Evers vetoes $1M for Burlington dam, but local leaders say work will continue

A $1 million veto from Gov. Tony Evers for the city of Burlington to help keep its Echo Lake Dam has disappointed local leaders, but they say it won’t obstruct the work to modify and repair the nearly 200-year-old dam.

Burlington’s Common Council unanimously approved an $8.1 million plan to modify the dam and dredge Echo Lake in December after 60 percent of Burlington residents said they favored those plans through an advisory referendum. The project would have received an additional $1 million in the state budget after the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee accepted a budget motion from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

“The state has already committed $1 million in grant funding to the city, and now with this approved budget motion, I am happy to share that the City of Burlington will receive an additional $1 million for Echo Lake — totaling $2 million for repairs and restoration,” Vos said in a statement. “With these funds, we can make progress to preserve and protect a beloved part of our community.”

But Evers wrote that he opposed sending any more state funding for the project after it received $1 million from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Burlington Mayor Jeannie Hefty, who was unavailable for an interview, said she was disappointed by that decision.

“So when a community wants this, I am disappointed and they are also,” Hefty wrote in an email.

Hefty, as well as Peter Riggs, the Burlington director of public works, said the city will continue to search for other grants to assist with the work.

“The project will still proceed and we will continue to seek funding opportunities to help defer the local taxpayer burden for the work,” Riggs said.

Yvette Moeller, who helped start the Facebook group “Friends of Echo Lake and Dam,” has been a vocal supporter of keeping the dam. She was also disappointed by the news of the veto, but said those funds would have been an added perk, as they were proposed after the council already approved the modification plans.

“It ($1 million) was never part of the referendum, so had it had come through, it would have been a perk. It would have been great, it would have been wonderful, but that was not part of the project or ever even considered,” Moeller said. “That came after the fact.”

In 2013, the city performed a dam failure analysis which found the spillway wasn’t able to contain a 500-year flood as required by the DNR. The city is required to fix the problem. City officials could have also approved a plan to remove the dam.

Alder Shad Branen favored removal, saying he believes the dam doesn’t serve a function anymore. Even so, as an alder, he decided to follow the will of the voters and approve repairing the dam, which was constructed in 1835 to generate power for flour and saw mills.

“As a Burlington taxpayer, I certainly prefer additional state dollars to reduce our burden on a project of this magnitude,” Branen said about the veto.

“Its disappointing,” he added. “If the city could receive another million dollars towards the project, that would certainly go a long way to assist us, but it’s not going to happen.”

Construction on the project could begin sometime in 2024. To modify the dam — which has not served the city as a source of power since 1933 — the floodgate will be removed and three new gates will be installed. The concrete retaining wall downstream from the dam will also be reconstructed.