OCCWA’s Rempala talks water issues at Lake Tomahawk town board meeting

Oneida County Clean Waters Action (OCCWA) is an advocacy group focused on “exploring the issues that affect our rivers, lakes and ground water” according to its website, www.occwa.org.

OCCWA member Eric Rempala elaborated on the group’s mission during a presentation to the Lake Tomahawk town board Sept. 12.

“We’re a local, Oneida County specific, water advocacy group,” Rempala told the board.

According to the website, the group was founded in 2013 “to provide an online forum for the citizens of Oneida County, Wisconsin, and neighboring Northwoods counties, who are interested in learning how to preserve our water-rich region of lakes, wetlands and rivers for future generations.”

Rempala noted that the OCCWA is active in “just about every water issue” in Oneida County. 

“Your town board is probably the most environmentally responsible board that I know,” he told the Lake Tomahawk crowd. “I love coming to this town and I appreciate all they do and you should, too. They are very good, excellent, water stewards.”

Rempala spent the next several minutes summarizing a few of the water issues OCCWA membership has addressed or is addressing, including invasive species and mining issues. 

In particular, he mentioned the 2018 mining issue in the town of Lynne, which went to referendum in November of that year and was ultimately defeated by voters. 

The year before, the state legislature lifted a ban on sulfide mining and in a referendum, Oneida County voters were asked if they supported mining a zinc sulfide ore deposit in the town of Lynne. 

In the spring of 2019, the Oneida County board, on an 11-8 vote, defeated a resolution that would, according to the OCCWA website, “protect Oneida County-owned forest lands from sulfide mining.”

“We are still very active in mining,” Rempala told the Lake Tomahawk board. “We have a mining resolution that we’ve had 10 towns in Oneida County, plus the city of Rhinelander, approve. Your town is one of them.”

He said the OCCWA has another resolution similar to the one already approved by the towns and the City of Rhinelander. 

“We have several problems with the county’s mining ordinance as it is written,” Rempala said. “What they did, basically, with the mining ordinance was ... mining was only permitted in manufacturing and industrial (areas.) That’s where mining was only approved for.”

He said Oneida County changed that to where mining can take place in areas zoned as “1A forestry and general use.”

“Now, most everybody, probably close to 80 percent of the people in Oneida County, has property zoned 1A forestry and general use,” Rempala said. “What that means is a mining company can show up, fill out a permit and start mining in those zoned areas.”

A town would have nothing to say about it at that point, he said.

“It’s already permitted,” Rempala said. “That’s what happened with Act 134 (passed in 2017) and that’s what your resolution, at the end of the day, called for the repeal of Act 134 and the reinstatement of previous rules.”

The goal, in a nutshell, would be to take the resolution to the county board, get it passed there and that would allow municipalities to once again have input on the mine permitting process. 

“Right now, there’s no process for the towns to be involved,” Rempala said.

PFAS issues 

Another major issues Rempala said the OCCWA is involved in is Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) contamination. 

“As all of you know, we’ve had a terrible PFAS detection in the Town of Stella,” he said. “I don’t think you will find anywhere more information, more links, DNR sites, whatever you want to know about where the PFAS issue is in Oneida County ... our website, I believe, is the most efficient as far as educating you in what’s going on and you need to know what’s going on with PFAS.”

Rempala said the PFAS contamination has been traced to “land spreading” of waste over time by “either paper mills or water treatment plants.”

“Town or city treatment plants,” he said. “In those processes, they wind up with something most people call sludge, some people call it fiber cake and that gets spread on a field. For years, it’s been spread on a field as fertilizer, right? And they provide it for free.”

While “stuff has been growing like crazy” over the course of the past 20 years, Rempala said, “somewhere, PFAS became part of the process in the (treatment) plants.”

“Stella has been famous for having this spreading going on for many, many years,” he said. “When we went to the town, the residents were like ‘It’s because of that spreading.’ Guess what? The residents are probably right. The DNR is still investigating it. It’ll be very difficult to prove but that’s the suspected source.”

Rempala also addressed the recently released results of testing of sludge from Ahlstrom Munksjö paper mill in Rhinelander, which was sued last month for PFAS contamination attributed to spreading in years past.

He mentioned the paper mill, owned by a Finnish company, has been using a different process over the course of the last few years. 

“We knew going in (before the latest testing) that they were running a cleaner operation,” Rempala said. “The test (results) just came back and we’ve got data on the tests and explanations from the DNR as to what it means. What it boils down to is Munksjö’s numbers are really good. They’re not zero but they’re way within the tentative limits.”

A few minutes later, as Rempala wrapped up his presentation by noting that technology-wise, “things have progressed.”

“Protecting the water up here, I think, in the long run, no matter what you do up here, how you live up here, we all have that sort of ‘Protect the water’ (way of thinking) and understand and appreciate that we live in a place where most people come to vacation,” he said. “When you live here, sometimes, you start to overlook that but every day, I’m grateful for what we have and try to protect it and keep it as pristine as possible.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].