Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District working on planning grant application
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District Board of Directors is working on an application for a $5,000 planning grant from the state Department of Natural Resources.
The first draft of the application was due September 15, said Al Brown, chair of the board of directors, at the September 21 meeting of the lake district board.
The first draft of the grant application will be reviewed by DNR personnel and the DNR biologist for the area, Alex Smith, he said.
DNR personnel in Madison and the biologist will make comments on the application, and then the next step will be to make changes to the application according to the comments. The final submission for the grant application is due November 15, Brown said.
The educational planning grant will be used to write a strategic plan for the Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District, he said,
The strategic plan will be based on four to six community meetings with residents of the lake district. The meetings will be 40 percent education and will present science and facts to the residents, and then the remainder of the meetings will be devoted to asking questions about the predominant issues facing the lake, Brown said.
“I want to know people’s expectations,” he said.
If people are expecting the water in Tainter Lake to be clear in five years, that is very different from incremental improvements to water quality, Brown said, noting that surveys would be sent out to those people who cannot be at the public meetings.
The information gathered at the public meetings will be used to write a strategic plan that includes priorities for the lake, he said.
Consultant
The grant money also will be used for hiring a consultant, Brown said.
“We are swimming in data,” he said, adding that the board of directors needs someone to guide them and tell them which data points to focus on.
The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) will be one of items to focus on, Brown said.
TMDL refers to the amount of phosphorus that is entering Tainter Lake.
Phosphorus is the nutrient largely responsible for fueling the algae blooms in the lake.
During the public comments portion of the meeting, one lake resident urged the board of directors to consider a weed cutting program for the lake.
The strategic plan and the consultant will be the precursor to writing a management plan. The Tainter Lake District Board of Directors needs a consultant to advise on weed cutting and dredging. If weed cutting and dredging are going to be accomplished, they must be part of the management plan, Brown said.
Weed cutting and dredging, for example, must be part of management plan in order to obtain the proper permits from the DNR, Brown said.
Grant money
The budget that was approved at the lake district’s annual meeting in August included $5,000 for strategic planning, Brown said,
The DNR will award up to $5,000 for the planning grant, and then the lake district also has to provide some matching funds, he said.
If the grant award is $4,600, then the lake district must provide $2,000. The remaining $3,000 can be rolled over into next year to be used for other purposes, Brown said.
Pete Heimdahl, a member of the board of directors, asked when the DNR could be expected to provide feedback on the initial grant submission.
Brown said he expected the DNR comments would be provided sometime in the first part of October to allow time to fine tune the grant application that is due November 15.
About 85 percent of the grant application is already written, Brown said.
When asked if the consultant had to be hired before the final grant application was submitted, Brown replied that the consultant would need to be hired by the end of the grant cycle.
The board of directors will have a certain number of months to spend the grant money, he said.
Other business
In other business, the Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District Board of Directors:
• Learned that the district now has an address — Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District; P.O. Box 293; Colfax WI 54730.
• Learned that as of August 31, the balance in the lake district’s bank account was $3,882.67.
• Approved the fiscal year for the Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District to run from September 1 to August 31. The district will receive three tax settlements during the year from the property tax levy of $15,000 with the last settlement amount received in August. If the annual meeting is in August and the fiscal year ends August 31, the board of directors will be able to report the majority of the financial activity for the year at the annual meeting.
• Tabled taking action on the insurance bid until the district has a bid to act on. The initial insurance policy, which included liability, errors and omissions, and workers’ compensation, ran from June 1 to September 1 at a cost of $721.
