Grant continues county beach testing program

Making sure Lake Michigan is safe to swim in will again be the case this summer, thanks to a state grant to the local public health department.

The Washington Ozaukee Health Department has been granted $10,260 from the state Department of Natural Resources to monitor Lake Michigan and beaches twice a week from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The money will be used to pay for staff time, mileage, testing supplies and maintenance on vehicles.

The number of testing sites has increased over the years.

This year, testing locations include Concordia University Beach, Harrington Beach State Park Beach North, Harrington Beach State Park Beach South, Port Washington’s north beach and south beach, Jay Road, Lions Den Gorge Nature Preserve, Pebble Beach Road, Sandy Beach Road, Silver Road and Virmond County Park.

The department will post signs warning of polluted water and can close beaches to swimmers if bacteria levels are too high. Lake Michigan water quality has generally improved in recent years thanks to efforts to mitigate runoff leakage from private treatment systems and phosphorus discharges from local municipal water treatment systems.

Efforts to reduce farm field runoff, for instance, through the increased use of cover crops and no-till practices have paid significant dividends.

“Just on fields where cover crops and no-till were implemented through the Clean Farm Families initiative in 2024, that resulted in 1,116 pounds of phosphorus runoff reduction, that’s phosphorus that remained on farm fields and did not end up in surface water or the beaches along Lake Michigan,” Ozaukee County Land and Water Management Director Katie Vogeler  said Tuesday.

Vogeler’s office also oversees installation, scheduled maintenance and pumping of private treatment systems.

“Any time livestock manure or human septage leaves its intended system of function, it becomes an ordinance violation,” Vogeler said. “This role is key to all areas of the county, not just Lake Michigan. Surface water runoff is visible and oftentimes viewed as worse because this violation can be seen, groundwater contaminations are harder to determine without a slew of tests.  This is why septic maintenance and pumping procedures are regulated and important.”

Some old septic systems have been found to be hooked up to field drain tile and leak downstream into waterways. Sometimes manure is incorrectly applied to fields.

In 2020, 22% of the private septic systems in the Fredonia-Newburg watershed area had been installed before 1970 and were in danger of failing.

The county has since made a priority of helping update those systems.