Grant bolsters Tendick Park upgrade plans

The Ozaukee County Planning and Parks Department continues to collect grant money to improve Tendick Park in the Town of Saukville.

Most recently, the department received a $100,000 grant to upgrade a fish passage in the Milwaukee River at Tendick Nature County Park in the Town of Saukville, continuing work the county started in 2008 to improve habitat for aquatic life in Ozaukee County.

The grant from the Fund for Lake Michigan (FFLM) will help finance removal of culverts and debris and improve embankments and stream beds.

The latest grants follow other funds awarded to the county to restore prairies at the 125-acre park and eliminate invasive plant species.

In 2008, the department began developing the Ozaukee Fish Passage Program to “reconnect, restore and enhance existing high quality habitat in the Milwaukee River,” according to an article written by county Parks Director Andrew Struck and published last month for the Milwaukee Riverkeeper’s annual report card on the Milwaukee River.

So far, the program has helped develop a fishway at the Mequon-Thiensville dam and removed the Lime Kiln Park dam in Grafton and the Newburg dam.

“The department has replaced or remediated 300 small and large impediments to fish and aquatic life passage in streams” such as culverts, log jams, stonefill and invasive vegetation throughout Ozaukee County, affecting 150 miles of streams and providing access to thousands of acres to wetlands and floodplain habitat, Struck wrote.

Besides Tendick Park, program work is being done along Mole Creek in the Town of Saukville, Sandhill Creek in the Town of Fredonia, Ulao Creek in the Town of Grafton and the Little Menomonee River in Mequon.

Cheryl Nenn, with Milwaukee Riverkeepers, said the county’s fish-passage work and removal of dams “can really improve water quality by reducing sediment and improving the flow of the river.”

Struck said the success of the program is already evident.

“An underwater camera located in the Mequon-Thiensville fishway has recorded dozens of species of fish and other wildlife moving upstream of the dam, allowing upstream access for some species for the first time in over 100 years,” Struck wrote.

The county has received seven other grants from FFLM since 2012 for other projects in the Milwaukee River watershed and the Lake Michigan basin.

The grant will also help address flooding issues at Tendick Park.

Matching funds for the grant are being  provided by the Federal Emergency Management Administration in response to flooding last year and a pending $50,000 state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) River Protection Management grant.

In addition, the county received a grant of $3,122 from the DNR for its prairie-restoration work at Tendick Park. 

A 50% match for that grant is being provided by Ducks Unlimited, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, North American Wetlands Conservation Act and other private donations.