Watershed and Water Quality Planning

Wisconsin has conducted Water Quality Planning since the mid-1970´s, when newly promulgated Clean Water Act authorities were delegated to the State Department of Natural Resources. The specific type of planning work has changed over time, but the end goal -- restoring, protecting and maintaining clean water and healthy aquatic ecosystems -- has been a constant through the past nearly 40 years.

Early Water Quality Planning (1970s)

Initially water quality management plans, or "basin plans" were designed to assess the need for and extent of wastewater treatment plant upgrades to secondary treatment. The majority of work involved conducting wasteload allocations for biological oxygen demand (BOD) on major river systems to determine the allowable pollutant loads from point source discharges. Examples of river systems that were analyzed include the Fox River (Green Bay), Wisconsin River, Milwaukee River, Rock River, etc. Every few years the state produced a Water Quality Assessment Report to Congress (Clean Water Act, Section 305(b)), which provided a narrative of the state of the state´s water condition and a summary of work achieved under the water quality program.

Basin Planning, Facilities Plan Reviews, Sewer Service Area Planning (1980s)

The 1980s brought significant changes to the water quality planning program in Wisconsin. The state implemented its innovative Priority Watershed Program to control nonpoint source discharges and enacted state legislation to systematize the connection between the state´s delegated Clean Water Act responsibility and its evaluation of point source discharges including urbanizing areas throughout the state. State Administrative Codes NR 121, NR 110, and NR 120 provided a structure and framework to tie together the state´s planning program with its implementation vehicles for permitting point source discharges and outreach and education for voluntary efforts for nonpoint sources of pollutants.

The development of Sewer Service Area Plans (see: Sewer Service Area Planning) for areas in the state specifically "designated" or mentioned in NR121, as well as for communities with populations of greater than 10,000 individuals, began. This work required review and formal "amendment" of specific actions such as permits or specialized plans to the state´s basin plans, which were the umbrella vehicle for related water quality work in the state. Water Quality Planners conducted "conformance reviews" for proposed permit limits, stormwater plans, sewer service area plans, and priority watershed plans to ensure that the proposed work was protective or if needed, helped to restore, the water quality in the respective basin.

Watershed Approach, Integrated Planning, and "GMUs" (1990s)

In the 1990s, the state began enacting a series of water resources rules which up until that point had been "covered" under the state Sewer Service Area Program´s Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) designations. [ESA´s are resource areas identified in Sewer Service Area Plans that must not be developed with public sewer (as per NR 121).]

State rules and federal law regarding shoreland/wetland areas, wetlands, floodplain zones, and Great Lakes related issues provided updated authorities for protecting and better managing these sensitive areas. For much of the state, these rules brought tremendous positive change with greater consistency and resource protection.

Basin planning, or "Water Quality Management Planning", continued to evolve in response to the modified legal framework and supplementary management tools. Recommendations in "basin plans" focused more on partnership, "ecosystem" recommendations, particularly those plans developed in the late 1990s.

In 1999, the water quality program worked with lands and fisheries to develop "integrated basin plans" statewide. These plans were designed to capture the essence of popularly discussed holistic, systems-based planning approaches. These Integrated Basin Plans, or State of the Basin Reports, reflected the department´s reorganized structure into geographic management units (GMUs) and were reflective of "basin team" partnerships at the local level. Integrated Plans, or State of the Basin Reports, were developed for most of the state´s 23 GMUs from 1999 through 2002.

Watershed Planning Network (2007)

Technological investments by Wisconsin DNR have resulted in the state´s ability to better identify and track resource issues and better manage and share information on water condition. In 2001, the state received the first of many federal grants to invest in the development datasystems that build upon the state´s 1:24,000-Scale Hydrography Datalayer.

Work conducted in the past six years has resulted in two new water-related GIS-enabled datasystems. The first is the Water Assessment Tracking and Electronic Reporting System (WATERS), which supports the state´s water quality planning program, including waterbody level assessments, water quality standards, and use designation assessments. The second is the Surface Water Integrated Monitoring System (SWIMS), which supports a wide variety of work, but its primary function is to provide ready access to monitoring sites and results against the state´s hydrologic systems. Both WATERS and SWIMS are supplemented by the Water Program´s Surface Water Data Viewers, interactive webmapping tools which provide "data delivery" to DNR staff and partner agencies.

The logical evolution of these tools is the development of support systems for partnership work which affects and is affected by DNR water program activity. The WDNR recognizes, and in many cases provides funding for, watershed/water quality planning work on specific waterbodies or specific areas of the state. For several years, this planning work was conducted and no further action was taken. However, with the advent of new tools, WDNR is now able to provide online progress reporting and easy to use tools for partners funded through DNR grants to share their final reports and resource status with DNR and others by a simple"click of the mouse"!

More about the Water Assessment Tracking and Electronic Reporting System (WATERS)...

More about the Surface Water Integrated Montioring System (SWIMS)...

More about the Surface Water Data Viewer...