DNR requires repairs to East Troy Dam
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
In the wake of the historic flooding of July 12 and the overtopping of the East Troy Dam, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has informed the Village of East Troy it either has to repair the dam and bring it up to spec with the DNR’s safety requirements, or remove the dam all together.
Many of the property owners on East Troy Lake showed up at Monday night’s Village Board and Committee of the Whole meetings to find out what the future of the dam was.
Homeowner Deb Wegner addressed the board during citizen participation, expressing her concern for her property value, along with her neighbors, as the lake is currently drawn down.
“We’d really like to know what is going to transpire with the dam and the lake,” Wegner said.
The cost to repair the dam as per DNR requirement will be about $712,000. The cost to remove the dam would be about $400,000.
In a memo to the board, Department of Public Works Director Jason Equitz wrote, “If removal of the dam is a serious consideration, Lynch and Associates will contact the WDNR to obtain a preliminary determination of what will be required for streambed stabilization/impoundment restoration. Therefore, this estimate is likely to change depending on the amount of sediment removal that will be required by the WDNR.
Equitz went on so say funding through a municipal dam grant program may be available to the village to repair the dam and the application deadline for that is in January.
While Monday night’s discussion was for the purpose of information exchange and to get feedback from the residents before making any type of decision, the board members indicated the dam would most likely be repaired as opposed to removed.
Sarah Nunn, of Lynch and Associates, the village’s engineering firm, outlined the type of repairs needed on the dam if it’s to remain in place. She also brief the board and audience on the timeline set forth by the DNR for the repairs.
Nunn said there were short-term and long-term repairs the DNR was requiring of the village. The short-term repairs, which need to be completed by November of 2018, include repairing the boil site, auxiliary spillway, left and right embankment slopes, replacing the stoplogs that were washed away and fix the source of the seepage at the principal spillway.
Long-term repairs, which have to be completed by November of 2020, included bringing the dam up to code so it can pass the 100-year flood standards, clearing trees and brush by the auxiliary spillway and removing woody vegetation and weeds along the entire length of the upstream slope of the embankment.
Nunn told the board it would make sense to do some of the long-term repairs along with the short-term repairs to avoid having to redo things two years later.
The board also discussed the possibility of dredging parts of the lake during the repair process. Several of the homeowners in the room said they would like to see the lake and waterway dredged so it would be more usable. It also would help with the cattails, which are a problem.
Nunn said the budget for the dam repair didn’t include dredging, but it was an option the village could consider. She said it would cost about $10 a square cubic yard to remove the dredged material, “as long as it was clean.” She cautioned that a study, completed about 10 years ago, said if there was about 200,000 square cubic yards of material that could be removed.
“But, depending on available funds, you can work your way backward from that if you don’t have $2 million for dredging,” she said.
