Glendale to vote on Estabrook dam removal
Glendale’s Common Council will step into an eight-year debate on the fate of the Estabrook Park dam on the Milwaukee River when the council votes Monday on a resolution in support of removing the 1930s-era dam.
Dam removal is recommended by city staff, Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy said in a memo to council members. Removing the dam will significantly reduce or eliminate the risk of upstream flooding, according to city staff.
Kennedy said he has advocated for repair of the crumbling dam since that is the current Milwaukee County Board policy. “My personal viewpoint on Estabrook is that I do not want to continue to allow it to be a divisive issue in our community,” Kennedy said in the memo. He added: “I don’t care one way or the other what the county does.”
If the vote of the sixmember council results in a tie, Kennedy would cast the tie-breaking vote.
Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, the Milwaukee Common Council, the Shorewood Village Board, the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District’s commission and county parks officials support removal of the dam at an estimated one-time cost of nearly $1.8 million.
County Board Chairman Theodore Lipscomb supports repairs and upgrades at an estimated cost of $4.1 million. Upgrades include automated dam gates and a fish passage.
In addition, operating and maintaining the restored dam will cost $207,000 a year, according to a revised estimate from the county Office of Emergency Management. Repairs, if made, are expected to last 20 years before major renovation is needed. Over 20 years, operating and maintenance costs would add an extra $4.1 million to the price of keeping the dam in place.
Those costs include hiring a dam keeper who also would be responsible for operating the Kletzsch Park dam on the Milwaukee River and the Mill Pond dam on Oak Creek in South Milwaukee.
Lipscomb and about 40 Glendale riverbank property owners want the dam repaired and gates closed to restore a shallow impoundment for recreational boating. Under normal river flows, the artificial pond extends upstream to Silver Spring Drive.
The pond has been drawn down since September 2008 when the state Department of Natural Resources ordered dam gates to be opened for a repair. The DNR followed up in July 2009 with an order to the county to repair or remove the dam.
Property owners along the artificial pond have threatened lawsuits to recover their costs of shoreline remediation and alleged damages from lower property values if the dam is removed.
The Abele administration notified Lipscomb and the County Board this year that the budget for the dam rehabilitation project is more than $600,000 short of the money needed to do the work. The budget analysis halted earlier plans to award a construction contract and begin work this summer.
Due to the funding shortfall, the parks department in July asked the County Board to reconsider its past support of repairs and approve demolition. The resolution has been referred to the board’s finance committee for action this month.
Lipscomb said he did not trust the administration’s report on project costs and asked the Comptroller’s Office to review the budget.
In a Sept. 1 report to Lipscomb, Comptroller Scott Manske confirmed the available balance is about $613,000 short of costs. But Manske also determined there was additional state grant funding of $726,000 available to the county for the project that could offset the added costs.
The comptroller’s analysis shows that the administration’s earlier report was missing information on all available funding, Lipscomb said. He criticized the report of a budget shortfall as “an erroneous claim.”