Residents Call for Expanding Aquatic-plant Management
- Share
- Tweet
- Pin
- Share
Residents who live in the Memorial Drive area – where the growth of aquatic weeds during the summer is among the most problematic in the bay of Sturgeon Bay – are calling on the city to make managing those plants more of a priority.
The Sturgeon Bay Common Council heard from some of those residents Aug. 2, when they spoke during the meeting’s public-comment period. The council had brought the matter back for a follow-up discussion after hearing about the extent of the problem June 7.
Similar to when he appeared before the council earlier this summer to call for the city to do more to manage those plants, Mike Langenhorst presented photos related to problems that boats have with navigating aquatic weeds in the bay.
“The size and scope of this issue far outweighs the resources that we have available to take care of this problem,” he said. “It’s time to think outside of the box a little bit. It’s not just an aquatic weed management issue. It’s much larger.”
While noting that fire, police and public works are the city’s three major departments, Langenhorst suggested the city either begin a fourth department or have a sub-department in public works called Water and Aquatic.
“It wouldn’t just take care of the weed issue,” he said. “The person [in charge] would be someone with a water-science background – someone that understands the [Department of Natural Resources] plans [and] someone that understands stormwater runoff into this area.”
Langenhorst said someone heading up a water and aquatic department or sub-department could also be in charge of the municipal marinas, beaches, Little Lake, waterfront parks and parkways, and could serve as a liaison between the city and the marinas and yacht club.
“We need to have some method of developing revenue, utilizing that to have a program like this,” he said.
Langenhorst also suggested contacting nautical engineers to design equipment that would do a better job of removing aquatic plants from the bay.
Out of a $17 million annual city budget, he called on the council to allocate more than around the current $78,000 per year on aquatic-plant management.
Memorial Drive resident Kent Wickman urged the council to support upgrading the city’s aquatic weed harvesting equipment.
“This equipment is decades old,” he said.
Wickman said the city needs harvesters and barges to take away the water weeds, and he also spoke in favor of paying higher wages to the people who remove the plants from the bay.
“They need to be paid for the expertise that they have,” he said. “I would really hope that you would maybe incorporate a double job of weed cutting/snow plowing, whatever, but make it an upgrade for them, so we don’t keep losing the people that have done this in the past for various reasons.”
Tim Graul, a retired naval architect, said the extent of weed growth in the bay seems worse than when he moved to the area about 50 years ago.
“The bay was clear,” he said. “You could sail anywhere in the bay.”
Depending on the direction of the wind, Graul said weeds in the bay can become impassable.
“My fear, gentlemen and ladies, [is that] if this isn’t corrected, Sturgeon Bay’s destination as a water-oriented town is going to disappear,” he said.
Graul said something is causing the weeds in the bay to “grow way too prolifically. If there is some kind of limitation that could be put on the nutrients that flow into the bay – whether it’s lawn feeding or whatever – but there has got to be a more nuanced and a more in-depth study done,” he said. “We have got to have a better relationship, or a better understanding with anybody who does regulate where and how the weeds can be cut.”
2022 Aquatic-plant Harvest
Ryan Londo, the city’s harbormaster, said 357 loads of aquatic plants were harvested in the bay this year during the two-month period of June and July, compared to 371 loads for all of 2021.
Based on one truckload of aquatic plants he had weighed coming in at 1,350 pounds, Londo said the total weight of the plants removed from the bay would come to around 1.1 million pounds.
“We still have all of August to go here,” he said. “We’re starting to lose some seasonal employees, but as we lose some, I get out on the water a little more.”
Londo said he expects the harvesting of aquatic plants will continue this year in the bay for about another month to a month and a half.
Of the three operational plant harvesters, he said the newest was received in 2018, and the other two are from 2001 and 1995. Londo said the engine was recently replaced on the city’s one shore conveyor, and there are two operational trucks used for hauling away the plants.
Weed-harvesting Area
City Administrator Josh VanLieshout said there are approximately 116 acres in the bay where mechanical harvesting of aquatic plants is allowed according to the permit the city has with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. About 64 acres, generally located at the mouth of Big Creek, are designated as a no-harvesting zone. Aquatic plants may not be harvested from the bay in areas outside the harvesting zone.
“At some point in the next couple of years, the city will update our weed-harvesting management plan and then go through that process and that effort with the regulatory agency, the DNR, again, and perhaps revisit the [harvest] areas and the no-harvest areas,” he said.
Because of the permit regulations, VanLieshout said the city may not remove all the weeds it sees hindering navigation in the bay.
“As frustrating as that is, that’s the nature of the beast,” he said. “Even if we could [remove aquatic plants in more areas of the bay], as Ryan [Londo], [municipal services director] Mike [Barker] and others have pointed out, we just don’t have the machinery to accomplish that level of harvesting and collect that level of tonnage.”
Mayor David Ward said the deepest the city is allowed to cut plants is three feet below the bay’s surface. In areas of the bay that are fewer than six feet deep, the city may harvest only halfway down to the bay bottom, so “if you’re in a five-foot area, you can only go down two and a half feet,” he said.
Ward said watercraft operating in the bay are contributing to weeds being torn up and floating to where they are causing problems.
The city will receive a new conveyor this year for handling aquatic plants, but it’s not scheduled to arrive until October, when the weed harvesting will have concluded for this year.
Budgeting for additional aquatic plant harvesting equipment will be difficult for next year, Ward said. That’s because the city has $18 million in net new construction that could generate around $8,000 in property-tax revenue for every $1 million in new value – or $144,000 – but the new contract with the police officers’ union will cost an additional $140,000.
“We’ll do what we can [to provide additional funding for aquatic-plant management], but it’s tight [in the budget], and with inflation, I don’t know,” he said.
Ward said the city’s Harbor Commission will be looking into managing aquatic plants in the bay before the matter is brought back before the common council.
