Tainter Lake District: Dunn County Historical Society hopes to stop sediment with prairie
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Historical Society owns 60 acres along state Highway 25 that the historical society would like to take out of row crop production and turn into a prairie with walking paths.
The Community Connections and Fund Raising Sub-committee recently met with Melissa Kneeland, the executive director of the Dunn County Historical Society, said Grant Peissig, a member of the Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District Board of Commissioners, at the March 20 meeting.
The historical society owns a little more than 60 acres of land just south of the intersection with county Highway D and Highway 25 — just south of the Season’s Harvest Greenhouse, he said.
The land across Highway 25, which has some steep slopes, was tilled up some years back, and erosion washing off the hillside has filled in the wetland area along the edge of the historical society’s tillable acreage, Peissig said.
Kneeland wanted to talk to the committee about taking the 60 acres out of tillable row cropping and putting it into the Conservation Reserve Program, he said.
Aerial photographs show that the wetland area has been filled in with sediment, Peissig noted..
Erosion of sediment has occurred on the other end of the property by Tainter Lake, too. The area by the island across from Kleist Landing has been slowly filling in with sediment, he said.
Peissig said he had told Kneeland the lake district Board of Commissioners would be happy for the land to be enrolled in CRP and to be a public area.
Dunn County Fish and Game raises pheasants and looks for places to release them, too, Peissig said.
Tom Bilse, a member of the Board of Commissioners and representative for the Town of Tainter, said he had talked to Kneeland last year.
The project has been in the works for a few years, and they want to put some walking paths in the prairie, he said.
The property “drops off significantly” by the lake, and “anything they can do would be fantastic,” Bilse said.
“I told her we would love it. I told her if there was something she needed to help move it along to reach out to me,” Peissig said.
Peissig said he had told Kneeland the Board of Commissioners would do what they can to help or support the project.
The land was donated to the historical society by Russell Rassbach, who also donated money for the historical society, Peissig said.
Not long ago, boats could navigate that area of the lake, but it is an example of how sediment is filling in the navigational channels, he said.
The CRP enrollment would be an “experiment” on what can be done. No-till for cropland is helpful, but finding ways to create prairie to help hold the soil would be helpful too, Peissig said.
