“I’ve been working here for 34 years,” said Dave Pericak, water field supervisor for northwest Wisconsin. “I’ve never had a request to do this before.”

With no significant fish population — at least unfrozen — Pericak said it was one of the few places that you could blast without harming resources.

After checking with water, fish, wildlife and law enforcement experts, the DNR issued the all-clear.

So on Friday, crews drilled a series of holes, dropped explosive charges down into the ice, and boom.

“It was kind of like the Fourth of July in winter,” said one neighbor who watched the blasting.

In his 50 years in the business, Jerry McManigle said he’s blown up barns, silos, foundations and the occasional beaver dam.

“That is the first creek I’ve done,” he said. “I just did it by the seat of my pants.”

The blaster, who traveled from Chickasaw County, Iowa, said there was some “tension” blasting within a stone’s throw of houses, but said he was confident in his skills.

He estimates he used several hundred sticks of the plastic explosives to break up about 1,700 feet of creek.