NEPCO Lake

This article is reprinted here from Artifacts Vol II #39, November 2013, pp. 22-26, with the permission of the South Wood County Historical Museum.

A lot of attention is being given this summer to that 400-plus acre pond of water just south of Wisconsin Rapids, named NEPCO Lake for the initials of Nekoosa Edwards Paper Company.

It started with, “The river is too dirty.”

That’s what lake builder and Nekoosa Edwards Paper Co. manager John Alexander told his father, president of the company, and the directors. You can’t get a white shirt clean using dirty water. Likewise, you can’t make a clean, white sheet of fine paper using dirty river water.

The mill was embarking on a program of producing higher grades of paper.

Whereas most man-made reservoirs are built with the intent of generating hydroelectric power, John had to sell his father and the board on the idea that they should spend $350,000 to build a lake to supply clean process water.

The board agreed with the recommendation and, in 1925, the project was underway. Land had to be acquired and cleared, dikes built, a highway bridge built, and a pipeline laid to the Port Edwards mill.

Three men were assigned to the project. Clarence Watson was the surveyor and civil engineer, while Frank Coldwell was the person in charge of building the pumping station and pipeline. Ed Gleason was the overall project supervisor, reporting to Alexander.

The engineers on the project already had in mind the source of their water supply. Two streams, the Four Mile/Buena Vista and Bloody Run creeks merged just east of the Highway 13 bridge and meandered through a natural valley before emptying into the river about a mile and a quarter downstream. By damming the creek at its mouth, a lake could be impounded that would provide up to forty million gallons of water a day, an amount that would satisfy the city of St. Paul, Minn., at that time.

To accomplish this, work went on day and, by floodlight, night, with the aid of a steam shovel, horse-drawn wagons and a large crew of men. Several Native Americans, out of work after the cranberry harvest, set up a camp on a promontory overlooking the river and a kitchen/dining room was built near the dam site. A large barn was built just west of the lake. The project even warranted its own blacksmith.

Work began September 1925 in order to complete the dikes and dam so that the spring runoff from the Buena Vista marsh area in Portage County could be retained in the new lake.

A 200-foot dike at the west end of the lake, with a two-gate dam, and a pumping station, was built at the dam site. It housed pumps, water screens and an electric generator. Excess water would be put through a hydro electric unit to produce electricity which would be used for powering the pumps.

The next phase of the project was to build several acres of settling basins and an adjacent chemical treatment building on one of the basin dikes. Water would enter the settling basins through the intake building where alum would be added. The alum produced a gelatinous floc that would settle out in the basins, entrapping suspended dirt and taking it to the bottom. Clear water was skimmed off the surface. A small narrow-gauge railroad was installed on the dike to haul the sacks of alum from the highway to the intake building.

The last major part of the project was to build a 30-inch, cast iron pipeline from the pumping station to the Port Edwards mill, a distance of 3,750 feet.

The pipeline presented two challenges. First, the pipe had to get across the river. This was accomplished during the winter months in three steps. In each case, a portion of the river was isolated by the use of temporary coffer dams. Next, the pipe was laid in an excavation in the river bed, and then covered over with dirt. Then the coffer dam was removed and the entire procedure repeated on the next third of the river.

Another complication arose when the pipeline came ashore on an island just east of the mill. A large marsh and swamp had to be crossed by driving pilings the diameter of a telephone pole down to bedrock, suspending the pipe on the pilings and covering with dirt.

Although there was not yet a lake, in February 1926, the first water was sent through the pipeline to Port Edwards from two large-capacity pumps mounted on a barge and moored at the mouth of the creek.

In order to make the lake more than an industrial water supply, Nekoosa-Edwards took steps to make the lake people friendly. Fishing was promoted by working with the Wisconsin Conservation Dept. to build a trout hatchery below the west end dike. An employee’s recreation area with a public beach was developed near the Highway 13 bridge. Finally, to maintain the pristine quality of the water, algae and weed control was performed two to three times a summer, using sodium arsenate, carbon disulfide and copper sulfate, some pretty harsh chemicals!

In 1929, four years after the lake was built, the Wisconsin Railroad Commission, which had jurisdiction over dams, brought charges against Nekoosa Edwards Paper Co., alleging that the creek had been dammed without first obtaining a state permit.

NEPCO contended that they owned the property under the water as well as the shoreline; the dam was at the mouth of the creek, and all the flow would be returned to the river after use.

The commission agreed to grant a permit after the fact but with a clause that, after thirty years, the lake would revert to the State of Wisconsin. NEPCO objected, claiming that their financial loss would be $700,000 if the dam were removed, based on the purchase of land, clearing land, building dikes and dam and pipeline as well as the harm to shoreline property development that had taken place.

The case was ruled in favor of the Railroad Commission in the State Court but NEPCO appealed and it went to the United States Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the dam could remain but that, since it was a navigable stream, the dam owners would have to provide transportation around their dam for any logs or water craft coming down stream. It seems Barker’s sawmill, destroyed in an 1872 tornado, had floated logs to their mill at the mouth of the creek.