Constituent question re: Dam Operation, Private Property and Trees - UPDATED

We have had a house on Lake Koshkonong for five years. We are on East Lakeside (south west corner of the lake) and we suffered through the historical flood and lost our walkway to the nice beach we had. So we replaced the walkway at our own expense and now, this year we have two massive floods in our wetlands and have lost our lake front completely. We lost all our trees by the lake and one tree fell on our dock and destroyed it also. All the people at this end of the lake has suffered the similar demise. We have all lost trees on our lake front area now--which is another costly mess which the residents in this area will have to take care of.

I have checked the RKLD site and read the recent newsletter. There is an striking absence of discussion about the loss of property and trees of those individuals off the wetlands on the lake because of the problems with flooding and poor control by the dam. I wonder if these losses have even been viewed by the members of your organization.

Given that we are new homeowners, maybe we don't understand the 'history' of the lake sufficiently.

I invite you to visit our end of the lake. You can see the destruction from the public walkway to the lake in the Lakeside Subdivision or walk down our property to our walkway (1231 E. Lakeside Dr). Are there funds to assist landowners that have continual losses over the last few years due to the lake flooding?

It is a discouraging too see our lakefront now, especially the loss of very large trees on our property due to the flooding. Please take the time to come view the destruction.

Thank you for your time,
Linda Laatsch
David Carley
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Linda -
I have sent our scientists out to your shoreline and they will have a report for me shortly. We will be back out again on Thursday sept 2 to view many sites like yours
Thanks for your patience!
Brian Christianson
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Brian --



We toured this section of the shoreline in April or May via boat. This is a stretch where the shoreline looks like a small beach with forest or forested wetland in the interior -- you can't see the homes from the water, only the trails and some docks. We may have photographs that show Ms. Laatsch's shoreline, but I couldn't identify it for certain.


I don't doubt that they've had tree falls in the last month, not sure what she means about losing the shoreline -- the beach is probably still submerged, but I doubt that it has gone away altogether.

Regarding the issues she raises, first, elimination or control of flood water levels is impossible given the hydrology and hydraulics of the river and the lake, as you know. Second, it is true that this is one of the few areas of private residential shorelines that are not armored against erosion loss, because the high ground is so far back from the lake shore. Putting a breakwater in front of this property may prevent some of the wave driven erosion that leads to tree falls, but could also produce unwanted fine sediment accumulation between the breakwater and the shoreline, unless the breakwater was a long-distance offshore, in which case it'd be quite expensive.

Rob
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Brian, Rob and Jon,

Stan and I were conducting the first half of the lake aquatic vegetation survey today on the lake and went by what I think is the Laatsch property.

They do have a tree or more that dropped and caused damage to the boardwalk and pier. Some other tree drops were also observed in the vicinity but no apparent damage resulted from these.

This is a relatively common occurrence in floodplain forests as these trees have very shallow root systems (pancake roots) that do not go deep and in the sandy substrate at this location, would not be very strong even if they did. When these sandy substrates are saturated or inundated they are not stable and tree drops result.

Stephen J. Hjort
Eco-Resource Consulting, LLC
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I am not sure exactly where this is but we (Rob and I) did go along the entire shoreline this spring/early summer and did view numerous tree falls along the shore and some were in this area of the lake.

Unfortunately some of this damage and repair/removal comes with the territory of this, and most other lakes, especially in floodplain forest environments. Tree falls are a natural occurrence in this type of shoreline habitat.