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| 12/11/2009 4:46:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | DNR's Gozdzialski: Apply water quality standards uniformly
More regulation in urban areas, second official adds
A Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' zoning specialist acknowledged Tuesday the need for greater water quality regulation in the state's incorporated cities and villages, while the agency's northern regional director went even further, saying water quality standards should be uniform across the state.
John Gozdzialski, the DNR's northern region director, and Tom Blake, a northern region zoning specialist, made their remarks at a meeting with Little Rice, Nokomis, Lynn and Sugar Camp officials, who had requested that the agency coordinate with them on shoreland zoning and other policy matters.
Gozdzialski spoke after being asked by Nokomis town chairman Gary Baier why most cities and villages are exempt from the state's shoreland zoning administrative rule, NR115, which applies only in unincorporated areas and in newer incorporated locations.
The shoreland rule establishes such regulations as the 75-foot setback from the ordinary high water mark of navigable waters, and a newly revised version will impose caps on the amount of impervious surfaces allowed on properties within 300 feet of a navigable water body.
"That question has been brought up for decades, in conversations between urban and rural officials," Gozdzialski said. "Quite frankly, there isn't enough legislative support to do it (apply NR115 to cities and villages). From the standpoint of protecting all the waters of the state, you're exactly the same. The standards that should apply should be the same."
State law exempts older incorporated cities and villages - the majority of those entities - from the standard, but Gozdzialski said, on other environmental issues, specifically, protecting wetlands, the Legislature had "recognized" the need to apply standards uniformly.
Indeed, the state established minimum standards for wetland protections for unincorporated areas in 1980 and extended them to cities and villages in 1981, and a 1997 DNR Shoreland Management Program Assessment reiterated Gozdzialski's point, observing there were only slight differences between minimum standards in the unincorporated and incorporated areas.
"The intent of the Legislature clearly was to require cities and villages to protect shoreland wetlands within incorporated areas to the same extent as the protection afforded to wetlands in unincorporated areas by county shoreland zoning," the program assessment states.
In addition to wetland regulations, the Legislature has required the general development standards of NR115 to be applied to areas annexed into incorporated areas after 1982 and those incorporated after 1994.
In making his remarks, Gozdzialski did not say the agency would push for including municipalities, or increasing regulation, and or that he would suggest it do so, but he said he would look into the matter, after Baier requested that the DNR "make a move toward making cities and villages comply."
"Do we sometimes suggest changes?" Gozdzialski said. "Yes. Would we? What I will do is talk to the (DNR's) legislative liaison and ask, have we discussed that question in the past. I will ask if there has been recent thinking and discussion."
More regulation
At the Little Rice meeting, northern region DNR zoning specialist Tom Blake echoed Gozdzialski's words, saying the matter had come up any number of times at various public hearings over the years.
"Municipalities, villages and cities don't fall under NR115," Blake said. "There are lots and lots of impervious surfaces in incorporated areas (the revised NR115 places limits on impervious surfaces in unincorporated areas). There's a practical matter there, but there is obviously a water quality problem."
Blake gave his own understanding about how incorporated areas managed to avoid minimum regulations in the first place.
"My understanding is, when the Legislature enacted shoreland zoning in the sixties, there were numerous groups involved," he said. "There wasn't much zoning in the state then. Municipalities made the argument that 'we don't need this (shoreland management) because we have zoning,' and the Legislature bought it."
Municipalities do have different regulations aimed at protecting water quality, Blake hastened to point out, though he also suggested they weren't very extensive.
"They are regulated for storm water runoff, so municipalities do have to move toward goals, such as removing sediment," Blake said. "It doesn't do anything for habitat. It doesn't do anything for scenic beauty. And not all municipalities are regulated, just the larger ones."
Later in the meeting, in response to another question about the connectivity of water, Blake observed that much of it was connected and there was interaction between water in unincorporated areas and water in incorporated areas.
"Certainly you have all kinds of water resources - lakes, rivers, streams, some of the lakes are dammed and some are not," he said. "If they are not dammed, there are outlets to other water bodies. If it's a seepage lake, there's interaction between the groundwater and the lake. Streams and creeks flow into larger water bodies and ultimately all connect into larger systems."
Water from unregulated incorporated areas flows into regulated unincorporated areas, Blake acknowledged, and vice versa.
Asked directly if he would like to see NR115 applied to cities and villages, Blake stressed the need for more regulation.
"I would like to see less runoff pollution," he said. "I would like to see more regulation in urban areas. I'm not sure NR115 is a good fit for that. There's a lot of differences between cities and unincorporated areas. It could be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole."
That said, Blake acknowledged, portions of NR115 could be applied to municipalities, and he said he was troubled by some applications of the rule, as when similarly situated properties on the same lake have different setback regulations simply because one property happens to sit within a boundary of incorporation while the other does not.
"It's not right to have somebody build at 75 feet, and one next door doesn't have to, in terms of setback, because it is within an incorporated area, and there is an issue there," he said.
It was the first significant recent statement by major DNR officials on the question of extending some type of water-quality regulation to the state's municipalities. When a newly revised version of NR115 went before the Natural Resources Board in June and before a state Senate panel in September, Russ Rasmussen, the director of the DNR's Bureau of Watershed Management, largely dodged the issue.
At the hearing, Rasmussen said the agency was helpless to apply the rule to cities and villages, without saying whether more stringent regulations were needed.
"With what is currently in the statute, the rule applies only in certain areas," he said. "This is a statutory requirement we can't change. It can be changed only through legislation. While many might disagree, we are taking this step to improve water quality where we can, in the unincorporated areas."
Though Gozdzialski went further Tuesday, he echoed that sentiment in Little Rice.
"We administer what is approved through state statute," he said. "We are the executive branch, not the legislative branch. We implement it."
Richard Moore can be reached at rmmoore1@verizon.net.
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