storm sewer that came right up into the lake and that continued and silted up that area. So an already shallow area became shallower. We're also concerned about the water, it's the stormwater retention, I think is what that's called, between San Damiano and there's a property just to the north of it. Everybody I've ever talked to has said that's woefully too small. And, you know, we question if it's getting dredged often enough. I mean, we just, we continue to see just a dramatic deterioration of our lakeshore. We move there about, nine years ago. I mean, we had weeds, not terrible amounts. It's just, it went from like right near the shoreline to now it's 40 feet out from our shoreline. And it's just this flat, this floating mass of rotting, stinking, awful weeds. So if there's anything that you can do to help us, we would really appreciate it.

I know that Yeah, David Roe addressed this exact question, I guess. Was it this meeting? I'm in several meetings that are very much like this one. And it's unfortunate he's not here to address that. Would you be willing to either email the commission or myself or leave your email address and I can address this question and have some kind of response sent your way?

Yeah, I mean, we've over the years asked for like, could you bring in a flat bottom boat that we could even pile stuff into? I mean, part of the problem is lifting it out of the water onto the pier, hauling it to the end of the pier. I mean, I do have one helper in my building. I'm one of the youngest people in our building. We just don't do it. And if not everybody does it, it makes zero difference because everything else just fills in. So we feel like, This is a problem way beyond what any individual homeowner can do. And, I mean, and again, it's so dramatically worse. That's what we don't, we would like to understand why is it getting so much worse. We hear the water quality is, you know, that may be getting better. And we just continue to see just terrible stuff. But I'm happy to leave an email. I've been in communication with members of the Dane County supervisors about this. You know, so I'm happy to do what we can. But I think some machine that could come in closer would be a godsend for us.

Thank you. Any questions for this speaker? All right. Well, thank you very much for coming and addressing the commission. Appreciate that. Yeah, if you would leave some kind of email address, I can tear you off a little sheet of paper here. that's kind of silly but all right moving on so that was a public comment on item one under G reports to committee so what we're looking at is the lakes and watershed Commission and budget recommendations I will preface by saying that Director Hicklin would have liked to have been able to be here, if not this meeting, the following meeting, to discuss how these recommendations pertain and relate to what will be in the budget, what the budget recommendations were coming out of the department. And that will be forthcoming in October, which will be after the release of the executive's budget proposal. Director Hicklin will be here too. That's late for this. It is, but it is indeed too late for this.

Looking at the documents, the statute, it seems to me it doesn't really go through Laura per se. It should go from us to the board.

Well, this is part of what I want her here to explain to us.

And I think that's what's changed over the years, as I mentioned early on.

And indeed, I do think that the general process is not what it always was. And I think as exemplified by the discussion that we had at the last commission meeting, there is a fair amount of confusion about how it is, how it should be and where it should go. So what I propose is that with regard to the budget recommendations that are before us, that I would move to have us adopt it, which would then allow us to debate and discuss it. And if adopted, we could proceed with that.

It's essentially what we put in for the previous year.

It is. It is. So with that, I'm going to move to adopt the budget, 2027 budget recommendations as written here. Second. I can. A report to committee, I can move. And we have a second from Steve Greb. All right, any discussion or questions, comments on this? I see both Supervisor Downing and Sherry here. I'll start with Supervisor Downing.

Well, thank you, Chair. When would amendments to this be appropriate?

Now.

Okay, I'll suggest one. And... It's in response to our lakes watchdog, Jonathan Becker, who sent us another letter just a few days ago and pointed out how Wabisa has gone beyond the summer maximum allowable. And I would suggest that in that paragraph in which we ask the county to continue to address flooding of the lakes, we add this, and by using the summer lake minimum as its management standard goal.

Is that a motion, Supervisor Downing?

It is.

Any discussion on that?

Yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Yeah. Basically, you know, we've gone through this before. John has always tried to keep it, and he's the one keeping the levels right in the middle. That was the idea, not at the minimum, because if you're at the minimum, Lake users are going to get very upset because you can't put a boat in at the minimum. Actually, the maximum is not much of a maximum, but we already have a motion that was put in years ago that is at the county level to keep it at the median. If you check with John, just to make sure that I'm not misquoting something, but I think there is one already in there. with a level.

Anyone else want to comment there?

So the rationale for that motion, Supervisor Downing, is just to kind of hedge our bets or have the ability to, if a big flood does come, to give us more room for storage.

Well, yes, what we've seen with heavy rains is that very often one or more of the lakes will go above the allowable maximum for the summer. And I think possibly when the words and implementing the lake management programs, was meant to address my point, but it's not very exact. I'd like to be more explicit and have us aim a little lower.

Any other, yeah.

Again, you know, as a lakefront property owner and user and representing a lot the Yajara Lakes, that's my constituents, Basically, you don't want to be at the minimum. And any lake level that comes up because of a sudden rain is quickly dispensed with. Now, that's the whole purpose of our dredging and all the harvesters that sit out on the lake. Waubeesa doesn't stay very high very long, and I haven't heard a single complaint from anybody on Waubeesa that they're flooding. And believe me, I get all the calls.

Phil, I see that you have your hand up.

Yes, my suggestion here would be not to put this in as a budget recommendation right now, but to ask John Reimer to model this as a target and let us see what the implications would be. He has the ability to do that and can go back retroactively the last couple years and say, all right, if I'm going to draw down or have my target be set at the min versus the median, Here's the impact to the lake levels, and then we can make an informed decision.

Okay, well, it's not at something, Max.

I think that's besides Supervisor Downing's motion anyways. Any other questions or any other comment on the motion?

Yeah, Downing again.

All right.

I would like to accept Phil's suggestion as a friendly amendment. In other words, instead of laying out the summer minimum as the goal, ask exactly what Phil suggested, that we model that suggestion.

Does that mean you're... pulling your motion or?

I'm asking that we revise it somewhat according to Phil's suggestion. And so it would read and ask staff to model using the Summer Lake minimum as a standard guide.

It still puts you to the...

Sorry, bear with me writing a note. I believe that exists. I don't think he's reported that before.

That model exists? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, I guess what... Even the modified motion is what's before us then. If there's no other comments, I think we will just take a vote on whether to include that in the budget recommendations or not. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Aye.

No.

No. No. I think the nos have it. The motion fails.

Is it too late to call for a roll call?

No, I mean, yeah, we can take a roll.

It was unclear to me when the I came in whether that was what it was for.

That's fair, Supervisor Downing.

All right, Allen Levin. No. Supervisor Blastowitz.

No.

Supervisor Downing.

Aye.

Supervisor Engelberger. No. Sherry Grutter.

No.

Phil Gabler. Aye. Steve Greb. No. Brian Schumacher. No. Bales, 2-6. Yeah, thank you.

All right. So then on to discuss the rest of the budget recommendations. Sherry.

So at our last meeting, when we saw the same document, and we had a discussion about the fact I brought up about nitrogen missing from here and that we would expand it, but I don't see any different language than what was here last time. So we've got, we're going to add nitrogen because it is an issue. And right now it's phosphorus and chloride. Anybody remember that?

I unfortunately do not. You do?

I think it was mumbled along the way. Okay.

Or wasn't it generalized more as like contaminant nutrient or something like that? Maybe not specifically nitrogen, but... No, I think she mentioned that.

Well, I was specifically talking about nitrogen, but it was just that we weren't just going to concentrate on phosphorus.

Oh, I do remember that.

So... Which one is that under?

where we have all the pollution. Okay. Phosphorus, fluoride, you just have to put a new, you'd want to add in a new paragraph there, I assume.

Right.

Somewhere alphabetically between phosphorus and chloride.

Because the NH4 concentration in the manure is killing the fish. So, I mean, it's definitely an issue. It's a modification of the nitrogen.

Do we have enough information to add something like that to this particular document?

I would recommend that We get some presentations on it, and it's not going to get into any budget this time, by the time we're done, because we don't know any, you know, here you have a maintainer. I suppose you could just put some land in on it, but it would be not unreasonable to arrange something, and then we could get an idea of what it costs, how we should do a remediation of it. I assume that's what you'd like.

I can't remember if the state of the lakes report has some information on nitrogen or not. There's some language.

That's why we had to start from the baseline. We're going to sit way back.

Mr. Chair, I have a meeting at 7, a town board function I have to run. Okay. Is that okay? Yes, yes.

No, I think it's all right. I'm sorry you have to depart.

Yeah.

Thank you for your input thus far. Yeah. Supervisor Downing, I see that you're off mute.

Oh.

Gotcha. Thank you. Sherry, how would you feel about that?

You're not Siri.

That happens all the time. I imagine it does. Just Siri response.

Like I said, Sherry, not Siri. I mean, I see what you're saying in terms of knowing what the fiscal implication would be, but... And how we would do it, and how do we get rid of it?

Well, they're not really specifying how we're doing it for chloride or phosphorus in the budget other than... No, what we did in the past, in other words, chloride was to do the salt-wise thing. Technically, I suppose nitrogen was...

with the manure healthy farms healthy lakes to some extent but we could go further into that so currently my understanding is the county actually does do um does actually measure nitrogen and and so it's actually part of the work that's already being done um but there's more that can be done with it so it's already some it's already something that's um you know, part of what they're monitoring.

I guess what I would suggest, if you would either be, like you would move to add it, or we could... we could make sure that a presentation and some other discussion gets brought onto a future agenda in which we could address it and then, and do something about it, but it would probably have to be one or the other. I don't know. We have enough language. Like we could just say, but put nitrogen in there, but I'm not sure that that's the appropriate thing.

It's too bad because like, can't find it in the wording in my notes, but we did come up with something last time and I don't remember exactly how we did it. But it was not in minutes. The minutes didn't have very much detail.

I mean, I can see where you put it, but I just don't know how you'd word. You know, we could say, you know, there's a problem like we do at the beginning. But then under the little item after, how do we remediate? What are we asking for in the budget? Further study?

Yeah. Jeremy, do you have any advice on this particular?

Well, this is your budget asks. It sounds to me like maybe it'd be a good idea to add it to your work plan for this year and then develop a budget ask for next year based on what you come up with. I don't know what you've done previously.

See, we have some, and some of it was covered by Amy as far as the manure management, which is where all the nitrogen is coming from, or most of it.

Cows.

Yeah, cows. Everything comes from cows. And, you know, and we did go through a lot of that years ago, believe me.

Well, I'm okay with that as long as we, I think we should address it more.

Yeah, I agree. We should certainly at least check that box and have some discussion on it.

And so I guess at least, I don't know if worrying about continuing to monitor the nitrogen, because I assume there's some cost with that, or maybe it's written into people's job descriptions.

That you could put in, I would think. Do we have a nitrogen monitoring program?

Yeah, Discovery Farms is monitoring nitrogen on several farms. That's an Amy presentation again, but that's a grant we already have. Not in the lakes? Not in the water itself? No, not in the water.

I don't know of any nitrogen. Where are they monitoring those from? From groundwater, surface water? Soil. Soil, okay.

Right on.

This is Phil here. I wanted to chime in. Isn't the USGS including nitrogen in their monitoring of the O'Hara River and the inputs into Lake Mendota?

I'm not aware of it, Phil.

I think they usually include that in their suite of nutrient modeling and monitoring. Sorry. Todd Studebeck would know. But I don't remember.

Yeah.

This is where all this would make a really good presentation.

Yeah, yes, that's exactly what I'm thinking. I think that we table the discussion on nitrogen, add it to a future agenda with a presentation. And plan on putting it into the budget. And plan on putting it into the budget for next time.

Okay. I also know that Dick, and I think I brought this up, but Dick Lathrop has a grant also, and he's doing some nitrogen monitoring. So it would be nice to know how.

Oh, well, yeah, that's exactly. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind forwarding that, who that is, and perhaps we can include that. He's been here before. Okay, maybe before my time, possibly.

Yeah, he's presented tons with this stuff.

So any other recommendations or comments people would like to make on the budget recommendations as they are? All right. I guess seeing none, then what's before us would be the motion to adopt the 2027 budget recommendations as they're written. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? All right. So ordered. Consider those recommendations adopted. Moving on to H, future meetings, items, and dates. The next Lakes and Watershed Commission meeting is tentatively scheduled for September 2nd, 2026 at 5.30. I will need to be excused for that.

I'll be out of the country.

Noted. Thank you. Well, we will definitely make sure we don't talk about nitrogen next week then, or next month. A lot of warnings for going out of the country now. Aye. Public comment on items not on the agenda. I would say I was fleeing the country. No, that's your hot. Such other business as allowed by law? Seeing none, K adjournment. I'll entertain a motion. So moved. Second.

All right. All in favor of adjournment, say aye. Aye.

Opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you.