Greetings from the Wisconsin Coastal Resilience Team!

This month's newsletter contains:

• Collaboration Classifieds
• Annual Survey of Local Governments’ Needs in the Great Lakes
• Share Your Policy and Planning Projects
• Lake Michigan Water Level Update
• Resource of the Month: Wisconsin Great Lakes Marina Resilience Assessment
• Around the Great Lakes: Mount Pleasant Zoning Ordinance Update
• Profiles: Wisconsin Emergency Management
• Training: Funding & Financing Coastal Resilience - Stormwater Credit Trading

Annual Survey of Local Gov't Needs in the Great Lakes

Survey Purpose: The Great Lakes & St. Lawrence Cities Initiative and its partners are assessing needs facing U.S. and Canadian local and tribal governments in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River region. We hope to learn more about priorities, investments, and needs related to coastal management, climate resilience, water quality, and other pressing environmental concerns. The survey results will guide efforts to help communities safeguard resources and access support.

Who Should Complete the Survey: The survey is intended for elected officials and/or staff in local units of government with jurisdiction and/or access rights along the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River in the United States and Canada. This includes cities, villages, counties, townships, regions, upper-tier municipalities, regional planning agencies, First Nations, Sovereign Nations, port authorities, park districts or other relevant entities. We encourage jurisdictions to work together to submit just one response to the survey on behalf of their jurisdiction, coordinating as necessary among government units to locate the requested information. 

Time Commitment: The survey will likely take at least 30 minutes to complete. You do not need to complete it in one sitting.

Response Deadline: Please complete the survey by Thursday, December 22, 2022.

If you have questions, please contact Bridget Brown, Chief Operations and Programs Officer at the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative: bridget.brown@glslcities.org 

Background: CALM is supporting community-to-community learning by developing case studies of policy-change and planning projects in Wisconsin's Lake Michigan region.

Request: CALM is looking for communities interested in sharing policy-change and/or planning projects with the rest of the network. Information about the projects will be compiled into a case study and shared on the Wisconsin Coastal Resilience website as a resource for the network.

If you interested in sharing a policy-change or planning project with the CALM network, please reach out to Lydia Salus at lydia.salus@wisconsin.gov. 

Lake Michigan water levels continued their seasonal decline, decreasing 5 inches from November to December. Though Lake Michigan is now about 31 inches below the highest monthly water level recorded for December 1986, the Lake is still about 4 inches above the long-term average water level for the month. Water levels are expected to continue to decline throughout the next month.

Wisconsin Great Lakes Marina Resilience Assessment

The Wisconsin Great Lakes Marina Resilience Assessment is a resource for coastal marinas to help identify risks, vulnerabilities and information gaps, and provide a blueprint to coastal communities and marinas on how to identify, prioritize, plan and initiate enhancements to ensure marina resiliency to coastal hazards. This resource is incorporated into the Wisconsin Clean Marina Program and Guidebook.

Using the results of the Marina Resiliency Checklist, marina staff will identify priority actions for implementation as next steps.

Mount Pleasant wants to use zoning and land use policies to provide a better guide for future growth and change in the Village.

In 2018, the Village hired a consultant to review the existing zoning code and provide recommendations.



This project was an opportunity to include bluff setback and shoreland protection ordinances in the Village code to help protect infrastructure investments and public and private property.

Wisconsin Emergency Management

Wisconsin Emergency Management (WEM) supports coastal resilience through the emergency management process. The process involves four phases: mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. WEM is organized into two Bureaus: 1) Response and Recovery; 2) Planning and Preparedness. These two sectors are responsible for carrying out the process of emergency management.

Additionally, grant assistance is available for pre-disaster hazard mitigation projects and post-disaster recovery and mitigation projects. Many of these grants are funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

NOAA's Office for Coastal Management is hosting a virtual, informational series on funding and financing options for coastal resilience projects.

In January, experts from the field will share information on stormwater credit trading as a financing strategy for coastal resilience projects. Communities involved in stormwater credit trading will share their work and lessons learned for others interested in this technique. To help guide the discussion, participants will be encouraged to ask questions and talk about their funding and financing challenges and information needs around stormwater credit trading.

For questions, please contact Lauren.Long@noaa.gov.

Date & Time: January 11, 2023 @ 2:30 - 4:00 (Eastern)

For more information, visit the Wisconsin Coastal Resilience website.

University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute | (608) 262-0905 | 1975 Willow Drive, 2nd Floor, Madison, WI 53706