TOWN OF BOVINA, WI (WTAQ) – Repairs to a privately owned levee in Outagamie County could be the key to preventing a river from overflowing.
The levee along the Shioc River broke loose earlier this week and since the breach, paired with melting snow, the water has started to rise.
A gap, which stretches 40-feet across the embankment, was filled by an excavator on Friday.
The site is located near Mack Wildlife Area on Van Patten Drive.
“We’ve got a levee along the Shioc River, and with the melting snow, basically the Shioc came up,” says Greg Baneck, Outagamie County Land Conservation Director. “Not sure the exact cause of the breach, whether it was a rodent, or a tree roots or whatever.”
He says the situation turned bad pretty quickly.
“One of the landowners, who was watching it pretty closely,” explains Baneck. “Wednesday afternoon, it was fine, and when he came back to his property Thursday morning, obviously something had happened.”
Water broke a hole in the berm 40 feet long and seven feet wide after finding its way through.
“So we’ve been spending the last day and a half, trying to repair the levee,” he says.
The crew laid a foundation with around 35 giant one-ton bags filled with sand.
The flowing water comes from a 120-acre area upstream, according to Baneck, and layers of clay and dirt filled in the gaps.
The water has started to drain into an already swollen field about twice that size downstream.
“The water’s going to come down slowly, and there’s still a lot of snow to melt up north, so it’s just taking its time to get through,” he explains.
Repairs should be wrapped up by Monday, according to Baneck.
“It’s from a public safety standpoint. If this were to get away, it could cause some pretty significant damage downstream, so Emergency Management enacted the Highway Department, and we came in to work on it,” he says.
