sophis wrote:

OregonMaule wrote:These people did this in Washington. Not far from my home airport. It is on farm ground and it is wet like yours. It has standing water all winter and early spring. If you can get approval, get an earth mover and do this. These lakes are 2100' long.

Call it an irrigation reservoir, wildlife enhancement. 3' deep should do. Use the material to make your elevated runway. Now you have a water ski lake, float ops, stock some bass.

That is pretty cool!! That's really thinking outside the box; I like it . . something to keep in mind if I ever decide to do floats . .

This is how our runway was built years ago. The owner made what I like to call a "float moat". In your case Sophis, 1000' would be cutting too close for most conventional float planes. Ours was only 800' long and barely 40' wide but it was a hell of a hoot playing around in . Unfortunately it has been deactivated now. I would love to build something that big (above) one day but even shit swamp land up in my area is worth a mint now. Here's a video of me in my old Beaver ultralight muck'in around in the moat a few years ago.

Just to note. the owner had some problem with environmental types years ago. So he registered the property as a designated nesting site for some kind of big ugly looking crane that shits like a cow and made a lot of noise. The trees across the runway would be full of these things screeching up a storm during nesting season. Anytime he got any grief from greenies about wildlife and airports he'd show how planes and wildlife can get along just fine. That took the bee out of their bonnets and shut them up. We never did have any conflicts with these gangly lookin big beaked screaming chickens or the ducks in the moat.

May not be relevant to this thread. But be careful of altering and Natural Springs or Creek on your property. This guy found out the hard way.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/14/wyoming-welder-faces-fine-for-building-pond-on-his-own-property/

Sophis,

This may not be as big/expensive a problem as you are worried about. The first thing I would do is go talk to the Soil and Water people at the USDA office in your county, find out if the SPECIFIC area you want to build the runway on is designated as a wetland and if so, is it permissible for you to put in underground drainage tile on each side of the runway (if not a designated wetland, no sweat). Providing that the creek is enough lower than your proposed runway (say at least 3 ft) than underground drainage tile may be a viable option for you. I would assume there should be a drainage contractor with a tiling machine in your vicinity. The cost of installing plastic 4 inch perforated tile is not that great and the little footage you have should be able to be installed in a short day. Tiling contractors are always short on jobs in the summer, as most farmers do not want them installing tile in a field with a growing crop, hence it will be easier to get one and there may be a chance to negotiate a little better price . If there is a low spot that the runway would cross, as David mentioned, run a plastic culvert under it in that area. I had owned 1/2 of a drainage business for years and am still involved, what you have, may end up being a piece of cake. Feel free to PM or I can answer questions on the forum.

Steve

Sidewinder wrote:Just to note. the owner had some problem with environmental types years ago. So he registered the property as a designated nesting site for some kind of big ugly looking crane that shits like a cow and made a lot of noise.

That's hilarious . . but genius too! Thanks for sharing the video as well; that looked like a lot of fun!

58Skylane wrote:May not be relevant to this thread. But be careful of altering and Natural Springs or Creek on your property. This guy found out the hard way.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/03/14/wyoming-welder-faces-fine-for-building-pond-on-his-own-property/

That's exactly why I have spent all this time researching this; four days ago I had no idea what owning "wetland" could mean but now I'm much more enlightened.

steve wrote:The first thing I would do is go talk to the Soil and Water people at the USDA office in your county, find out if the SPECIFIC area you want to build the runway on is designated as a wetland

Steve, thanks for the excellent advice, however I've already learned a lot more over the last few days that is steering me away from the property.

So, I finally learned that the DNR appears to be the enforcement agency for the wetlands; at least here in WI. They have a portion of the website complete with a mapping tool as well as other resources (including video tutorials) to determine if the land is wetland. It is definitely wetland. Of the 26 acre property it appears only the 3 or 4 that the house sits on is not wetland and this is based on my physical walking of the property as well as the maps. This cross references with the Fish and Wildlife Service maps referenced earlier. So what can you do with the land? Well, as a hint; here is the "permit" page of the WI DNR site (http://dnr.wi.gov/permits/water/) (click on Waterway and wetland). As you will see; even grading the land requires a permit from the DNR; the same for adding a culvert etc.

As a prospective buyer, this seems like a lot of risk. Couple that with the fact that owning the land would be the equivalent of owning a mosquito factory in the summer, the un-surety as to whether my wife's horses could even graze on the wetlands (fencing etc.), and all the hoops to jump through to even potentially have a landing strip; I'm thinking I'll pass on the property. If I'd have to grade the land at all, I'd need a permit from the DNR and it would be hard to justify why I need a 1000x20 foot raised area without saying "runway" and the alarms that would go off after I said that. Plus, as stated earlier, seasonal changes from year to year could ruin the idea altogether. Overall I think it's wiser to wait until something opens up that will only require getting permits from the local township, rather than the state, assuming I need to do any permits in the first place (hopefully not).

So, that's where I'm at. Thanks for all the education and ideas. I'm sure this thread will prove helpful to others in the future as well so thanks for sharing. For me it's looking like a pass.