May 15, 2026
By Tim Hundt
VERNON COUNTY, Wis. – Vernon County took a major step toward reshaping two of its most flood prone watersheds Thursday when officials announced that federal funding has been approved for engineering designs to remove or rebuild a system of aging flood control dams on Coon Creek and the West Fork of the Kickapoo River.
The announcement came at the May 14 meeting of the Vernon County Conservation and Education Committee where County Conservationist David Hettenbach laid out how the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service will pay for detailed design work on the PL 566 dams that were built for flood control in the mid twentieth century.
Dam work follows years of flooding and studies
The new design money is the next step in a process that began after the historic 2018 floods when multiple dams in the region failed or were overtopped in the Coon Creek and West Fork Kickapoo watersheds including Jersey Valley and the Mlsna dam. Since then Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) invested over$1.8 million for a cost/benefit study of all of the dams in those two watersheds that recommended removing the flood control structure and rebuilding Jersey Valley.
You can read our previous story about the public input during those studies here.
And the County decision to sign off on the decommissioning plan here.
A total of 23 PL566 flood control dams are slated to be decommissioned across both watersheds in three counties. The NRCS study concluded that these dams have outlived their 50-year design life and it is simply not cost-effective to replace them to modern safety standards.
There are 14 dams in the Coon Creek watershed that will be decommissioned. There are nine dams in the West Fork Kickapoo watershed and all are set to be decommissioned with the exception of Jersey Valley that was deemed worth rebuilding because of the recreational value. The Mlsna dam at the top of the West Fork near Cashton has already been removed at a cost of about $470,000.
Hettenbach reminded supervisors that the county board had already voted last year to seek federal design funding for the work.
“This resolution was passed to pursue this design funding so we have kind of just been sitting around waiting,” he said. “We were not sure how long it was going to take and this actually happened sooner than I thought.”
Federal money approved for design work on dam removals
Hettenbach told supervisors that the federal government has committed several million dollars for engineering designs to decommission most of the PL 566 dams in the Coon Creek and West Fork Kickapoo watersheds and to study a possible rebuild of Jersey Valley Dam.
He said the money will not flow through county accounts but will go directly from NRCS to a private engineering firm that will be hired to do the work.
He summarized the federal commitment in round numbers for the committee.
“We had a meeting at the end of April and they kind of laid out the logistics as far as NRCS contracting with an engineering firm to do the designs of the decommissioning,” Hettenbach said. “For the Coon Creek dams it is $1.5 million and for the West Fork dams $1.1 million. And then the engineering to rebuild Jersey would be $1.7 million.”
Hettenbach said NRCS estimates about $100,000 in engineering design per site and roughly $500,000 per site for eventual removal costs. The design money now in hand only covers the engineering phase. The actual cost to remove the dams has not yet been established.
“They are hoping to start that contract on June 1 and they would give them an 18 month performance period to get these designs ready,” he said. “There would be a kickoff meeting in Madison with the engineering firm the county conservationists from each of those three counties and then NRCS to kind of kick things off.”
The three counties are Vernon, La Crosse, and Monroe which all share PL 566 structures in the two watersheds.
Landowners will likely see engineers on the ground this summer
Hettenbach said once the engineering firm is under contract NRCS and the counties expect the consultants to be on the ground at each structure later this summer.
“At that point we would have more of an idea of the site visits for the engineering firm,” he said. “My thought was after that meeting in June, we then reach out to each of the landowners to talk to them because I might actually have a date for when we are looking at visiting your site.”
He told supervisors he held off calling landowners now because he could not yet tell them when engineers would actually be there.
“I did not feel like I needed to call them now because I cannot tell them when that is yet,” he said. “But it is going to be I would guess sometime in late June or July.”
County will have new responsibilities for floodplain mapping
Although the federal government will pay for the engineering firm Hettenbach said there will still be some county costs especially when it comes to updating floodplain maps once dams are removed or reconfigured.
He explained that the engineering work will include technical modeling of how water will move through the valleys after the dams come out but the county will have to submit the formal paperwork to revise federal flood maps.
“They will remap the Zone A floodplains behind the hydraulic shadows behind some of the dams that they are going to remove,” he said. “The county would be responsible for turning in those LOMRs and stuff to FEMA.”.
“That is a cost and I do not know whether they would let us do one change or if it is $8,000 per site,” he said. “And that would come at the end of this 18 months.”
Supervisor Bruce Kilmer asked how detailed the new mapping work would be.
“When they do that do they actually shoot elevations boots on the ground or do they use a computer generated model,” Kilmer asked.
Hettenbach said those decisions will be made with the engineering firm once it is under contract but he expects a mix of field work and modeling.
“I am not 100 percent clear on what in this case they are planning on doing and I might know more in June,” he said. “A lot of this is modeling and they will come shoot some grade and put that through the models but I can get that answer when I am sitting in a room with them.”
Jersey Valley Dam rebuild will face cost test
The future of Jersey Valley Dam which failed during the 2018 flood drew extended discussion. NRCS plans to use some of the design money to look at rebuilding Jersey at a new site about 800 feet downstream where the valley walls are stronger.
Hettenbach said federal engineers will only take the Jersey design to 30 percent completion before stopping to decide whether it is worth the high price tag.
“They are going to get to 30 percent and then they are going to take a pause and look at is it still worth it for the federal government to reinvest this money to rebuild Jersey,” he said. “Once they are 30 percent the geotechnical review will be done and that will give them a really good idea of what the final cost of rebuilding that dam is going to be.”
He reminded the committee that the earlier programmatic study put the cost of rebuilding Jersey at around $20 million several years ago and that NRCS engineers now believe the real cost is much higher.
“In the programmatic statement that was done after the floods in 2018 the cost to rebuild Jersey was put right around $20 million,” he said. “Steve thinks that cost would be significantly higher now and they will have a better idea once they finish drilling holes and looking at how far into the bedrock they are going to have to tie this dam in.”
The key question for NRCS will be whether the benefits of rebuilding Jersey justify the federal price. Hettenbach said the earlier analysis showed that most of the justification for rebuilding Jersey came from recreation benefit, not flood control.
“In their analysis of rebuilding Jersey Steve gave me these numbers that about 10 percent of the benefit is a flood benefit and about 90 percent of their reason to rebuild was recreations benefit,” he said. “So that is why if it was more skewed towards flood benefit the number would probably be higher, but most of the benefit was recreational and so that is where their cap is a little bit lower even though it sounds like a lot of money.”
Hettenbach said NRCS has indicated that if the new 30 percent design shows a rebuild cost above roughly $26 million to $28 million dollars the agency is unlikely to support reconstruction and would instead fund decommissioning similar to other dams.
County share would focus on recreation pool
If Jersey is rebuilt Hettenbach said NRCS would pay for the bulk of the construction because of the federal interest in the PL 566 system. However the county would still have to contribute for the additional height needed to create a recreational lake behind the dam.
“Steve did mention they will pay 100 percent of the construction costs for Jersey but the county would be on the hook for the lift that would require a recreation pool,” he said. “I am guessing the DNR has a certain standard that if you are going to have a recreational pool that people are going to use for recreating there needs to be a little lift there so then the county would be responsible for that portion.”
He said the NRCS engineer gave him a very rough estimate of around 1 million dollars for that lift which could mean raising the dam height by about five feet.
“Steve just gave me a rough number of around a million dollars for that but again that is rough and I do not know that it will ever come to fruition,” he said. “The lift would be about possibly five feet higher and that is about what we would need to probably tack on.”
Supervisor Frank Easterday said many residents around the old Jersey Valley Lake are most interested in seeing the recreational lake restored.
“My feeling is if we cannot have a recreational dam then we might as well have nothing because that is what everybody wants,” Easterday said. “I get asked that question more than anything else by the Amish community down there when are we going to get the Jersey Dam back and I am like I do not know if we ever will.”
Supervisor Dave Eggen who represents several dam sites said he has long argued that the dams should be viewed as both flood protection and community assets.
“I have argued for the last couple years about a recreational dam versus a life saving and property saving dam which is what they were intended for and what they have accomplished,” Eggen said. “That is the balance we are trying to figure out.”
Supervisor Kevin Walleser pressed Hettenbach and staff on how much engineering is really needed to take a dam down.
“How much engineering does it take to wreck a dam,” Walleser asked.
Matt Eddy conservation specialist who helps oversee the county’s dams explained that modern standards require more than simply knocking out a structure because the valleys now have homes roads and other infrastructure that rely on predictable water behavior.
“They have to be able to pass a 100 year flood without more than two foot impoundment of water,” Eddy said. “So depending on the site and some of the problems we also have because of the sedimentation you get in and just the slope of these stream channels you are dealing with stream velocities and that is where it comes to in dealing with that impoundment.”
Hettenbach added that designers also need to plan for the large volumes of sediment that have built up behind the dams over decades.
“They make estimates about the sediment load that has been impounded by the dam for years and when will that go and how much will go downstream every year,” he said. “Those are the things they have to look at before they take a dam out.”
Other dams will be monitored and maintained while removal plans develop
While the long term future of many dams is tied to the NRCS watershed plan Eddy said county staff will continue inspecting and maintaining the structures to keep them safe.
He explained that county staff met with a DNR watershed engineer and NRCS engineer over the winter to decide how to prioritize work in the Coon Creek and West Fork watersheds while removal is being studied.
“We asked them how do you want us to approach this with the Coon Creek and West Fork watersheds,” Eddy said. “Their preferred alternative for the watershed study is to remove the dams so we kind of came up with a plan.”
Eddy said state and federal engineers assured Vernon County that none of the known issues at the PL 566 structures create an immediate risk of failure though some dams do have higher risk features that need to be watched.
“They assured us that none of the issues that are listed pose an imminent threat to those dams failing,” he said. “It does put them at a higher risk but there is nothing that is indicating we have any urgent issue.”
Instead he said the county will focus on inspections and targeted repairs while the long term removal designs are developed.
“They really want us just to continue to monitor the concerns that have been listed and make any observations for significant or drastic changes in condition,” Eddy said. “We are going to be climbing up into the pipes and measuring those and see if things are moving.”
On the Bad Axe River watershed where dams are not part of the NRCS removal plan Eddy said the county is moving forward with outlet repairs and spillway maintenance including a new concrete repair product at one structure and crack sealing at another.
“We have a number of outlet pipes to repair and a lot of the outlet pipes on the Bad Axe dams are corrugated metal pipe culvert encased in concrete,” he said. “We have got a new product we are going to try called Elephant Armor starting on Skildum Dam and see how that works.”
For Duck Egg Dam which is supposed to operate as a dry structure Eddy said the county will also be tackling cracks in the concrete spillway once staff decide whether to use in house labor or hire outside contractors.
“They want us to seal the cracks on the emergency spillway,” Eddy said. “We are kind of looking at different mastics they use on highways and airports and trying to decide if we want to try to do this ourselves or contract it out and it is going to be a big project.”
Committee members weigh flood control conservation and cost
As the discussion wound down committee members reflected on the generations of investment that have gone into the county’s dams and on the choices that lie ahead as federal design work begins.
Easterday said any new design at Jersey Valley that does not restore at least some lake would be a hard sell for residents who remember fishing and swimming there.
“If it gets moved downstream from where it is existing now it will not be near as deep as what I have been told,” he said. “If we cannot have a recreational dam then we might as well have nothing.”
Walleser looked at the long list of projects and funding estimates and said he was struck by how much the county is being asked to consider.
“That is actually a pretty good deal when you figure that compared when you are building a manure pit and what it costs,” Walleser said. “You are talking about a lot of water and a lot of money.”
Eggen said he views the new design money as the beginning of a long journey to decide what the next generation of flood control and recreation will look like in Vernon County.
“I got a Chinese proverb I have been sitting on the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step,” Eggen said. “Well that is kind of what we are doing.”
Hettenbach told supervisors he will bring back more detailed information after the June kickoff meeting with NRCS and the engineering firm and will keep the committee informed as landowners are contacted and site visits begin.
“I will certainly give you a rundown of what is said at the June meeting,” he said. “At the end of all this it will be nice to just have a final answer on some of these dams.”
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