Forestry committee decides against changes to stewardship grant application

HURLEY - The Iron County Forestry and Parks Committee decided against altering its grant application seeking funds for improvements to the county's campground at the Lake of the Falls park so that all-terrain vehicles could continue to access the park.

The decision came after Forest Administrator Eric Peterson read an e-mail from Jillian Steffes, with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, that clarified that the use of Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds to finance the renovations would prohibit the use of ATVs in the park.

The email was in response to a request that Steffes attend the meeting after several Mercer residents and business owners expressed concern at the prospect of the campground being closed to ATV and snowmobile traffic.

According to Steffes' email, Aid to Local Parks portion of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program - which Steffes said was the best fit for the county's grant application - "is intended to to support nature-based outdoor recreation."

The DNR's lawyers have said ATVs don't fit this purpose and therefore any campground that uses the funds would be closed to ATV camping, according to Steffes email. Whether the ban on ATVs would also apply to snowmobiles is unclear, according to Steffes. While the DNR has allowed snowmobiles in past, there is no official statement from department attorneys allowing it and therefore, Steffes was unable to guarantee that the use of snowmobiles could be allowed permanently.

Steffes did confirm a compromise would be possible as the campground is split into three "lobes" and the grant funding could be used on only one or two of the lobes. Steffes' email said any section of the park that didn't use funding wouldn't have the restriction on ATVs in place.

Steffes did caution that the department only had a limited amount of funds and most likely not all grant requests would be met. She added that while Iron County's application is "a good application and an excellent fit for this grant program," there were several applications that were scoring a bit better.

Given that it would appear the county wouldn't be receiving the grant, the committee reached a consensus to forgo altering the application but indications are they likely would seek the compromise if it was announced that they were selected to receive stewardship funding.

Regardless of whether the county receives grant funding, it will use the $104,000 budgeted for renovations to the campground to build bathrooms and showers. The money had been intended to provide the local matching requirement for the grant application but it could finance a portion of the project regardless of the grant outcome.

If awarded, the grant would be used to build more showers and bring water and a septic system to portions of the park.

If the county pursued the grant application another year, it would have to find additional money for the matching requirements, Peterson said.

The county would be allowed to change the grant application to only use the funding in a section of the park without submitting a new application, according to Peterson, because it would be changing the location of the improvements but not the scope of the project.

In other action:

-One of the bids in the recent timber sale won't be awarded to the high bidder, according to Peterson, because the high bidder missed deadlines to submit the necessary paperwork and money to get the contract.

-Zach Lawson, a fisheries biologist with the Wisconsin Bureau of Fisheries Management, updated the committee on some of the fish population surveys they have done in the area. Among the information presented, Lawson talked about how the bureau's efforts to harvest sturgeon eggs in the county was incredibly successful with eggs taken from four sturgeon.

-The committee approved forwarding a resolution to the full county board that would seek funding from the state for legal costs associated with the mining protestors who camped on county land.

-Following the meeting, Peterson and committee members James Kichak and Thomas Thompson toured the new docks at Saxon Harbor. Peterson also laid out the remaining construction he hoped to complete in the harbor.