Plan To Ship Water From Presque Isle On Hold After Zoning Ruling

A plan to ship water from the northern Wisconsin community of Presque Isle to a Michigan community is on hold following a local zoning ruling.

The plan is a collaboration between the owners of the Carlin Club on Carlin Lake in Presque Isle, where the well is located, and Trig’s supermarket chain, which would bottle the water for retail sale at a bottling plant in Marenisco, Michigan.

Last week, the Presque Isle Zoning Committee rejected it by a 3-2 vote, because the property is zoned residential.

“To the best of our knowledge, there has not been any water taken from the Carlin Club, and we think that if that were to happen, that would be a violation of our zoning ordinance,” said Dick Hemming, chair of the Presque Isle Zoning Committee.

Hemming said the Carlin Club can use the well water for its restaurant and lodge, because those commercial uses were grandfathered in when the residential zoning was passed. But he said shipping water from the site would be a new use.

The pumping plan has been opposed by the Carlin Lake Association, a group of homeowners that filed a lawsuit against the owner of the Carlin Club.

“These people think that it’s OK to come in and mine our water,” Ramona Kubica, vice president of the association, said. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. They would mine our water.”

The group hired hydrologist Robert Nauta of RJN Environmental Services, of Monona, to conduct a water quality study.

“The water report shows the level of the lake could drop. It also shows the quality of the water of the lake could be affected,” said Kubica. “It would decrease our property values. It would make it difficult to sell property on the lake.”

The plan calls for the water to be shipped by tanker truck to a bottling plant now under construction in Marenisco, Michigan, 10 miles across the state line in the Upper Peninsula.

Although Presque Isle rejected an earlier proposal for a bottling plant, the new facility has been embraced in Marenisco because of the jobs.

“This is a big deal for us,” said Dick Bouvette, Town of Marenisco supervisor. “We haven’t had an industry here of this magnitude since the late 1970s, so of course we’re excited about it.”

But if the bottling plant opens, it may need a different source of water than Presque Isle.

Calls to the Carlin Club and the attorney for Trig’s were not returned in time for this story.