 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government. Working for you, my name is Adam Payne, Sheboygan County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And as you know, Sheboygan County has 22 departments, nearly 1,000 employees, about $140 million budget, a lot of very important work going on. And one of our department heads leading the effort in the Land and Water Conservation Department is Pat Miles. Pat, welcome. Good morning. Pat's been with Sheboygan County for a number of years, does a nice job in our Land and Water Conservation Department and really some neat initiatives going on there. So Pat, please begin by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and when you started with Sheboygan County. Okay. I'm going to age myself here, but I did start with Sheboygan County in 1977. A little background, I grew up on a dairy farm, Southwest Wisconsin Grand County. I graduated from Lancaster High School in 1973. Spent about a year out west, roaming around a bit. After that, I attended Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton. And as I said, I started work here in Sheboygan County in 1977. And when did you become the director of the Land and Water Conservation Department? I believe that was around 1980. Very good. And I think many of our viewers probably you know, when they hear Land and Water Conservation Department, they have a general sense of what that might involve, but what's the primary role and responsibilities of your department? As a department, we generally provide technical and educational assistance in the natural resources of Sheboygan County, protection, enhancement, et cetera. As far as some of the responsibilities, we carry out the conservation policies of the ag resource and extension committee of the county board. These include management of the solar water resources, control and prevention of soil erosion, and watershed protection. So natural resource protection and enhancement, what type of programs do you administer that help with that? We have a variety of programs. There are some local, some state. Some of the state programs is the Land and Water Resource Management Program. We have the Department of Ag. We annually get grants from that department to administer costary grants to landowners to install the various conservation measures that are required as far as watershed protection or soil erosion control. Locally, we have erosion control and stormwater management ordinance, which primarily deals with construction sites. We have a non-metallic mining ordinance, which basically deals with reclamation of our mining sites once they are completed mining. We have our animal waste ordinance, which regulates the construction of animal waste facilities so that we're sure we're protecting our groundwater and surface water. And we have our general watershed protection, where some of those programs are primarily wrapped up, but at one time we had, I believe, five watershed projects in Sheboygan County, and that was probably one of the most in the state at any time. So a real breath of responsibilities programs predominantly helping with water quality. You mentioned first agriculture and buffers and dealing with manure management. How many farmers are there in Sheboygan County? We have, according to the 1907 Agricultural Census, about 1,059 farms in Sheboygan County. So that gives you a fairly good idea. So all these different programs ranging from working with both farmers to landowners to non-metallic mining, which is gravel pits and things of that nature, you must have a huge staff in the Land and Water Conservation Department. Tony, what do you have? Actually, we don't. When we, as I mentioned, when we had our watershed program up and running, we had, I believe it was nine or ten employees, and that was about 10, 12 years ago. We are now down to five. We have, with those five we currently have, we have over 140 years of experience. So I mean, that tells us most of our people have been around in a considerable time. We have Eric, who has been there about 31 years. He's our engineering supervisor. He oversees all the engineering technical aspects. We have Chris, who has been there since 1985 and he's basically our main conservation planner and deals with nutrient management as far as animal waste. We have Dave, who's been there since 1988 and he's basically our engineering guy, our CAD guy, which is the computer-assisted design or drafting. And we have of course a secretary who's been with the county for 20 plus years. So we have a wealth of knowledge and employees that we have. With water quality and the number of programs that you identify that are to help improve water quality, why is that so important to the people in this area? Because I don't care who you are. We all use water, whether it's from the lake, whether it's from the ground. We use it for washing, we use it for drinking, we use it for manufacturing, we use it for recreation. So with that in mind, we want to make sure that the quality of the water that we do use is of such that we can use it and it's not polluted. We're fortunate here in Sheboydon County that we do have good water resources whether it's from Lake Michigan or from the groundwater that we pull out of our wells. And what from your point of view with the vast experience you have and how long you've been in this position, how are we doing as a county and a community with water quality, protection and enhancement? Do you see the water quality actually improving and our lakes and streams improving? Groundwater protection improving? Or do you feel that because of all the demands on the resource and what's happening on the landscape that we're losing that battle? Firstly, I feel that we're improving the water resource that we have. We have a water testing program underway and I'll get into that a little bit later. We've currently tested wells in three townships in northwest part of the county and we have detected some slight elevated levels of nitrates and coliform bacteria. But overall, even in those areas where you have the gravelly soils, the water quality actually is quite good. Lake Michigan water, as you know, is very good. City of Sheboygan, Village of Kohler, City of Sheboygan Falls, they all rely on that lake for their drinking water and such. You do have some major storm events where you'll have a short period of time where you'll have some effect from the surface runoff, but that's probably imbeddable. But overall, I think we're doing a good job. Very good. Thank you, Pat. Pat, about nine months ago you moved from what we call the egg building out in Sheboygan Falls and Forest Avenue into the administration building. It was part of a three department move, but you consolidated into the administration building with the planning and resources department. I'm just wondering, how has this made a change for your clients and customers in the use of your facilities in your office? Actually, since we've moved, as you said, about nine months ago, it was in March, actually our customers really have not noticed a change other than they may have to travel a bit farther into Sheboygan to visit us. Granted, that traffic is down a bit simply because in Sheboygan Falls we were located next to the federal agencies, the Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Farm Service Agency, which are federal agencies. But overall, I don't think many people have noticed any difference. We still have contact. We have telephones, of course. We have computers and we have field work with most of our work in Falls field work. So we're out in the field regardless if we were in Sheboygan Falls or in the city of Sheboygan. So to be honest no change actually except just for our physical move into downtown. So it has been working well. That's good to hear. Could you tell us a little bit about some of the benefits you've discovered now that you are co-located with planning and resources to your operation? I've found and I think the staff have found that we have much better inter-department coordination. We do have some programs that we work together on or they are related and it's nice to be able to walk across the room and talk with someone in planning or vice versa. We share office equipment, field equipment, especially. That helps. That cuts down on duplication. We have as far as the department, we have an improved computer connection with the network. Out in Sheboygan Falls we were over the airwaves. We were having some difficulty as far as land records, the mapping aspect of the network. It's much improved. The public now has public records all located in one place as far as county agencies are concerned. The land and water is now in the administration building as well as planning, registered deeds, and the treasurer's office. So it's kind of a one stop for public records should someone need that information. It's quite a list of positives. I don't know if we brought all those up when we dreamed up the idea of switching some of the departments, but I'm really glad that it's working out that well for you. It's worked out much better than I anticipated initially. It's worked well. You're also working on a land and water resource management plan revision right now. Can you tell us a little bit what's included in that revision plan? Sure. Last revision was in 2004. The revision that we have just recently completed is going before the State Land Water Conservation Board on February 2nd, I believe in Madison. We'll be presenting a PowerPoint presentation and at that meeting they'll be approving that plan. After that time we'll be bringing in a resolution to the county board for county board approval to be introduced one month and hopefully acted on the following month for approval as well. But some of the goals changed. Some of the goals that did change was the Emerald Ash Board awareness. I'm sure you've heard of that. I think most people have. That's something we're going to be dealing with in a few short years. Groundwater protection, we put more emphasis on that in the plan. Basically correlating with our water quality improvement program. Kind of ties in well. And nutrient management is something that we're going to be focusing more on. There's more of a focus from the state and national levels as well for nutrient management work. So those are kind of the highlights as far as the plan revision itself. Are there any processes or other improvements that are becoming about the result of this new plan? Pretty much the complete list. Yeah. I rose in control of stormwater management ordinance we recently revised I believe it was about a year or two ago. That initially came about from the last revision. Of course the grass buffer strip program was a result of our Land Water Plan nutrient management planning. As I mentioned before we were able to secure some grants from Department of Ag. Some cost share grants as far as implementing nutrient management with some of the landowners in the county. And as I mentioned we revised our animal waste ordinance here a while ago as well. So those things are reflected in the plan and of course part of the plan. I understand that it also includes a lot of agricultural statistics. Could you give us an idea of what's included and maybe what conclusions you're drawing from those changes? Sure. I'm going to be reading a little bit here because we've got a lot of numbers. So as I mentioned in the 2007 Ag Census from the Department of Agriculture, Wisconsin we have 1059 farms and of those farms we have only 200 dairy farms left. I'll just put that perspective I think at one time it was probably totally dairy. We have lost 15,409 acres of crop land since 1992. And that's roughly 70% of a township. If you figure a township is 36 sections or 36 square mile sections, 70% of that has been lost to development. I think that's substantial. Of the total county area it's about 551 square miles and we have an average of 51 dairy cows per square mile. And that makes us the 10th heaviest concentration of dairy cattle in the state of Wisconsin believe it or not in Sheboygan County. As far as an employment type farm related employment in Sheboygan County it generates about 12,000 jobs in Sheboygan County and that's about 21% of the county's workforce. So agriculture is a big business in Sheboygan County. Well thanks for that information. What natural resource issues or priorities do you see that really will need attention in the future? Do you either draw in stuff from this plan or from just your information you gather in general? I think nutrient management is going to be the big issue in the coming years. We do have as I mentioned 200 dairy farms. Some of those are quite large. Some of those are calf coal which in a layman's term means they have to have a permit from the state of Wisconsin. And as a result of all that waste being generated it needs to be applied properly so that we don't affect our groundwater or surface water. So there's going to be a big emphasis on that as well as erosion control and storm water management. As you know we're under phase two of our EPA permit so we're involved in some of the storm water outfalls of the county currently doing some testing out and making sure that we don't have any industrial waste going in those. So those are going to be a little more emphasis on those two areas. Okay well thanks for that information. I'll turn it back over to Adam for Apple. Thanks Mike. Pat earlier you mentioned the buffer program and some of our viewers might be wondering what is a buffer program how do you describe that? In a layman's term a grass buffer strip is simply a grass strip next to a stream or a lake or a river. It can be anywhere from 20 feet wide to 100 feet wide. In Sheboygan County we established a county wide buffer strip program in 2000. The county board is generous enough. They initially funded the program at $35,000 and since then we've been funding it anywhere between $35,000 and $50,000 a year. In a nutshell land owners receive an upfront payment for taking that land out of production and leaving it idle for a period of 10 to 15 years. They are allowed to maintain it somewhat by cutting it into summer control the weed growth and stuff. The big benefit of buffers is controlling the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from the adjacent farm fields as well as the sediment and studies have shown that we can get over a 70% reduction in those items as far as reduction with a 100 foot wide buffer strip. To date just to give you an idea of the success we've had with the county buffer strip program we have 69 land owners that have contracted with Sheboygan County that install buffer strips. We have a total buffer length of about 173,000 feet. That's linear feet and if you can put that perspective that would be 33 miles long. So that's substantial. Acreage wise as far as the buffer itself it totals about 190 acres in Sheboygan County. So we've done a tremendous job with the buffer strip program and again for 2010 we have dollars again available for land owners if they are interested in participating. It's a little cost practice and it's very beneficial. It's an excellent program and I really compliment you and your staff on how well you've done implementing it. As you said in the grand scheme of things it's pretty low cost and for our viewers who aren't sure well nitrogen, phosphorus, what is all that? Essentially when folks are spreading manure out there if you don't have this buffer in place that's going directly into our streams which go into our lake and once it's in the water it's a real problem and with those buffers there not only does that slow down that sediment and keep it on the land where it belongs it's also excellent wildlife habitat whether it's pheasants or songbirds or what have you. So it has just a real benefit across the board and because of your good work and land owners participation and willingness we're protecting our drinking water and ground water and I compliment you and your staff on the fine job there. And that leads me to the next question you mentioned earlier that we have a water quality monitoring program in place and as you know this has been something that's been near and dear to me because as resources get tighter and everyone's demanding new services and looking for financial resources to get things done how do we justify continuing programs to improve our water quality if we can't tell people well this is the difference this is the impact from spending these dollars on buffers or others. So what is our water quality monitoring program how does it work what are we learning from it? Okay a water quality monitoring program actually has a number of components to it if you can go on the county's web page look up departments land and water and you'll hit a tab water quality monitoring you can get a nice overview of all the components of that program they include we have a buffer strip testing site in the town of Sheboygan Falls where from the spring to fall we're pulling samples from this site which is installed in an actual buffer strip adjacent to a crop field that field has rotations of corn and soybeans on it as well as alfalfa so it gives us an idea of what we're doing as far as reducing the phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment levels coming off that adjacent field we have as I mentioned earlier a well testing program we've done three townships to date we've partnered with UW Extension and UW Stevens Point where we'll have a townwide program on an annual basis and landowners are encouraged to bring in their samples we do offset some of the cost cost of landowners are literally a total of $7 for a test and there's eight different things they test for and the two main items we're looking for is the nitrates in the fecal coliform this year we received a stewardship grant from Sheboygan County as well as our regular budget amount so we're looking at either doing two townships or possibly a town of Herman or village of Howard's Grove Village Howard's Grove is the only municipality with total wells in the county so we'd like to know if there's a problem out there we can do a cross section of the township of the village it gives us a fair idea if there's a problem it can be flagged for follow up some of the other components is the we have a buffer strip monitoring page where we'll have all the buffer strip locations identified we'll have photographs of those sites as well as the annual reductions of those sites from nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment so you can go on that site and you can click on a particular contract it'll bring up the actual photograph of the actual buffer in the summertime as well as the pertinent data along with it and in addition to that another component we have our beach beach closings report monitoring report we don't actually take care of that that's provided by the state but we do have a link to that and if you're interested in the summer about a beach if you're going to the beach you want to know the condition of the beach you can hit that tab and it'll give you an update if it's closed or if there's a warning that type of thing so you go on the county website look for land and water conservation department and you can drill down right into this water quality program as well as information on the beach and closings and the condition of the water you've reported to the county board from time to time as well as to myself and the resources committee that because of the buffer strips that have been put in place literally tons and tons of soil and phosphorus and nitrates have been kept out of the water and I don't want to put you on the spot but do you have a general recollection of since this program's been put into place how many tons of sediment have been kept from going into our water if I recall it's around an annual basis around 800 tons per year reduction and if I can recall again that equals about 53-54 14-yard dump trucks on an annual basis so just if you can imagine that number of dump trucks going down to the lake front and dumping that much sediment into the lake every year that's what we're keeping out by our buffers. That's a great analogy I think that really gives folks a better understanding of just how much that's keeping out and the development has become such a key issue for Sheboygan County as well as the state and the nation. We're trying to be far more proactive with economic development. Chairman Van der Steen and the county board have some initiatives in play to get more active in this area and if we don't have good water quality and if we don't have clean streams and if we don't have a nice looking lake front and a clean Lake Michigan, who's going to want to start their business here, who's going to want to bring their family here. So the role of your department is frankly very important to the success of our economic development and job growth in this community. Exactly. In addition to the water quality program and seeing the runoff that's coming off the land and you touched on this but just wanted to drill down a little bit more, the well water. All the folks that live in rural areas or don't have a water coming from the city they need to be concerned about the quality of their well and one of the things that happen sometimes in the country is folks build that new home or move to a new subdivision and it may have been a farm 10, 15, 50 years ago and there might be an old well there yet that hasn't been decommissioned. What kind of problem does that create and what are we doing about it? Those are problems because those are direct conduits to the ground water. Usually if those wells have not been used in some time they've deteriorated somewhat. The well casing probably has weakened and as I said it's a direct conduit to the ground water. If the land is being farmed around that well very close and we have a lot of runoff, chances are that runoff is going to go down into that well. We do have a program to address that and it's not very large. It's the state cost share of dollars that we do get from the Department of Ag we do take a portion of that and we offer what we call a well decommissioning program which basically will provide up to a thousand dollars per well to assist these landowners in properly abandoning these wells. We need a certified plumber or a well installer to decommission the wells. There is a certification form that goes along with it and I believe last year we decommissioned probably about 12, 14 wells and we plan to do so again this year. It's a first come first serve basis but again there's assistance out there. And if you can imagine our viewers listening to this that if your grandchildren are going out to spend a day in the rural area whether again it's a newer subdivision or on the farm and there's an old well there and maybe you're aware of it and it's always been somewhat out of sight of mind and an old milk house and an old dilapidated barn or maybe it's out in the backyard and it's got a tin can over the top that can be a straight source of contamination right into the groundwater. Once it's in the groundwater you're not going to clean it up and if they have their own well that they think is just fine they're pulling from that same source of water so very important to get those taken care of and again your department plays an important role in doing that We only have a couple of minutes left and I know one of the prides of your department is the tree and shrub program that you've had and that's going to be coming up here shortly and you've already got the order forms out there I believe very quickly how does that program work how can people get more information Okay our order forms are out they've been out since October the last date to order is March 1st which is coming up in a month or so. You can go on the county's website again look up departments there'll be a tab on our department web page where you can actually bring up the order form and actually fill it out it'll compute it for you taxes, costs, etc just print it off and you can mail it in Each year we have roughly about 80,000 trees that we sell through this program. Minimum order is anywhere from 10 to 25 trees and we have two new items this year that we're offering and we hope they catch on one is rain barrels as you probably heard a lot about rain barrels where we're collecting rain off rooftops for use in your vegetable gardens plants, etc and we have composting barrels so again you go on our website look those two items up and if you're interested you can order those we have many available yet and the tree pickup is the last week in April our one day tree sale is that May 1st I believe or 2nd in May starts at 12 noon out in Sheboygan Falls at the egg building where the tree pickup is held. So if they want to order get on the website now contact your office and they can order up through March 1st. Pat Miles director Land and Water Conservation Department thanks for joining us today and thank you for joining us. Next month we're going to talk about what's a controversial topic as you can imagine a proposed one half percent sales tax in Sheboygan County and essentially what it boils down to is fiscal responsibility economic development and providing property tax relief and Pat like many other departments in fact like the vast majority of departments in Sheboygan County implement mandated programs and services and we're not receiving sufficient funds from the state or federal level to implement them. So chairman van der Sien and the county board either need to find another source of revenue to be able to continue providing programs and services or they're going to have to start making some significant cuts and of course that's a difficult decision to make if we want to maintain law enforcement, health and human services and important programs such as what Pat's administering in the Land and Water Conservation Department. So please join us next month and until then stay safe.