Opening a discussion about the region's water future

Water Sustainability and Climate (WSC), a research project with staff in the UW Madison Limnology Building on Lake Mendota as well around campus, takes the state of the Yahara Watershed very seriously. And it is engaging organizations throughout the region in a conversation about how a variety of changes will affect the Watershed.

Editor’s Note appended at bottom

With a five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, WSC brings together hard science and outreach in hopes of understanding what affects the watershed, both presently and looking ahead to the future.

The Yahara Watershed is large, spanning from the shore of Lake Mendota throughout Southern Wisconsin.

Watersheds are places through which water, such as rain and melted snow, drains. In the Madison area, that water ends in the Yahara River. The Yahara Watershed is a unique combination of both urban and agricultural water use and potential abuse. 

Jenny Seifert, science writer and community outreach organizer for WSC, said the role of WSC is to examine any long-term change in resources in the watershed. Change may come from climate change, farm-use, human demand and other factors.

Seifert believes the biggest potential threats to the watershed are “what we value and the consumer choices we make.” This extends to how our food is raised, what we consumer and other human choices, Seifert said. Other issues facing the watershed connect directly to political policy determined by who is elected and how cities and towns use land.

A recent WSC workshop presented four future scenarios of different human choices and outcomes in the watershed called Yahara 2070. The scenarios, as generated and imagined by WSC, look to future consequences and possibilities.

The workshop invited grassroots watershed groups ranging from Friends of Pheasant Ridge and the Rock River Coalition to school district representatives and the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission to discuss the scenarios’ possible role in protecting the watershed’s future.

Mike Kakuska, director of environmental resources planning for the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission, said he is invested in the state of the watershed because it is an integral part of the development and future growth of Madison, the focus of his job. Kakuska said that growth should be “done right.”

The imagined scenarios tell a variety of stories about the watershed and the different responses that may come with that issue. Changes in policy, farming, migration, resource sharing and incentives were all components of the 2070 worlds.

Seifert prefaced the scenarios and group discussion by stating WSC knows it is difficult to jump ahead 35 years, let alone 55. Yet Yahara 2070 was created to allow just that, with a variety of different futures.

“What can we do now to work for a desirable future?” Seifert asked the groups.

As different representatives of the watershed groups discussed the pros and cons of the scenarios, WSC closed the workshop with the essential question of what the scenarios can do for the community.

Many groups wondered the same thing.

“The stories are great but then, now what? What do [citizens] do?” Kakuska said. “Maybe [they] join a watershed group.”

One representative from The Natural Step Monona said the scenarios have the potential to “create vision and enhance modification [in action] for people.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been edited for clarity and to correct details about WSC.