Green Bay watersheds and their impacts on the Lower Green Bay and Fox River Area of Concern

Session: Great Lakes Tributaries: Connecting Land and Lakes (5)

Erin Houghton, NEW Water Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, [email protected]

Abstract

Locally, the Lower Fox River Basin and Lower Green Bay have a TMDL and are jointly identified by the IJC as an Area of Concern (AOC). This watershed has been heavily impacted from point source pollution and a switch to large scale dairy operations, the end result has consistently been poor water quality.  NEW Water, the brand of the Green Bay Metropolitan Sewerage District, is situated at the mouth of the Fox River and has monitored nutrients and sediment in its receiving waters for more than 30 years. NEW Water is completing an Adaptive Management pilot project, assessing its capacity to reduce phosphorus and sediment from rural landscapes to meet future WPDES permit reductions. By leveraging their long term monitoring program, NEW Water will be able to show reductions in nutrients and sediment in this AOC as a result of joint efforts in the watershed. Seasonal trends over the past five years indicate the Lower Fox River is close to meeting TMDL water quality standard of 0.1 mg/L total phosphorus while Lower Green Bay has met TMDL standard recently. These observations occurred as watershed collaborations increased and PCB dredging efforts in the Lower Fox River came to an end.

Twitter handle of presenter
@edubbs84