Conservation Workers Tour Flood-Damaged Sauk County

Officials Are Looking At Ways To Prevent Future Damage

Updated: 11:36 am CDT July 24, 2008

Officials in Sauk County have been working hard to recover from the massive amount of water that tore through the area in the last month.

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But now they're taking time out to share information to help other counties prepare for a disaster.

On Wednesday, Sauk County conservation officials led a tour of the damage through the county to discuss practices that worked, those that didn't, and the damage caused by 2 feet of rain in a short period of time, WISC-TV reported.

"Many of these people come from outside the county so the idea is they will learn from our experience to prepare in their counties for similar events or long-term conservation in general," said Jen Stewart, conservation technician for Sauk County.

Conservationists from across the area joined the tour to see what happened to the waterways and the area around it.

"Even though we install conservation practices to hold soil, manage nutrients, try to keep water clean, there were limitations due to the severe impacts of the rains, the heavy rains that came quickly," said Stewart.

The flooding in June and more recently in early July have challenged farmers, homeowners, and in turn the land conservation community to figure out what worked and what didn't in controlling the heavy water.

"You can have a degree in soil science or watershed management but when you see erosion on this scale and how small of a watershed this is, then mother nature throws you a loop in almost 2 feet of rain in a short period of time you just go wow, I never realized that could happen," said Mike Stanek, a resource conservationist in Sauk County.

Lessons learned in this area like the helpfulness of prairie grasses to stop the water or the sheer power of 2 feet of rain are educating those who were luckier.

"It 's very valuable," said Carlton Peterson of Marquette County. "It's hard to come up with solutions when we get 14 or 20 inches of rain, everybody is suffering from it and everybody wants a quick solution."

"We know that we can't stop the flooding altogether, but we know that the practices that we put on the land have an effect on that," said Stanek.

The tour continued into Lake Delton to show people the drastic damage there and that helped reinforce that the recovery in Sauk County is far from over, WISC-TV reported.

They're working on grants and federal money to both repair damage and study how to improve the watershed to mitigate flooding.

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