his map shows the Green Lake Sanitary District’s boundary. The magenta-colored areas represent unsewered areas of the district. 

Green Lake Sanitary District Administrator Lisa Reas speaks to the Green Lake Common Council.

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his map shows the Green Lake Sanitary District’s boundary. The magenta-colored areas represent unsewered areas of the district. 

The city of Green Lake and the Green Lake Sanitary District are in the early stages of exploring a potential partnership that would bring wastewater services to unsewered areas outside city limits.

That’s after the Green Lake Common Council Monday unanimously approved conceptually moving forward with accepting septage from the Green Lake Sanitary District at the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The partnership may make the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant more efficient, provide revenue to the city, keep the city’s wastewater rates low and lower the city’s phosphorus discharge into the Puchyan River, according to Sanitary District Administrator Lisa Reas and Green Lake Public Works Director Jason Carley.

Over the coming months, the Sanitary District will do research to determine the feasibility of sending raw wastewater from the unsewered area around Sunnyside Road and potentially Forest Avenue to the city’s treatment plant.

“This is very early in the discussion,” Reas said. “We did not want to go down this road without making the council aware and getting some feedback.”

Reas attended the meeting to provide the council with background information about the Sanitary District and the proposed partnership with the city.

She noted the Sanitary District’s boundaries encompass everything around Big Green Lake, with the exception of what’s in city limits.

In addition, Reas said the Sanitary District provides sewer services to about 60% of the properties inside its district boundary for wastewater.

Because it covers more than 60% of the lake shore, the Sanitary District is able to assume the powers of an inland lake district.

That enables it to perform tax-funded watershed work such as offer a waste management contract within the district boundaries, operate a fish-rearing facility, maintain 15 conservancy properties, participate in a weed harvesting program and perform aquatic invasive-species spraying in Beyer’s Cove.

The Sanitary District recently applied for — and was awarded — a $600,000 grant from the DNR, which will be formally approved in the fall, for targeted runoff management, Reas noted.

“We just raised our tax levy to hire a new watershed coordinator who’s going out and working with farmers to help bring projects into the land conservation department,” she said.

While the city of Green Lake discharges its treated wastewater into the Puchyan River, the Sanitary District discharges into the Fox River, about five and a half miles south of Princeton, Reas noted.

Because the Sanitary District is working to reduce the amount of phosphorus it discharges, it’s looking at options.

The Sanitary District hopes to use its treated wastewater as irrigation water on adjacent farm fields to reduce phosphorus discharge.

It will participate in a pilot program next year on a neighboring farm.

“We’re very excited about this [and] the DNR is in favor of it, but if anybody’s ever tried to get a farmer to sign a 20-year agreement, you can imagine what our sticking point is on the project,” Reas said.

As part of its long-term planning, the Sanitary District plans to provide sewer to the unsewered areas.

The main unsewered areas are around Sugar Loaf Road, near Sunnyside Road and between the city and the Green Lake Conference Center, Reas noted.

“We’re looking at what it would take to sewer, for example, Sunnyside,” she said. “Our infrastructure exists all the way down to Spring Grove Road, so we would potentially run that wastewater all the way around the lake.”

Green Lake Sanitary District Administrator Lisa Reas speaks to the Green Lake Common Council.

Because of the proximity of the Sunnyside Road area to the city’s wastewater treatment facility, the Sanitary District and the city have had preliminary discussions about entering a partnership to send raw wastewater to Green Lake’s Wastewater Treatment Plant.

“The city would be able to bill the Sanitary District,” Reas said. “It would be a source of revenue for the city.”

City Clerk Barb Dugenske noted revenue from the partnership would go to the city’s sewer fund and could help keep wastewater rates low.

Beyond giving the city another revenue stream, the proposed partnership also would help the Wastewater Treatment Plant.

That’s because the Sanitary District’s wastewater has higher levels of biological oxygen demand (BOD), which the city’s wastewater plant is lacking, Reas noted.

She said the Sanitary District and city use the same DNR wastewater specialist, who told her the partnership would be a potential benefit to the city and would make the treatment process more efficient.

Carley noted the partnership would “work great for the city,” especially because Green Lake is such a seasonal city.

In the winter, he said the Wastewater Treatment Plant is “underserved” as it already is “way oversized” for Green Lake’s population.

In the peak tourism season, the city’s Wastewater Treatment Plant operates at about 45% capacity, but hovers around 30% most of the time, the public works director added.

“Our plant is basically starving in the wintertime,” Carley said. “This would give another source of basically food, BODs, for our plant.”

Reas added that it also would lower the phosphorus levels of Green Lake’s treated wastewater discharge into the Puchyan River.

“There’s actually an environmental benefit from this kind of relationship,” she said.

In addition, the Sanitary District hopes the partnership will help lower costs for residents receiving service.

Reas and Carley added that additional research and engineering must be completed to learn more about the feasibility of the project.

“We’re funding all the engineering,” Reas said. “What I would anticipate is, once our engineers have their recommendations on how we would connect this, they would provide the information we get to you guys. And then you would have your engineering firm just double check.”

In other news from the Green Lake’s Committee of the Whole and Common Council meetings:

Joe Schulz served as the reporter of the Green Laker in 2019 and 2020, before being hired as a reporter for the Commonwealth in October 2020. He is from Oshkosh and graduated from UW-Oshkosh in December 2020 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

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