After years of pilot programs and numerous stopgap measures, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources issued the Crystal, Fish and Mud Lake District a controversial five-year permit that will allow it to continually pump water from its lakes to the Wisconsin River.

For the residents living in the lake district, the permit represents the culmination of nearly 10 years and about $600,000 spent devising a way to lower the lakes encroaching upon their homes.

The permit will allow the district to pump 24 hours a day, seven days a week until Fish Lake is lowered about 3 feet to its normal high-water mark.

However, opponents of the permit view it as eroding environmental standards and potentially damaging the quality of the lower Wisconsin River.

"This permit sets a precedent that will allow for the backsliding of environmental standards that are really designed to protect a unique resource," said Dave Marshall, a member of the environmental group Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway and a retired water resource biologist for the DNR. "We just don’t want to play Russian roulette with a resource this valuable."

The pump, located in Fish Lake County Park in Dane County, drains water from the roughly 250-acre Mud and Fish Lakes through 2.5 miles of underground pipe to the Wisconsin River near the village of Prairie du Sac.

The Lower Wisconsin Riverway is classified as an "exceptional water resource," which normally means that all water discharged into it must be of the same or higher quality.

With the permit issued June 11, however, the DNR is relaxing this standard, but still applying stricter discharge limits than usual.

During two public informational meetings in November and January, DNR officials argued the permit was necessary to correct a public health problem for 14 home owners on Fish Lake whose private septic systems are not operational due to high lake levels.

In April, the Dane County parks division announced it would consider buying these residents’ homes in order to expand a county park, and last month Dane County’s zoning department sent letters to four Fish Lake homeowners with severely water-damaged properties informing them they had one year to either demolish their homes or bring them up to code.