Sister Bay Readies Utilities Plan for Public Consumption

Sister Bay’s Comprehensive Utilities Plan Action Committee (CUPAC) will present a year and a half’s worth of work for public scrutiny at a public hearing Sept. 6.

The plan’s purpose is to provide a roadmap for village water, sewer, and storm water management infrastructure to account for growth over the next 30 – 40 years.

“The goal is to make sure development doesn’t impact the system in a negative way and make sure [developers] implement the infrastructure to keep the system growing,” said Village Administrator Bob Kufrin.

That means requiring developers of all types to install properly sized water and sewer lines across their property so the system is not pinched when the next development comes along.

“You don’t want a development to build and end the lines with 6-inch line,” Kufrin said. “You want 8 or 10 or 12-inch so the next development isn’t a problem.”

He compared the planning effort to buying a home.

“When you build or buy your first house you plan for growth,” he explained. “You may not have kids now, but you build extra bedrooms or space so your family can grow. It’s similar here. We tried with this study to take a look at the long-term horizon. There will be continuous growth in the village. It may come in fits and spurts, but it will continue. People don’t by five one-acre plots to combine them into one 5-acre, they buy a five-acre parcel to subdivide.”

With the CUPAC study he hopes the village can avoid being surprised when new projects come to the table. They should be better prepared to tell developers what impact a project will have and what they will have to do to make it fit the village’s long-term needs.

“The plan puts the onus on new development to absorb the costs associated with the added burden on the system rather than the system rate-payers,” he said.

When the committee began the process the idea was to examine the land within the village boundaries, but the increased impetus across the state to address storm water runoff problems required an expanded scope. Thus, Kufrin said they looked at all property draining into the village boundaries, extending the study into the Town of Liberty Grove.

Sister Bay invited the town to participate, but the town was initially wary of contributing to a study commissioned and paid for by the village. Then Liberty Grove Chairman Charlie Most was concerned their participation would in essence be giving the town’s approval to any decisions without equal voice in the matter.

The town pulled out of the meetings, but later had representatives attend to observe and voice concerns in the effort, but not vote.

Storm Water Issues Significant

Addressing storm water runoff issues became a major part of the planning effort, and Patrick Planton, an engineer with SEH consultants who aided the village in the process, said that has become common as the state puts more emphasis on storm water management policies for municipalities.

“It’s only recently that communities have woken up and addressed runoff,” Planton said. “It wasn’t that many centuries ago we used rivers as sewers.”

But in Door County, where there is shallow soil and high dolomite bedrock, Planton said concern for contaminating the water supply with runoff is especially significant. Kufrin said there are many factors to consider in designing a system, which complicated planning.

The village has been addressing storm water concerns for several years. Their efforts won them a Beach Buddy award from the Natural Resources Defense Council this month.

In 2004 a storm water filter was added to the system below the public beach park to clean water before it entered the bay. The project added about 10 percent to the overall cost of the 2004 sewer reconstruction, but Kufrin said such decisions pay off in the long run.

“If you have beach closings or water contamination problems, such as the Log Den experienced, the impact on tourism is significant,” he said. “Storm water problems have an economic impact.”

But what to do with other, larger filtration systems are not as easily solved.

“Naturally closed depressions are areas we need to be particularly concerned about,” he said. Those areas, also called NCDs, are low points where water gathers and sits before seeping into the ground, where the soil and plants act as a natural filter.

“From there you have two competing demands,” Kufrin said. “If clean, that water becomes drinking water, if not, it’s being pushed into the bay.”

The village would like to protect those NCDs from development, as they act as a natural recharge point for the water system. If those are filled in, the water will have to go elsewhere, flooding other properties or likely going into storm drains, causing water quality concerns.

“The more water systems are built, the more likely you’re taking water to the bay faster without that filter,” Kufrin said.

Kufrin said owners of land with NCDs could be hurt by restrictions coming out of CUPAC, but it may be necessary from the village’s standpoint.

“We’re weighing development versus the public water supply,” he said. But that doesn’t mean property owners affected by the restrictions will easily accept them.

“With zoning you’re telling a property owner they can do something with their land,” he explained. “But now you’re coming to them with new knowledge and saying they can’t. Meanwhile, they’ve been paying taxes and fees based on the possibility of using it according to the old zoning, so they are rightfully upset.”

But Mike Walker, the village assessor, said it shouldn’t affect many.

“I’m not seeing too much potential use that isn’t current use, according to current zoning,” he said. “We’re not looking at too many diamonds in the rough.” But Walker said that could change if zoning is altered in the future.

The $140,000 study resulted in a short-term and long-term plan for village utilities. The short-term horizon is roughly three to eight years with a price tag of about $23 million. The long-term estimate to upgrade and improve the system over 20 to 40 years is about $43 million.

“It sounds like a lot of money, but as the growth occurs those are real costs paid by the developer, the abutting benefiting property owners, or system rate payers,” Kufrin said. “My goal is to have it paid for by the developer and the abutting benefiting property owners first, and minimize the costs to existing system rate payers.”

He said that will be done through ordinances not seen in the plan. Final determinations on ordinances have yet to be made, though Kufrin is watching the county and would like to make them match as much as possible.

Eventually, the plan will be reviewed by the county, state, DNR, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Town of Liberty Grove as the village gathers input and comment.

The study was paid for in part with a $43,000 grant from the DNR earmarked for storm water runoff aspects. Though the scope, cost, and bulk of CUPAC is daunting, Planton said such efforts are vital.

“If I were running a public utility it’s the first thing I would do,” he said. “This infrastructure could be there for 50 or 100 years, so you want to make sure they’re not undersized or oversized.”

Planton called Sister Bay’s “the only true water utility system north of Sturgeon Bay” and said the plan is unique because most communities don’t tackle water, sewer, and storm water together.

Kufrin described the effort as a master plan, rather than one heavy in details. Larger cities do such studies on a regular basis, Planton said, while smaller communities may only have to do this once in a couple decades.

Planton and Kufrin said decisions on these issues are often forced by other events and deadlines. In this case, the village wanted the plan in place for the reconstruction of Bayshore Drive slated for 2011 – 2012.