With rivers and lakes in Central Wisconsin drying up during the waning days of the season, Wisconsin legislators are meeting to consider new groundwater and high-capacity well regulations that could prevent such problems in the future.

A groundwater working group convened by state legislators met for the first time last week and discussed issues that will be tackled this fall. The issues, according to state Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, who helped organize the group, include everything from ineffective regulation of high-capacity wells - those that pump more than 100,000 gallons of water a day - to a lack of regional groundwater management and too little emphasis on conservation.

Black, who chairs the Assembly's Natural Resources Committee, said he hopes to see legislation ready for consideration late this year or early in 2010.

The group's first meeting was held as residents and water experts alike lament the loss in recent weeks of trout streams and lakes in Central Wisconsin, where a continuing drought has combined with higher levels of pumping by farms and municipalities to dry up the Little Plover River in Portage County and Long Lake in Waushara County. Other waters affected in the area include the Tomorrow River, Wolf Lake, Pickerel Lake, Huron Lake and Plainfield Lake.

More than one-half mile of the Little Plover River, designated by the state as an "exceptional resource water" and a reproducing trout stream, was reduced to a dry and cracked stream bed on Sept. 15. Hundreds of trout died, according to Barb Feltz, a member of the Friends of the Little Plover River.

Feltz said that, historically, there is no record of the Little Plover going dry before the 1990s. But it nearly went dry in 2003 and has dried up every year since 2005.

Long Lake, surrounded by cottages near Plainfield, has turned into a prairie, according to Brian Wolf, who owns a home on the lake and is closely monitoring state efforts to beef up groundwater laws.

"Long Lake is dry," Wolf said. "Near my shoreline now, I have poplar trees coming in . . . This used to be a trophy bass lake. Now they're gone. Fundamentally, that's just not right."

George Kraft, who heads the Central Wisconsin Groundwater Center at UW-Stevens Point, said the issues raised by the Little Plover are among the most important problems likely to be addressed by the working group.

Current groundwater law, passed by the Legislature in 2003, regulates only those high-capacity wells that are within 1,200 feet of any exceptional resource water, such as a quality trout stream. But in the case of the Little Plover, Kraft said, none of the agricultural or municipal wells that are affecting the stream are within that 1,200-foot distance.

In fact, in its recent report to the Legislature, the Wisconsin Groundwater Coordinating Council reported that a "very high percentage of lakes, streams, small springs and wetlands are afforded little to no protection" by the 2003 law.

"We have a lot of work left to do here on groundwater," said Kraft.

Fixing the problems, according to Black, may require that different parts of the state have different rules. He pointed out that Central Wisconsin, with its sandy soils, is suffering from drought while southern Wisconsin is coping with high water levels in some places.

"One thing that is clearly emerging is that one size does not fit all," Black said.

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