Nicolet president explains decision to allow test wells on campus

Nicolet College President Kate Ferrel has addressed a question that has been circulating since it became known that the City of Rhinelander is considering drilling a new municipal well on the school’s Lake Julia campus.
During the public comment portion of the Rhinelander Common Council’s May 12 meeting, Ferrell offered the following remarks regarding the well project.
“I just want to say a couple of words about Nicolet College’s perspective on the City of Rhinelander’s proposed municipal well at Nicolet College,” she said. “One of the recurring questions that I have been hearing from neighbors is why would we agree to a test well out at the college? What was our motivation? Why would we agree to a test well if now we’re saying, ‘this isn’t a done deal.’ I just wanted to address that a little bit. Since 1967, Nicolet College’s motivation has been to serve our communities and to be a good neighbor to all and to really carry forward a spirit of sustainability. In December 2023, we agreed to allow the city to drill a test well site, a couple of sites, at Nicolet because we saw an opportunity, a really important opportunity to potentially help our Rhinelander neighbors access safe and healthy water. Then, in April 2025, when we received a copy of the test results and the Wisconsin DNR’s review of those results, we definitely discovered that we have a lot more to learn, our administration and our board of trustees, before we can make an informed decision about whether or not to annex, lease, sell land to the city.”
Ferrel also noted that the city held a public informational meeting on the project just before the council meeting where Town of Pelican residents expressed concern that the project is on an “accelerated timeline.”
Although the water would be conveyed to city residents, the proposed well site is in the Town of Pelican, a fact that has caused significant concern among adjacent property owners.

A number of those who spoke during the informational meeting asked questions regarding potential negative impact on their private wells, as well as nearby lakes, if the well project moved forward.
Greg Droessler of Town&Country Engineering, the firm contracted by the city to design the proposed well, provided background information on the history of the project. He stressed that the site investigation report was compiled by a different firm and Town& Country only recently became involved in the project. When asked why there was no representative from the DNR at the meeting, he stated the agency was not invited to participate “because, quite honestly, we didn’t want to put them in a position of having to defend another consultant’s information.”
In response to a number of questions, Droessler and fellow Town&Country engineer Amy Beras noted they need more time to study information recently received from the DNR.
Droessler also detailed the city’s difficulties in locating a suitable site for a well, a fact he admitted is quite ironic given that the Rhinelander area is surrounded by water in the form of lakes and rivers.
For a location to be suitable for a municipal well, there must be sufficient quantity and quality water, he explained, noting that the discovery of PFAS contamination in two city wells near the Rhinelander-Oneida County Airport as well as in the Town of Stella have further complicated matters. Droessler stated that Town&Country’s deadline to submit the well design to the DNR is June 30, however the project cannot and will not move forward until or unless the Nicolet board and the city come to an agreement.
In her remarks at the council meeting, Ferrel stressed that the college intends to take a comprehensive approach to the question of whether to allow the well project to move forward on campus property.
“Nicolet is focused on carefully and deliberately taking all of the proper steps to provide our leadership and administration, and our board of trustees with the environmental, the fiscal, financial and legal information that we all need to make a really sound decision,” she said.
Bob Martini, a member of the college’s board of trustees, expressed the same sentiment during the listening session.
Martini, who served as the statewide river protection coordinator during his 32-year career with the DNR, told those in attendance that the trustees have engaged the services of a groundwater modeler.
“Nicolet College is very concerned about cooperating with the city,” he said. “We want to make sure we do that. We’re a customer. But we’re also really concerned about the impacts to the rest of the people in the area. We also have a sustainability mission on campus and beyond. There’s a whole series of reasons why we need to be very comfortable with what the impacts might be.”
“We want to get a separate look, a fresh set of eyes on the various estimates that were calculated from equations to move to the modeling stage to see if we can better define what those impacts would be to the surrounding areas as well as to Nicolet College itself,” he added.
Martini prefaced his remarks with a statement stressing that he was not speaking on behalf of the board, as no individual board member has that authority. He also noted that the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) Board would also have to sign off for the project to move forward.
Ferrel noted that the college had scheduled a “neighborhood listening session” for the afternoon of Tuesday, May 20 and public comment on this topic would be accepted during the board of trustees meeting that will follow the listening session. Members of the board of trustees are  expected to be present for the neighborhood listening session, according to a Nicolet spokeperson. Originally, it was announced that the board members would not be present for the listening session but a school spokesperson has advised that a number of the trustees have since expressed an interest in attending the listening session. 

To review the materials presented during the city's May 12 informational meeting, visit the city website:  https://www.rhinelanderwi.us/news_detail_T21_R116.php.