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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLand & Water 06-03-08 NOTICE OF MEETING AND AGENDA ST. CROIX COUNTY LAND & WATER CONSERVATION COMMITTEE June 3, 2008 —10:40 a.m. Agricultural Service & Education Center 1960 8 th Avenue, Baldwin, WI CALL TO ORDER ROLL CALL APPROVAL OF MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING ADOPTION OF AGENDA DATE OF NEXT MEETING — July 1, 2008 LAND & WATER CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT Agency reports FSA NRCS DNR RC &D West Central Area NEW BUSINESS: Director's report 2008 Strategic Initiatives Land & Water Resource Management Plan Glen Hills dam inspections - update COLP (Capital Outlay Plan) Kinnickinnic Land Trust — Nelson French Deer baiting /feeding resolution Subdivisions — report Vouchers OLD BUSINESS: Staff reports PARKS DEPARTMENT NEW BUSINESS: Director's report Public Health — Tobacco -free policy 2008 Strategic Initiatives COLP (Capital Outlay Plan) Pine Lake - update Bills /vouchers * Personnel issue OLD BUSINESS: ANNOUNCEMENTS & CORRESPONDENCE ADJOURN SUBMITTED BY: Robert Heise DATE: May 21, 2008; amended May 29, 2008 COPIES TO: COUNTY BOARD OFFICE NEWS MEDIA /NOTICE BOARD COUNTY CLERK COMMITTEE MEMBERS (Items may be taken in different order) *Additions /Changes /Corrections UNOFFICIAL ST. CROIX COUNTY LAND & WATER CONSERVATION COMMITTEE Agricultural Service & Education Center, Baldwin, WI June 3, 2008 Members Present: Ken Graf, Linda Luckey, Buzz Marzolf, Bill Peavey, Dan Raebel, Gene Ruetz Members Absent: None Staff Present: Director -Bob Heise, Land Specialist -Tammy Wittmer, Intern- Mickey Johnson, Technician -Ryan Schaefer, Administrative Assistant - Arlene Lier Others Present: Marty Engel -DNR, Bob Hendrickson -FSA, Steve Pernsteiner -NRCS, Chuck Whiting - Administrative Coordinator, Bill Cranmer -Dist. 22- County Board Supervisor, Nelson French- Kinnickinnic River Land Trust Ruetz called the meeting to order at 10:51 a.m. Action on Previous Minutes: Motion by Peavey, seconded by Graf, to approve the May 6, 2008 meeting minutes. Carried. Adoption of Agenda: Motion by Ruetz, seconded by Luckey, to adopt the agenda. Carried. Date of next meeting: July 1, 2008 LAND & WATER CONSERVATION DEPARTMENT FARM SERVICE AGENCY (FSA) Bob Hendrickson - County Executive Director reported: • The Farm Bill has been passed. • An informational meeting will be held on June 16' for the new CRP - SAFE (Conservation Reserve Program — State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement) program sponsored by FSA, NRCS and DNR. The meeting will be held in New Richmond at the WITC building. The new SAFE (CRP) program started May 1, 2008. There are 2,500 acres allocated for our area which is most of the land west of Hwy 63, excluding Cylon and two townships in southern Polk County (Farmington and Alden). Land for SAFE must have been cropped 4 out of the six years from 1996 through 2001. It must be located within the designated area and it does not need to be highly erodible for enrollment. Producers must have owned the land for at least 12 months before sign up. There is a one -time Signing Incentive Payment of $100.00 per acre after the 30 days, after the contract is approved. FSA will use the average of the top 3 soils to determine the Annual Rental Rate. Annual payments will be made once a year after October 1". Cost Shares will be paid at the rate of 50% of what it cost to establish the cover. There will also be a Practice Incentive Payment of 40 % of the total cost for establishing the practice after the practice is installed. At this point we already have 3 producers interested in the SAFE program. • We are still taking sign ups for the Livestock Compensation Program (LCP) and the Crop Disaster Program (CDP). We have currently paid out over $2,800,000.00 in CDP payments and well over $140,889.00 in LCP payments. The signup for LCP will end in July and the signup will be disabled for CDP in June. • Crop Reporting is proceeding well. Even though we don't have all the details on the new Farm Bill, the requirement to report your crops is the same and must be completed by July 15, 2008, or there will be a late file fee that will apply. • Sign up for the 2008 DCP (Direct & Cyclical program) will start sometime in July and run through September. • There have been some changes to the New Farm Bill that will be very good. Payment Limitations now will be hooked to landowners ID number. You cannot have any other entities to get extra payments. • Interviews for the Program Technician position will be conducted during the second week of June. NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE (MRCS) Steve Pernsteiner- District Conservationist reported: The new SAFE - CRP program has seen an initial flurry of activity with 6 landowners signing applications on over 300 acres. Conservation plans are being developed for these applicants. With the new Farm Bill passed, NRCS will have a better budget for the year. Several conservation programs including Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and Farm and Ranch Protection Program (FPP) have seen an increase in funding under this farm bill. CSP has seen many modifications to make it simpler. A new program, Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentive Program has been added. This program provides grants to States to secure hunting access to private lands. The new critical haying and grazing of CRP will keep the office busy developing plans. DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES (DNR) Marty Engel- Fisheries Biologist reported: There are several different program areas in the Baldwin DNR service center. Once every other month, a DNR representative from a different discipline will attend the LWCC meeting. Fish management - covers 4 counties. This spring baseline surveys (ten year rotation) were done on two lakes: Hatfield Lake in New Richmond (which was aerated a number of years ago) and Squaw Lake. There is a nice population of northern pike (good size, quality) and nice large mouth bass in Hatfield Lake. We do not like to see an over abundant bullhead population. We may have to write a project and get funding to do bullhead removal. The bullheads prevent the pan fish species from doing well. Squaw Lake — bass /pan fish/crappie type fishery. We are doing additional work on pan fish in the county on Squaw Lake. It has some of the nicest bluegill fishing in the county. The size distribution looks very good. This year the county went to a 10 -bag limit on pan fish on all the lakes. With our area's large population, they could easily outfish our lakes. Monitoring the four lakes (Hatfield, Squaw, Bass, and Baldwin Pine) indicates not much winter kill. RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT (RC &D) Ruetz reported: • River Country received the $40,000 grant for working with Sacred Heart Hospital -Eau Claire on a "buy local foods program." The hospital is willing to spend $300,000 this year for food produced locally. They are trying to work together to get enough producers to produce what they want. • Funding for the grazing program looks better since the Farm Bill passed. More grants are available. WEST CENTRAL AREA Heise reported that Clark County will host the Summer Conservation Tour on June 26 (Thursday). Election of officers will be held during the business meeting. Ruetz plans to attend. NEW BUSINESS Kinnickinnic Land Trust Nelson French, new Executive Director of the Kinnickinnic Land Trust, gave a presentation on the direction that the Land Trust is going. The land trust was established in 1993, a non -profit private organization, established with the mission to work with the community to protect natural resources and scenic beauty of the Kinnickinnic River watershed (140 square miles in size and river is about 22 miles long). It is managed by a ten - member board of directors, all private individuals who are nominated and serve as volunteers on the board). There are 600 members and donors for the organization consisting of individuals and businesses. Some support comes from foundations. The operations are all privately funded; currently, the land trust does not receive any public funding for office staff. In our 15 -year history, we have completed 26 projects (working with landowners to conserve priority sites either through fee title acquisition of the lands or placement of a conservation easement on the property). We have protected over 2,000 acres; own 3 preserves (a few hundred acres). We partner with DNR in stewardship fund for conservation easements and USDA and the FRPP program for working lands easements. Marzolf asked French for advice on preserving the 82 acres located next to the County Government Center. French works within the defined Kinnickinnic watershed boundary, but stated that there are ways where you can weave conservation development and protection principles into some other social needs which were identified. Director's report Heise reported: • WLWCA is conducting training for new and seasoned LWCC supervisors. There is a session to be held in Menomonie on June 12 at the Dunn County Ag center. Marzolf and Ruetz plan to attend. • Willow River project (TMDL — Total Maximum Daily Load being delivered to the St. Croix River) — There were two meetings in May. There was good attendance but the farming community was not represented. The next stakeholders meeting will be held on June 25 at the Emerald town hall. Subdivisions — report Tammy Wittmer summarized the current county ordinances and how staff reviews storm water & erosion control. Staff covered the option of having a separate storm water and erosion control ordinance which outlines a consistent set of standards and review process. The LWCC directed staff to move forward with drafting an ordinance and to research and review other counties throughout the state who have already implemented a similar ordinance. Glen Hills dam inspections — update Schaefer reported on the annual inspection of the 10 PL -566 dams. Map indicates location of the dams. Federal law requires that PL -566 dams be inspected annually. Inspections are done monthly in summer months. Five of the ten dams have high water alarms because they are deemed high hazard dams. Early in May, Merwyn Neibacher (Parks Department) and Schaefer made an inspection of the ten dams. Basically, the dams look very good except dam #1 (small debris around trash racks) due to spring runoff. Dams #2,7,8,10 and 11 look excellent. There is some rodent activity on the southeast corner of dam #3. There was no physical damage on any of the dams. Dam #4 (off of county Road G) — Last fall the snowmobile trail was changed to go over the dam and down the spillway. There were concerns of potential damage to the vegetated spillway, however none was noticed. Dam #5 — Adjacent landowner had a tree cutting performed on his property that abutted the dam. There is a lot of debris in the groin area of the basin dam area and on the manhole that surrounds our alarm systems. We are working with the landowner to get it cleaned up. Dam #6 — We saw an uplift of the inlet pipe a few years ago, it was not a concern then and uplift of the draw down pipe remains the same. Our NRCS dam specialist/engineer did a summer inspection of all the state's PL -566 dams last fall. No change to the uplift of the draw down pipe was noticed. There have been intermittent false alarms on dams 4, 5 and 6 that have high water alarms. We are working with the two phone companies (which makes it complicated) to try and resolve these problems. Graf and Peavey left the meeting at 11:17 p.m. 2008 Strategic Initiatives Discussed the 40 -acre county -owned property located in town of Cylon. WI DNR is interested in the property as it is surrounded by DNR -owned property. Staff will continue discussion with the DNR after the new stewardship dollars are allocated. Land & Water Resource Management Plan (LWRMP) Heise reported that a planning session (technical part) is scheduled for June 18 (9:00 -12:00 noon) at the Ag Center in Baldwin to begin amending the LWRMP. After a plan draft is created, we will assemble a citizens' advisory committee to build input into the plan. COLP (Capital Outlay Plan) Heise stated that the highlighted items may be incorporated into our Capital Outlay plan for our department (or the Ag Center). We will be swapping out 3 computers for our department. They are on a 3 -year cycle and we get 3 each year. We work with Computer Services on getting our computers updated. We will be looking at a keyless entry door system for the Ag Center which was discussed with the county safety committee. Another item that we are waiting for a quote on, is to finish the basement bathroom (fixtures and walls). Parks — The park improvement grant ($100,000 - $50,000 state, $50,000 county) — We will not know if we are successful with that grant proposal until August/September. About $60,000 of that is to finish our upgrades on our electrical system at Glen Hills park. We upgraded a certain portion (five different phases) and this would complete all phases and bring our current electrical system for the campgrounds up to standards. We are continually moving forward with limestone screenings (about a mile each year) for Wildwood Trail. One item to be added is a satellite toilet system (for park staff) near the maintenance shed at Homestead Park to replace an old one. We will continue our plan to chip seal the campground blacktopped roads at Glen Hills Park. Discussed LWCC taking a tour of the county parks to familiarize them with the park system. Deer baitinz/feedine resolution Heise presented a revised Deer Baiting/Feeding resolution that the LWCD and Sportsmen's Alliance would like forwarded to County Board at their June 17 meeting and eventually to Wisconsin Counties Association this fall. Luckey made motion, seconded by Ruetz, to approve the resolution with the changes as recommended, "to the State legislature ". Carried. Vouchers Reviewed vouchers. Luckey made motion, seconded by Raebel, to approve Chair Ruetz's signature on the June LWCD voucher list (total $37,071.23). Carried. PARKS DEPARTMENT Members Present: Linda Luckey, Buzz Marzolf, Dan Raebel, Gene Ruetz Members Absent: Bill Peavey Staff Present: Director -Bob Heise, Parks Operations Manager -Dave Larson, Administrative Assistant - Arlene Lier Others Present: Fred Johnson, Geralyn Karl- Health & Human Services NEW BUSINESS Director's Report Heise reported: • There was an Eurasian Milfoil weed pull on May 15 by the Hudson Scuba Club at Homestead Park. Another weed pull is scheduled for Sunday, June 8, and also one in July. • June 14 & 15 — Free entrance into County parks. It is scheduled annually on the second weekend in June. Public Health — Tobacco -free policy Fred Johnson and Geralyn Karl presented the concept of Tobacco -free Parks (policy) to the committee. Signage would be the way to make the public aware of the county's tobacco -free policy on all county owned property with facilities. The "tobacco -free" policy at the County owned parks and facilities would send a positive message. The item will be on July's agenda for supporting this policy. 2008 Strategic Initiatives One item is to support trails and parks, under "effective community issues ". Pine Lake — Update Larson reported that Xcel Energy representatives indicated on May 5 that they would have a decision within the next month. We are in a holding pattern because there has been no movement in negotiations with the auxiliary parking lot. Capital Outlay Plan - COLP The park improvement grant ($100,000 - $50,000 state, $50,000 county) — We will not know if we are successful with that grant proposal until August/September. About $60,000 of that is to finish our upgrades on our electrical system at Glen Hills park. We upgraded a certain portion (five different phases) and this would complete all phases and bring our current electrical system for the campgrounds up to standards. We are continually moving forward with limestone screenings (about a mile each year) for Wildwood Trail. One item to be added is a satellite toilet system (for park staff) near the maintenance shed at Homestead Park to replace an old one. We will continue our plan to chip seal the campground blacktopped roads at Glen Hills Park. Discussed LWCC taking a tour of the county parks to familiarize them with the park system. Vouchers The June bills list for Parks was presented. Motion by Marzolf, seconded by Raebel, to approve Chair Ruetz's signature on the voucher list (Park accounts total $8,199.16). Carried. Personnel issue Heise reported that there is a staff vacancy (Site Manager) at Homestead Parklands. Committee directed him to work with Human Resources on filling the vacant position. Chair Ruetz adjourned meeting at 3:05 p.m. Buzz Marzolf Secretary Arlene Lier Recording Secretary