A Northwoods Almanac
for 9/28 – 10/11/12 by
John Bates
Sightings
9/13: Rick and
Pat Schwai visited Hawk Ridge and were treated to both a glorious day and the
second largest count number so far (6600+) this month. Pat noted, “I
didn't expect the hawks to be flying so high that they were invisible to the
naked eye and still tiny with my 8x32 binoculars.”
9/16: Jim Ferguson went out on Lake Tomahawk for a last day of
summer pontooning and was surprised to come across two red-necked grebes. He
observed, “The two birds stayed close together all the time. We also
counted 39 loons. All the birds were on the western end of Tomahawk Lake.”
9/17 Sharon
Lintereur in Lake Tomahawk watched a barred owl hunting in her woods and was
able to get some fine pictures (see photo).
9/19: Ellen and Kit Deubler had a rare visitor, a bull moose, at
their home on Elsie Lake in the Township of Lac du Flambeau (see photo).
9/23: Mary, Callie, and I were very lucky to come across three
migrating Lapland longspurs on one of the dikes in Powell Marsh.
Bumper Crop of Acorns
Our
native red oaks have outdone themselves this fall in their production of
acorns. There are so many underfoot in places it’s hard to walk! Productive red
oak trees can produce over 1,000 acorns in a banner year – some white oaks are
known produce over 10,000 acorns with yields reaching as high as 6,000 pounds
per acre. However, white oaks are quite uncommon in the Northwoods, attaining
their northern range boundary usually a few counties south of us.
I’m sure a host of wildlife species
have also taken note of the acorn bounty. Among birds, ruffed grouse, wild
turkey, red-headed woodpeckers, blue jays, crows, white-breasted nuthatches ,
brown thrashers, rufous-sided towhees, and common grackles are heavy consumers
of acorns. And though red oak acorns are more bitter due to their high tannic
acid content than white oak acorns, many mammals consume them, chief among them
being rodents and squirrels, as well as black bears and white-tailed deer. For
deer, acorns are preferred above all other food items whenever and wherever
they are available.
But wildlife are not the only
consumers of acorns; people have consumed acorns for thousands of years. In
fact, acorns are still a commercial food crop in China and Korea, and are
harvested to a lesser degree in Mexico and Japan. You can buy acorn flour
online right now from www.acornflour.org. Acorns
were particularly important to certain tribes in California, comprising half of
their diet! There, oaks were planted, transplanted, and intensively managed in
“orchard-like” settings.
But what about Native American use
of acorns in northern Wisconsin? The Woodland tribes of the Upper Great Lakes
Region relied on seasonally abundant plant and animal resources, chief among
them in the autumn being fall-spawning fish and wild rice. But archaeological
evidence indicates that acorn use was also widespread, though the sweeter
acorns (white and bur oak) were preferred over red oaks. Red oak acorns require
leaching of their tannic acid to be edible, but the practice was common, as
described in the Menominees by Huron Smith in 1923: “The acorn was boiled till
almost cooked. The water was then thrown away. Then to water, two cups of wood
ash were added. The acorns were put into a net and were pulled out of the water
after boiling in this. The third time, they were simmered to clear them of lye
water.” Smith added, “Because the red oak was so abundant in Ojibwe territory,
the acorns were one of their most important starchy foods.”
Environmental
Analysis of the Rest Lake Dam
On
9/15, the WDNR released an Environmental Analysis (EA) related to the eventual
new operating order it will issue on the Rest Lake Dam. The purpose of
the EA is to provide a factual disclosure of the levels and flows of the river
and how the large community of species are impacted, the management
alternatives considered, and their anticipated environmental impacts. Here is a
beginning attempt at summarizing this complex document:
Summary
of the Issue
The
Rest Lake Dam, located on the Manitowish River in Manitowish Waters and
incorporated into the County ‘W’ bridge, creates an upstream reservoir that
controls the water level on a chain of ten natural lakes and river channels
known as the Manitowish Chain of Lakes. Elevations upstream of the dam are
raised between 9.2 and 13.5 feet.
Downstream
of the dam, the Manitowish River flows through three small lakes and then
travels another 15 miles until the Manitowish and Bear Rivers combine to form
the North Fork of the Flambeau River, eventually flowing into the
Turtle-Flambeau Flowage.
The
chain of lakes is drawn down about 3.5 feet every fall to protect piers and
boat houses on the Chain. The drawdown results in significant autumn flooding
downstream. The Chain is then refilled every spring after most of the ice is
off Rest Lake, which unfortunately is after nearly all of the snowmelt has
already gone downstream. Based on USGS estimates, to raise or lower the Chain 1
inch takes 14.8 million cubic feet of water. This amount of water translates to
a daily flow of 171 cubic feet per second that is either taken from, or added
to river flows downstream of the dam. The natural streamflow below the dam is
thus profoundly altered in order to empty or fill the Chain – photographs
throughout the EA dramatically illustrate this.
The
current owner of the Rest Lake Dam is Xcel Energy. The hydropower generated
downstream resulting from the fall drawdown of the Chain was evaluated by the
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which in 2001 concluded that the
management of water levels and flows was “neither used and useful nor necessary
or appropriate to maintain or operate” hydropower generation.
Thus,
given that the dam has no functional value to Xcel, its current operation is
summarized by the EA as “focused primarily on upstream water interests
including minimizing possible ice damage to piers and shoreline structures, as
well as keeping water levels above the dam in a narrow operating range near the
maximum water level from June through October.”
According
to the EA, the problem with this management strategy is that at any time of
year, the minimum river flow required at a dam stems from Chapter 31.34
Wisconsin Statutes, which states that a dam must, at the minimum, discharge at
least 25% of the stream’s natural low flow. This is calculated by estimating
the “Q7-10 flow” which is
defined as the lowest average flow for a consecutive seven-day period with an
average recurrence interval of ten years. The Q7-10 is mainly used for the permitting of
wastewater discharges, and, importantly, these flows are not considered
protective of aquatic life and habitat. The USGS has since estimated the Q7-10
for the Manitowish River to be 40 cubic feet per second (cfs).
The
downstream flows of the Manitowish, however, have often been lower than 40 cfs,
sometimes for months at a time, and thus of very significant ecological concern. So, the DNR began meetings
in 2002 to re-evaluate the 1937 operating order that today still acts as the
legal directive for the management of the dam.
The
other statutory issue surrounding the management of the Rest Lake Dam stems
from Wisconsin’s
Public Trust Doctrine (Wisconsin
Constitution: Article IX, Section 1), which establishes public water rights and
the State’s obligation to protect those rights in navigable bodies of water.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has declared that the State holds navigable waters
in trust for all citizens, and that public water rights such as water quality,
quantity, scenic beauty, and recreational use need to be protected for the
benefit of current and future generations.
In
response to these statutory directives, intensive data-collecting studies were
eventually undertaken by the DNR, and in November of 2009, the USGS placed gaging
stations to record the river flow on the three largest inflows to the Chain
(the Manitowish River, Rice Creek, and Trout River), the water level elevation
at the dam, and the river flows downstream of the dam. This information, along
with historical dam operating records and nearby long term gaging stations on
the Bear and Trout Rivers were used by USGS to develop inflow models for the
Manitowish River at the Rest Lake Dam.
Other
information gathered in the EA addressed the major sources of water loss from
the Chain and the rivers, which include water withdrawals for cranberry
operations, private irrigation, evaporation, and plant transpiration. It also
evaluated other issues such as water quality, aquatic habitat with discussion
of the functions and values of wetlands, fisheries populations and habitats,
wildlife populations including birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles, and
mussels, wild rice habitat, and cultural values such as local economics, land
values, recreational uses, and shoreline structures.
Cranberry
Growers Water Withdrawals
The
entire EA is thorough, essential reading and quite revealing. For instance, the
EA quantifies what the actual water withdrawals are from the three cranberry
operations around the Manitowish and Trout Rivers.
Cranberry
production uses water to irrigate cranberries during the growing season, to
flood beds for harvest in August, to flood beds in winter to protect the vines
from freezing/drying, and to either flood beds or irrigate to protect the
plants from frost in the spring.
Approximately
960 acres of cranberry production is located downstream of Wild Rice Lake where
pumps keep water levels high on Little Trout Lake, from which water is then
pumped or flowed to individual cranberry beds. Water diverted to these
cranberry beds is likely not returned to the Manitowish Chain because it is
located in the Bear River sub-watershed.
The
pumping station is only operated when water levels on Little Trout Lake are low
during dry years. In 2007, a drought year, operating records indicate that
pumping occurred 24 hours a day from June to October. Given the 10-14 cfs
pumping rate from this operation, the USGS estimated the amount of water
withdrawn from the Chain and diverted to Little Trout Lake ranged from 11 to
27% of the natural inflow of the river.
Another
cranberry pumping station located upstream of Wild Rice Lake is used to keep
water levels high on Great and Little Corn Lakes. Approximately 177 acres of
cranberry production occurs
in this location. This cranberry operation diverts from 2 to 100 percent of the
flow of the Trout River when the pumps are turned on. For example, on December
11, 2009, USGS measured 2.41 cfs below the pumps and 25.0 cfs upstream (a
diversion of 22 cfs). This means that under low flow conditions, the pumping
rates can and were measured by the USGS gage to temporarily reverse the
direction of flow on the Trout River.
The
third cranberry pumping location has approximately 41 acres of cranberry beds
and takes water out of Alder Lake, recycling it directly back to where it was
withdrawn minus losses due to evaporation and evapotranspiration.
A
fourth operation is currently under construction in the watershed that will
have approximately 20 acres of cranberry beds, and which will divert water from
Lower Gresham Lake. The outlet of this lake is Gresham Creek, which is a
tributary to the Trout River upstream of Wild Rice Lake.
Operating Order Yet to
Come
The
draft EA is available for public review and can be downloaded at: http://dnr.wi.gov/water/basin/upwis/restlakedam.
Comments
on the draft EA need to be received by the DNR by 10/31/12. An updated Rest
Lake Dam operating order will be drafted after the certification of the EA.
I
highly recommend reading the EA. It’s a lesson in the complexity of natural
systems and our relationships to them. My hope is that objective and bighearted
discussion will follow, the sustainable management of the rivers and the Chain
will ensue, and people will come together to work with the DNR to optimize the
health and integrity of the rivers and lakes throughout this watershed.
Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: call me at
715-476-2828, drop me an e-mail at manitowish@centurytel.net,
or snail-mail me at 4245N Hwy. 47, Mercer, WI 54547.
