What to Do About Aging Dams in Wisconsin's Driftless Area?

Frederica Freyberg:
In environmental news, Wisconsin is home to more than 4,000 dams and most of them are very old and at risk of failing. It’s left communities across the state in a position to decide their future before the dams burst and wreak havoc on the communities downstream. “Here & Now” reporter Nathan Denzin visited communities in western Wisconsin which are grappling with what to do with their old dams.

Nathan Denzin:
In the summer of 2018, Wisconsin’s Driftless Area was hit by massive and destructive storms.

Dean Daniels:
They were good ones. They were really dandy.

Bob Micheel:
If you were standing on top of the dam, which is about 39 feet above the valley floor, your boots would have been in water.

Charlie Burke:
The cleanup took well over six months.

Nathan Denzin:
The storms caused dams to fail in the Coon Creek and West Fork Kickapoo watersheds near Viroqua.

Bob Micheel:
There’s over 10,000 structures in the United States. Five structures breached in one event in 2018 that never happened before.

Nathan Denzin:
Bob Micheel is the Monroe County Land Conservation director, which is in charge of the dams in the Coon Creek watershed. Somehow, no human lives were lost in 2018, but roads were washed away and debris spread for miles.

Bob Micheel:
If you have a structure that fails, it’s like a giant bulldozer racing down the valley floor, destroying everything in its path.

Nathan Denzin:
There are 23 earthen dams between the two watersheds, and to the untrained eye, they just look like big dirt hills. They’re all past their 50-year expected lifespan and climate change has supercharged storms the dams were never designed to hold back.

Bob Micheel:
We have 11 more structures that are still standing. That potential of happening again is still there.

Nathan Denzin:
The county commissioned a study, along with state and federal officials, to figure out what the future of the dams might look like. The study considered nine options, including rebuilding or repairing but in the end, found removal was the only viable solution. If they are taken out, it would be the largest dam removal project in U.S. History.

Dave Eggen:
I was actually dumbfounded that there would even be a discussion about taking these dams out. They’ve saved this community and this valley from flash flooding now for nearly 60 years.

Nathan Denzin:
Dave Eggen is a retired farmer and representative on the Vernon County Board, who has lived most of his life within a mile of at least six of the dams. Despite the aging dams, residents still say that they play a critical role in reducing flood events. They worry that removing the dams would mean multiple floods a year, hurting farming operations.

Dave Eggen:
There is no protection from flash flooding, like a 30-foot-high earthen dam.

Nathan Denzin:
His neighbors agree.

Charlie Burke:
I have a concern over what will happen to our farming operation.

Dean Daniels:
What scares me the most is, you know, how are we going to have to react when the dam is gone?

Mark Andrews:
Bottom line is I don’t see what the benefit really is.

Nathan Denzin:
Eggen recalled a story from his grandfather who had farmed the valley before the dams were built.

Dave Eggen:
After five years of farming out here on these fields, he realized that he wasn’t going to make a living farming in this valley because of the constant flash flooding.

Nathan Denzin:
But the cost to repair or replace these dams is steep, estimated at about $61 million. Removing them would only cost about $4 million.

Mark Erickson:
And Vernon County doesn’t have the financial resources to operate, maintain and repair dams.

Nathan Denzin:
Mark Erickson is the Vernon County resource conservationist who has been overseeing one dam that’s already in the process of being removed.

Mark Erickson:
But where that clay meets these sandstone abutments or hillsides, that’s proven to be the weak point.

Nathan Denzin:
All of the old dams in this area were connected to sandstone underneath hillsides, but over time, that sandstone will crack and the dam could breach.

Bob Micheel:
You’ve seen one structure, you’ve seen them all because they breach the same way.

Nathan Denzin:
And if they breach, a violent burst of water would be released downstream with huge destructive power. Monroe, La Crosse and Vernon Counties have all approved a plan to remove the dams, but it will take additional studies, consultation and grant applications before any earth is actually moved. That leaves about 18 months for Eggen and his allies to stress the importance of the dams and provide viable alternatives to removal.

Dave Eggen:
I’m sensing a lot of sympathy towards these dams being taken out with hardly any options.

Nathan Denzin:
He thinks that with the right material and a friendly contractor repairing the dams might not be as expensive as initially thought.

Dave Eggen:
I personally talked with a general contractor in the county to give me a ballpark to dig down and put in new age plumbing. He said $200 to $250,000.

Nathan Denzin:
But his frustration runs deeper than the ballpark figures noted in the study. Cost benefit ratios were calculated to determine if federal funding would be justified to repair the dams. That ratio concluded that not enough people and structures are downstream for those dollars to be released.

Dave Eggen:
Our country can spend $111 million on a missile, and they’re shooting them off every day over in the middle East. But you can’t come up with a handful of millions of dollars to help restore life-saving dams like we’re standing on.

Nathan Denzin:
The one dam that did qualify for federal funding to be reconstructed only did so because it holds back a standing lake. Though that lake has been contaminated multiple times by manure runoff. If the plans go forward and the dams are removed, the community knows it will have to change to survive future floods.

Sydney Widell:
The dams have definitely been a reckoning about how we live on this land.

Nancy Wedwick:
Biggest concern really is what are the next steps?

Nathan Denzin:
Sydney Widell and Nancy Wedwick are members of the Coon Creek Community Watershed Council. Wedwick serves as the president and Widell is watershed coordinator.

Nancy Wedwick:
We started to learn and find out that there are indeed many things that you can do just as people or as landowners, to mitigate flooding, to slow water, to make running water walk.

Nathan Denzin:
The Coon Creek Watershed is no stranger to first of its kind interventions. In the 1930s, the federal government used this land to demonstrate the effectiveness of sustainable farming practices.

Nancy Wedwick:
Here we are again. What are we going to do next?

Nathan Denzin:
The likely answer: return to many of the practices implemented in the ’30s.

Nancy Wedwick:
Building the terraces, returning to the contour strips, doing whatever we can to infiltrate good quality water.

Nathan Denzin:
Terrace farms are higher on ridges and build berms between strips of crops to slow water. She also mentioned the effectiveness of planting perennials, oats, or even building more mini dams. Anything to build the quality of the soil and slow water down.

Sydney Widell:
There’s some levers that we have more control over than others, and it’s a matter of using the levers we have as effectively as possible.

Nathan Denzin:
But they added…

Nancy Wedwick:
We should not think that, yes, by implementing a few practices, we’re going to solve problems, flooding problems. No, we are not. We can slow water and we can start a process.

Nathan Denzin:
A healthy ecosystem, they argue, will somewhat reduce the danger of smaller floods.

Bob Micheel:
These smaller events: the 2, 5, 10, 25-year storm events, we can manage those. We can do that. But when we get these 100-year storm events every year, those are the ones we have to respect and stay out of harm’s way.

Nathan Denzin:
Beyond the question of if people will have to relocate from the valley floor, there are ever more concerns. Will sediment from recently decommissioned dams get washed downstream? How will it affect the famous trout streams around Coon Creek? How will farms be impacted? There aren’t easy answers for any of those questions, but these communities will have to grapple with them over the coming months.

Dave Eggen:
For the people that are living and using those buildings, that’s their livelihood.

Nancy Wedwick:
This is the most important work I’ve ever done or will ever, ever do.

Nathan Denzin:
For “Here & Now,” I’m Nathan Denzin in Coon Valley.