2024 Coastal Management Funds to Benefit Willow Creek Preserve, Maintain Trout Fishery

The integrity needed to maintain an elite status of the Sheboygan River and its Willow Creek tributary will be better protected with the influx of money from Wisconsin’s Coastal Management Program.  The 2024 round of funds from the program were announced on Monday.  The $3.3 million award is directed toward local, state, and Tribal governments, regional planning commissions, universities, and nonprofit organizations.

Sheboygan’s Willow Creek Preserve, part of the Glacial Lakes Conservancy, will receive over 10 thousand dollars ($10,063), or 48% of the $20,876 needed to engineer and design plans for a regenerative stormwater conveyance system on Willow Creek’s southernmost outfall in the City of Sheboygan.  As a tributary, Willow Creek shares, with the Sheboygan River, a “Class-II” trout stream status, and is one of only two tributaries to the River accessed by Lake Michigan fisheries.  The stormwater conveyance system would limit stormwater runoff and their urban pollutants from entering the area of concern, helping to ensure the quality of the riparian environment for years to come.