Posted: June 30, 2009

Muskego — Gas stations, truck terminals, maintenance garages and other facilities that are now kept at a distance from the city's wells would be allowed to locate right next to those wells under a proposal that will come before the Plan Commission on Tuesday.

The measure would somewhat loosen Muskego's strict protections of the 11city wells that provide drinking water to many residents. The city now has more restrictions than the state Department of Natural Resources, but the proposed change would prohibit only what the DNR does.

The existing ordinance, approved 10 years ago, has two protection zones that prohibit certain businesses and other facilities that might pose a hazard to the city's drinking water from being located near wells.

The primary zone is roughly 600 feet around each well. A secondary protection zone keeps certain businesses so far away that contaminants from them would take five years to get to a well. By that time, the contamination would be diluted and have less impact, said John Jansen, hydrologist who is assisting the city with the proposal.

The proposed ordinance would do away with the secondary protection zone.

That means four types of businesses now banned from being located within the secondary zone, such as gas stations, car repair shops and towing services, could actually be located beside wells. The businesses would, however, need a conditional-use permit from the city.

The primary protection zone would still be in place, but six types of uses currently not allowed in that zone would be allowed with a conditional-use permit. Those uses are bus or truck terminals, dry cleaning facilities, exterminating shops, printing shops, public and municipal maintenance garages and tire and battery services.

Resident questions need for change

Suzi Link, the only person to speak at a public hearing last week, asked why the city is considering changing the protections that the Common Council approved only 10 years ago.

"Why are we not meriting the same restrictions as when we wrote this ordinance?" Link asked.

Jeff Muenkel, Muskego community development director, said the ordinance is hard to enforce because geological modeling has to be done for every well to determine where the five-year and primary protection districts should be. The new ordinance sets the protection zone at 600 feet, roughly the size of current primary zones, Jansen said.

Because the current ordinance is so cumbersome, it has been applied inconsistently and the ordinance only applies to the city's six wells that were dug or taken over after 1992, he said. The five-year protection zone is particularly tough to deal with, he said.

The rules can be more lenient, Jansen said, because a large layer of clay protects most of Muskego's city wells from contamination. Soil borings done when the well sites were chosen show whether the clay layer is sufficient to protect the well from contamination, he said. A business could be allowed over a clay soil that would not be allowed over sandy soil, Jansen said.

Muenkel said the proposal to change the ordinance is not in response to a request to move a car facility near a well. Some believe the new site would be inside a wellhead protection district.

But Muenkel said the wellhead issue came up when the city was confronted with drawing wellhead protection districts for the two new city wells that will come online this year.

"We found many discrepancies" in the way the wellhead protection zoning ordinance was applied, he said.

THE NEXT STEP

WHAT: Plan Commission review of proposed changes to the city wellhead protection overlay zoning

WHEN: 6 p.m. Tuesday

WHERE: City Hall, W182 S8200 Racine Ave.