Last week Wisconsin Wetlands Association (WWA) and Ashland County Land Conservation Department staff met with representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection to visit multiple built or planned flood risk reduction demonstration sites.
The projects are a result of 2019 Act 157, which provided $150,000 to Ashland County for the design, implementation, and evaluation of demonstration projects that test natural flood risk reduction practices in that county. WWA was a champion of that legislation and has been actively helping Ashland County assess flood vulnerabilities and identify strategic opportunities to restore wetlands, streams, and floodplains to reduce risk. The selection of sites was informed by this assessment work, with a focus on prioritizing work upstream of vulnerable road-stream crossings and farmlands.
The demonstration aspects of the work included a catchment-scale approach, where work was planned at multiple sites within a single drainage area, and the state’s first-ever approved use of “post-assisted log structures,” which were installed to help raise the bed of an eroded channel and reestablish healthy headwater wetlands.
As part of 2019 Act 157, Ashland County and the WDNR will soon submit reports summarizing the results of these projects and recommending policy and funding improvements needed to accelerate the use of wetland, stream, and floodplain restoration to reduce floods.
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