Clintonville hires engineering firm to explain mysterious booms

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Clintonville, a city in eastern Wisconsin, has hired an engineering firm to discover the cause of mysterious booms and ground-shaking. The Waukesha firm of Ruekert and Mielke will install four ground seismology monitors to see if there’s an epicenter.

About 300 residents attended a public meeting Wednesday night to see what officials have been doing and offer their own ideas for what might be causing the rumbles. They mentioned temperature changes in the water supply, a drop in the water table, the forming of an underwater lake and a connection to this week’s earthquake in Mexico as possibilities. Officials have found no such things.

Some residents swear that the Pigeon Falls fault line is close by. Clintonville Administrator Lisa Kuss says there’s no evidence of that either, but officials are asking the U.S. Geological Survey if a fault line could be in the area.

Geologists have said the booms are coming from up to 200 feet underground. No one’s been injured, but one homeowner said she’s getting cracks in her home’s foundation.

The booms have mostly occurred late at night or in the early morning hours since Sunday evening, March 18. They were a novelty at first, but residents are literally getting tired of it. One said she’s staying at a relative’s house about 10 minutes away, just to get a good night’s sleep.

Another resident talked about renting a motel room for the same reason.

Tags: news, wisconsin, environment