Lily Lake Summerhaven Association  Lilly Lake, Wisconsin

Rev. 04-Jul-08

Welcome Message from the President

Welcome! We hope this Web site helps you keep up with activities at our lakeside community. If you have questions or comments, please email them to me (rvollmer5@wi.rr.com) or call 262-537-2545. Also, if you are an Association member and have not yet given us your email address, please contact me.
The Association is most grateful to NCast Corporation for the donation of server space and technical support for this Web site.

Note: The web site is maintained with software that inserts some codes unreadable by very old browsers (e.g., Netscape 4.x). Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher or one of the more recent versions of Netscape.

Ron Vollmer, President, Lily Lake Summerhaven Association

Special announcements:
____________________

Emergency Wheatland Town Board Meeting, June 18: Lilly Lake remains open
The Town Board listened to the residents who attended the meeting and reviewed the received emails, which were split almost evenly for and against SNW. No matter which way they voted, the Town Board members knew they were going to be criticized strongly.

Public safety is the primary criterion in making this decision. Since there are no known submerged piers (only 2 piers are currently at water level) and no other known impediments to safety, the Town Board voted to leave Lilly Lake alone. In other words, it will not enact a SNW resolution for the lake.
____________________

• July 1 repeat water test: 9 cfu / 100 mls. No beach advisory needed after all.
  June 30 water test: 326 cfu / 100 mls. This level requires a beach advisory. Another test will be done in the next day or two.
  June 23 water test: 2 cfu / 100 mls.
  June 17 water test: 7 cfu / 100 mls.
  June 10 water test: 17 cfu / 100 mls. The beach advisory has been lifted.
  June 3 water test showed a reading of 237 cfu / 100 mls. Anything over 235 requires an advisory; readings over 1000 require a beach closing.
  
• Lieutenant Paul Falduto of the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department is the new Wheatland Water Patrol Officer starting the weekend of June 28-29.
  
• See the agenda for the next Town Board meeting.
• Oversized piers can get exemptions per the June 24, 2008 Kenosha News.
• Wheatland was given a grant to study lake weeds per the June 27, 2008 Kenosha News.
  
• If you think you have gypsy moths, see http://gypsymoth.wi.gov/.
  
• The www.wheatlandtornado.info web site is serving as "information central" for the ongoing efforts to recover from the storm.
• To non-US readers of this web site: Every month, the web log shows evidence that people far away have accessed this web site. I'm really curious to know how you found us and why you would visit (our information is of purely local interest). Please email Marilyn if you wish to share any information about why you came to this site. Thank you.
• See Other local events for information on events in our area.
If your church or civic group is having a festival, rummage sale, or other public event, please tell Marilyn so that she can put it on the calendar.

Board Members

President	Ron Vollmer 537-2545 rvollmer5@wi.rr.com 7512 336th Ave Burlington, WI 53105 Note: Ron is the central collection point for Association dues before they go to the Treasurer for deposit.
First Vice President	Marilyn Magnuski 537-4750 mjmagnuski@netwurx.net 7723 334th Avenue
Second Vice President	Jennifer Reed 262-492-1624 Jennifer.Reed@learningpt.org 33239 76th St
Secretary	Pat Scannell 537-4408 33260 80th St
Treasurer	Jillian Verstrate (unlisted) 7634 Lily Lake Rd Mailing address: P.O. Box 763 New Munster, WI 53152

Block Captains

If you cannot reach your block captain and you want to discuss something urgent, please call one of the Board members.

Highlights of the March 29, 2008 Meeting

The following highlights present the main topics and issues covered during the meeting. The highlights summarize the main ideas and are not meant to be a complete verbatim transcript of the whole meeting.

Emergency Preparedness Slide Show
Linda Botts, Coordinator of the Southeast Wisconsin Citizen Corps, and Laurl Borst of the Red Cross presented a slide show and talk about emergency preparedness. [Note: A summary of their presentation will be put on a new web site page covering emergency preparedness.]

Block Captain Reports
Gypsy moth egg cases are plentiful in Block 1. Mike Adam will send a picture of them to be posted on the web site so that homeowners in the area can identify them and crush them.

Nancy Snider has trouble with a family whose noise (dogs, dirt bikes), profanity, and in-your-face attitudes disturb the neighbors. She has successfully defused a bad situation, but Constable Haas probably needs to get involved.

Weed Control
Bio-Aquatic Services in Lake Geneva will use granules this year from the beach to the boat ramp. The granules have to be dropped early (the plan is for May) in order to catch the milfoil plants as they emerge and begin to grow actively. (Once they reach the surface, it's too late.) If you want your lakefront treated, please contact them as soon as possible. They have to get DNR approval and the right conditions before they can act. April would normally be an appropriate time, but this year we still have lake ice. There may be up to 4 applications of the herbicide this year.

One DNR rep who was here last year reportedly said that we've been wasting our money on weed control for the past 15 years because we're getting at it too late.

One thing that needs to be monitored is trailers and boats coming from other lakes. We get a lot of lake traffic from various places because we're a free launch. Boats from other places may have bits of weed on them. All it takes is a small piece of weed to reestablish weeds that we've worked hard to get rid of.

Lake Study
The Town Board is working with the DNR to do an $8000 lake study of the plant population. Samples will be taken from various parts of the lake. Weeds are a vital part of the lake. You can't kill all of them. We're in the top 10 for lake clarity. We have some rare plant species growing. A dredging will never happen again.

Geese
The geese are in the New Munster wildlife area just waiting for the lake to open up. If you see them congregating somewhere, please notify Ron Vollmer. Last year they hung out from the beach through Nor du Lac and over to the Lily Lake Resort. We had our beach tested. Does Nor du Lac test its beach water?

Comments from the Floor about Reassessments and Taxes
A heated exchange took place between some members and Town Board Chairman Jeff Butler (who attended the meeting) about tax bills and the January tree cutting. Comments from the floor included the following:

Real estate values are dropping by every measure, yet our taxes leaped based on the sale of one house. A resident who raised the issue at a Town Board meeting felt dismissed. Lakefront property owners are really getting taken to the cleaners. It takes 5% of Wheatland residents signing a petition to get the Town to do a reassessment. The Town Board could have rejected the assessments. (Per Jeff, no it couldn't. There are legal issues involved.)

All the social events that this organization sponsors are very nice, and we should continue them, but at the same time we need to become more political. For older residents who don't have children and don't decorate their houses, it is hard sometimes to see the value of the Association.

Motion from the Floor: Establish a Town Board Association Representative
The Association should establish a new position whose responsibility is to attend Town Board meetings, get the minutes, transmit our views, and keep the Town Board accountable.

Do we need a new position? Why can't we just start doing that right now? Ray Giesler and Jerry Dressler will work out some arrangement to attend Town Board meetings. Ron Vollmer will get the meeting minutes from Sheila Siegler for posting on our web site.

At the fall meeting, we'll revisit this issue and see if we have to do anything more formal with an Association Representative position.

Suggestion from the Floor: Hold 3 or 4 Association Meetings a Year
Meeting twice a year is too infrequent to make any progress on the political front. We should meet 3 or 4 times a year, and the spring meeting should be in April when more people come up to their property.

STOP Sign at 336th and 80th?
Is there any progress on a STOP sign at 336th and 80th? People are still roaring around that corner.

The neighbors have to sign a petition before the Town Board will act. Dean Fryda will lead the effort to get a petition going.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

DAN HIRCHERT (USDA WILDLIFE SERVICES): GUIDELINES FOR CANADA GOOSE DAMAGE MANAGEMENT IN WISCONSIN
Dan Hirchert from USDA Wildlife Services presented a slide show about management of goose problems. The USDA gets involved with geese because they, like deer, can damage crops.

Two populations of geese: migrants and residents (Giants)
Migrants pass through our area only for short time when they migrate from Hudson Bay to southern Illinois and back again. They do not breed here.

Residents (Giants) migrate very little (only when everything here freezes). They are very productive, averaging 5 eggs per nest. They live 20 years, are adaptable, don't have many native predators, and weigh up to 15 lbs.

Damage: crops, airplanes, park areas, landscapes, water bodies, attacks on people
Resident geese can produce major crop damage, and they threaten safety near airports. E.g., in 1995, an AWACS plane flew into a flock of geese; the resulting crash killed all 24 military personnel on board.

In urban areas, they can cause property damage, decimate vegetation, contaminate water bodies, and increase erosion. They can make such a mess that people stop using parks. They are also aggressive and will charge children who are holding food or adults who surprise them while they are nesting. During their molting period (late June) when they are unable to fly, they can cause traffic accidents because they walk everywhere, including in roadways. They may create predator-proof nests in high places such as roofs. If they succeed in raising a brood somewhere, they return to the same place, and their young learn to return to the same place.

Abatement: scare away and reduce populations, educate the public
You can manage goose concentrations with various techniques: propane cannons, pyrotechnics, flagging, fencing, and increased hunting. Most of these techniques are not usable in urban areas.

Hunting laws allow high bag limits (usually 5/day) before the migrants arrive. Hunting has helped manage the exploding resident goose population. Sixty to seventy years ago, it was thought that resident geese were extinct. In 1970, the DNR estimated there were 1600 resident geese in the state. Now there are probably 155,000. The breeding population is increasing.

Education is important. People should not feed the geese. Local ordinances can help enforce that idea. If you notice birds starting to congregate, try to disperse them because they act as decoys and attract more birds.

Non-lethal abatement methods include scare devices (like blow-up figures that inflate on a timer), trained dogs, pyrotechnics, repellents, and habitat alteration. If you discourage them in one place, they will go to another nearby area.

They like a smooth transition from water to grass. So anything you can do to break up that transition, like putting a band of rocks along the shoreline, can help discourage them. Fences (plain and electric), string grids, and big plants next to the shore are other methods. For small ponds, stringing fishing line at 20-ft intervals interferes with their ability to land in the water.

Because they are so adaptable, you may have to change your disruption techniques from time to time.

Predators: skunks, raccoons, foxes, coyotes
Skunks, raccoons, foxes, and coyotes normally don't take on an adult goose, but they disrupt nests and will kill juvenile birds for food. One area that had resident foxes stopped having any trouble with geese because the foxes took out all the young birds.

Protected by treaty
Geese are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. You need a federal permit to take eggs or birds.

Population management: reduce breeding, increase mortality
It is our local decision what we'd like to do about the geese. Then we apply for the permit.

Spraying 100% corn oil on the eggs suffocates the baby geese. However, you need a permit to do this, and you need to check for new eggs that the adults might produce. By adding dye to the spray and rechecking the nest, you can see any new unsprayed eggs. If you break the eggs during the adults' fertile period, they'll just produce replacement eggs. They sit on the nests for 28 days. They're fertile for roughly 25 days of that time.

Addling (shaking) the eggs is another option, but you have to shake for a long time, and you need a permit.

Nests are hard to find. Geese love islands (for their protection) and floating bogs. They can nest under bushes and trees. And you may be attacked as you approach the nest.

2-year process to remove geese: test for contaminants, then take birds away
Removing geese takes 2 years. The first year, the USDA collects 7 birds and tests them for PCBs, mercury, lead, and pesticides. The 25 contaminant tests take a long time. The collection takes place near the end of June when the geese are molting and can't fly.

If the birds test clean (so far, only one community has tested high for PCBs), the following year the USDA harvests the agreed-upon number of birds. It is wise to leave a few birds for goose lovers to enjoy so that the community does not become divided between goose lovers and goose haters.

The birds are handled, caged, and euthanized humanely. They are sent to a licensed poultry processor, who turns the meat into gooseburger for food pantries. Smaller birds are donated to animal sanctuaries for food. So far, 1600 geese have been pantried or given to Native Americans for food, and 1800 geese have been used for animal feed.

Effectiveness: manage the big adults to allow other options to work
If you reduce the number of big adults, other less drastic options may suffice to manage the geese in subsequent years. One community hasn't contacted the USDA in 5 years after their first removal. When you have a smaller population of geese, you attract fewer migrants because there are fewer decoys.

Summary of actions
1. Reduce food and habitat.
2. Time your actions: act when the geese are nesting and flightless. That's a roughly 3-week period in June.
3. Solicit neighborhood involvement.
4. Work with law enforcement.
5. Reduce geese to tolerable levels, but don't eliminate all geese.
6. Be proactive. Don't wait until the situation is out of control. If you have a few geese now, you'll have more later.

Costs: $2000 and $2000
Dan has found a lower-cost lab. So tests for contaminants now run $2000 instead of $4000. Next year, it will cost roughly $2000 to remove some birds. There is some grant money that may help defray the cost.

Disturb the nests right now
The geese are already nesting and probably sitting on eggs. This is the time to disturb the nests.

Dan Hirchert can be reached at 1-800-433-0663. He will collect the 7 geese to test for contaminants and apply for a grant. He'll also let Ron Vollmer know when he comes so that Ardie can take pictures for the web site.

Copyright © 2007 Lily Lake Summerhaven Association. All rights reserved.
Lilly Lake (Wisconsin)
Web master: Marilyn Magnuski, 262-537-4750, mjmagnuski@netwurx.net