page_title: Door County, Wisconsin
section_title: Wells, soils, and surface waters
hierarchical_section_title: Door County, Wisconsin / Geography / Pollution / Wells, soils, and surface waters
caption_attribution_description: advertisement for Cream City Dry Arsenate of Lead
context_page_description: Door County is the easternmost county in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2010 census, the population was 27,785. Its county seat is Sturgeon Bay.
  The county was created in 1851 and organized in 1861. It is named after the strait between the Door Peninsula and Washington Island. The dangerous passage, known as Death's Door, contains shipwrecks and was known to Native Americans and early French explorers.
  Door County is a popular Upper Midwest vacation destination.
context_section_description: The combination of shallow soils and fractured bedrock makes well water contamination more likely. At any given time, at least one-third of private wells may contain bacteria, and in situations with quickly flowing underground water, wells may test clean one day but contaminated the next. Some household wells turn brown every spring from nearby manure applications. In September 2014, 16 people feel ill from drinking wellwater after rainwater washed manure went down a sinkhole in Jacksonport.
  The porous and fractured dolomite bedrock was implicated as a factor in a June 2007 epidemic when 239 patrons and 18 employees of the newly opened Log Den restaurant were sickened by a norovirus. Six were hospitalized. The virus was found to have traveled from a septic field 188 m (617 ft) away to the restaurant's well, contaminating their water. From September to December 2007 a study was conducted in which dyes were placed into the septic system. The dyes traveled through the groundwater at about 2 miles per year, and researchers concluded that viral contaminants could travel "many miles in their life times." For transient non-community public wells such as the one supplying the restaurant, state only regulated for contaminants within a 200 foot radius unless  flow studies had previously been done. Modeling research supporting this decision predicted that pathogens would be unlikely to travel more than 155 feet per year.
  After the Milwaukee Journal published an Insight article about septic system problems in the county in 1971, 28% of tourists surveyed in person and 57% of tourists surveyed by telephone reported having read the article. 13% of tourists surveyed by phone said that if water pollution increased, they would stop visiting the county. But the Chamber of Commerce spokesman and one other resort owner said they thought the publicity was good advertising. 14 out of 15 resort owners surveyed said their business had not declined from the previous year, although six thought the article hurt tourism and two thought their businesses had been negatively affected. A study found that those who thought bad water was the county's main problem were less likely to return, and that the water quality problem was hurting tourism.
  The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources reports 137 leaking underground storage tank sites, 385 spill locations, and 104 other areas involving contamination, such as of soils and groundwater, including 24 cases which polluted one or more neighboring properties and 82 open cases such as cherry orchards left with arsenic and lead-contaminated soils from pesticide use during the 1960s and earlier. Additionally, two landowners voluntarily cooperated with the DNR, limiting their future liability. Mines, prior landfills, and former orchard sites are considered impaired lands and specially marked on an electronic county map. A different electronic map shows the locations of private wells polluted with lead, arsenic, and other contaminants down to the section level.
  PCBs from Green Bay have been deposited into the county as windborn dust and off of contaminated waters. The state lists 6.85 miles of the Ahnapee River in Door County as an impaired waterway due to PCB pollution, a designation extending past the county line. In 1975, PCBs were found in the eggs of red-breasted and common merganser ducks in the county and were implicated along with DDE and mercury as possible explanations for eggshell thinning.
  In 1964 on Little Sister Island only 41% of herring gull eggs hatched. High levels of DDT were found to be the main cause of death among the unhatched chicks.
  Between 1996 and 2006, impervious surfaces in the county increased by 0.6 square miles (about 400 acres). In 2006 a total of 1% of all land in the county was paved. Over the same period, 0.8 square miles (about 500 acres) were deforested and 0.6 square miles were lost to agriculture. As development increases water quality is expected to worsen and the risk of flooding is expected to increase. During the 2018 to 2019 winter season, 9,470 tons of salt were app
caption: A 1919 ad touting the "maximum killing power" of a particular arsenate of lead pesticide. Also in 1919 it was found that arsenic residues remained on produce after washing. The pesticide was supplanted by DDT beginning in 1947 and later banned for use on food crops in 1988.[150]
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