County targets Manawa for flood mitigation

MANAWA – Waupaca County emergency management officials plan to target Manawa for federal flood mitigation projects following an emergency response that saved the city’s wastewater treatment plant during record spring flooding.

During an Emergency Management Committee meeting last week, Emergency Management Director Zac Van Asten said it was a chaotic scene in Manawa on April 15, where a massive volunteer effort helped hold back rising floodwaters.

To protect the wastewater treatment plant, responders anchored a makeshift embankment wall into a nearby bridge and wrapped it completely around the facility, he said. The barrier required 18 truckloads of gravel. The Highway Department brought in portable  concrete barriers, and 15 to 20 more were donated on the spot by Joe Starr, owner of local business Crosscut Solutions.

Van Asten noted that between 100 and 150 well-meaning citizens were roaming the wastewater facility grounds to help sandbag. He said law enforcement was called in to secure the area and establish order.

“They were so willing to help, but they were everywhere,” Van Asten told the committee. “We needed a little bit of law and order there.”

One committee member described the scene as a “wild zoo.”

Van Asten said fire department personnel were on scene all night with pipe poles constantly pulling debris out of the dam. In addition to storm debris, Van Asten said a jet ski and multiple 500-pound propane tanks were floating down the river.

It was the second time Manawa had experienced flooding in two years. In July 2024, heavy rainfall caused the north embankment of the city’s 100-year-old dam to fail. That caused the 180-acre Manawa Millpond to drain and sent a mix of floodwaters and raw sewage from the nearby wastewater plant pouring into Lindsay Park.

During this year’s flooding, Lindsay Park again sustained damage, though not from raw sewage as the emergency response saved the wastewater plant.

Emergency Management Deputy Director Eric Halverson said the county is actively rewriting its Hazard Mitigation Plan to maintain eligibility for project funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Because Manawa has flooded twice in two years, the city qualifies as having “repetitive damage,” making it a candidate for long-term federal projects, he said.

Proposed solutions to protect the city’s infrastructure could include building permanent diking, diversion systems and reinforcement walls around the wastewater treatment plant. He noted other communities that experienced flooding have used temporary pop-up floodgates to protect areas when rivers rise.

Halverson clarified to the committee that FEMA hazard mitigation funds cannot be used to rebuild the Manawa dam. Because the dam previously operated as a hydroelectric facility, it falls under different federal regulations and requires entirely separate funding sources, he said.

The City of Manawa and Town of Little Wolf are pursuing separate state and federal funding assistance to help cover the reconstruction cost, estimated at about $8.4 million. The plan is to rebuild the dam without reinstating its hydroelectric component.