Washington County committee to draft resolution after Druid Lake floodplain remap upends building rules

Washington County Land Use and Planning Committee members said they will press state regulators after new floodplain maps for Druid Lake, Wis., impose stricter building limits that residents and county staff say could make lakefront properties difficult or impossible to repair or sell.

Brett Schur, Washington County’s land use manager, told the committee that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources used LiDAR-based data for updated FIRM maps and that, after the DNR finalizes the maps, the county will have six months to adopt the new maps into the county floodplain ordinance.

The new maps place many Druid Lake lots into a DNR-defined “flood storage” layer that, unlike the current FEMA-based flood fringe designation, prohibits adding fill without removing an equal amount elsewhere on the property. That requirement, combined with DNR rules that generally require houses to be raised about 2 feet and a 15-foot ring of fill around structures, is difficult to meet on lots that Schur said are often about 50 to 60 feet wide.

“If you do add fill, you have to remove the same amount of fill somewhere else on the property,” Schur said. “It’s kind of contradictory if you’re acquiring 15 feet of fill around a new home, but you have to remove another yards and yards off your property.”

Why it matters: Committee members and staff…