Environment

Environment

August rainfall caused citywide flooding, but high lake levels threaten more

By Cathleen Draper | December 31, 2018

In late August, significant rainfall pummeled Madison, causing flooding throughout the city, damaging infrastructure and private residences, and costing the city millions of dollars. According to a report by Daniel Wright, assistant professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at UW-Madison, the amount of rain that fell on the Yahara watershed was by no means historical. Rather, Wright wrote, it fell around a 30 year recurrence interval, meaning “over the course of a 30-year mortgage, a homeowner will, on average, experience one storm similar in magnitude.”

The four inches of rain that fell across the lakes produced a 100-year flood event in Madison due to the high lake levels of Lakes Monona, Mendota, Waubesa and Kegonsa — especially Lake Mendota. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources set the minimum and maximum lake levels in 1979. The storm on August 20 caused the lake levels to rise well above their minimums and 100-year flood levels.

Environment

Volunteers endure rain during Madison Parks’ cleanup challenge, while officials brace for ice damage due to high lake levels

By Keith Bradley-Hewitt | December 14, 2018

Madison residents braved rainy and wet conditions in early November to take part in the Flood Clean-up Challenge hosted by the City of Madison Parks Division. The event, which took place at 11 different parks in Madison, addressed the impact of the flooding that occured in the city over the summer. With the gradual recession of flood waters since mid-September, many parks situated along shorelines in the city were left with debris, trash, and large swaths of seaweed on their beaches, which had been washed ashore during the flooding. In response, the Madison Parks Division developed a cleanup plan that relied, in part, on volunteers. “I was really taken with the opportunity to volunteer for the city [and] to clean it up,” said Emily Reynolds, one of the volunteers who came to help with the effort.

Environment

Compost program paused, not over, says City recycling coordinator

By Sophia Dramm | July 24, 2018

Despite Madison’s compost pilot program coming to an end last month due to contamination issues, the City hopes to restart the program in 2019. The program, officially called the organics collection program but can more accurately be understood as a food scraps recycling program, began in 2011 to reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill. The program had to stop because too many participants, which included residents and businesses, were putting non-compostable items in compost bins, thus contaminating the compostable material. “This isn’t over,” said Bryan Johnson, the Recycling Coordinator for the City of Madison Streets Division. “The program, the way we had it, wasn’t working with the processing options that were available to us.

Environment

Wisconsin Utility Companies Invest in Alternative Energy

By Simpson Street Free Press | July 18, 2018

The future is getting brighter for wind and solar energy in the Midwest. Two Madison-based power companies, Alliant Energy Corporation and Madison Gas and Electric (MGE), have recently invested in clean energy sources that will affect thousands of customers across the Midwest. Alliant and MGE are investing in wind and solar energy, respectively. Wisconsin Public Service of Green Bay will also invest in solar energy alongside MGE. Alliant has partnered with Tradewind Energy, an independent renewable power developer to bring English Farms Wind Farm to completion.

Environment

Madison’s changing lakes

By Izabela Zaluska | June 8, 2018

Climate change is about more than temperature change. For University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor Hilary Dugan, the bigger concern with changing climate revolves around Madison’s lakes and rainfall. Dugan, who teaches within UW-Madison’s Center for Limnology, said there are projections that Wisconsin’s rainfalls are going to come in bigger storms. Instead of storms with two inches of rain, a storm may drop four or five inches. There won’t necessarily be an increase in the number of storms she added. With larger rainstorms, comes more landscape material being washed into the rivers and lakes Dugan said.

Environment

Protecting Pets from Ticks

By Harrison Chalnick | June 4, 2018

Abnormally high temperatures this May have caused a significant uptick in Wisconsin's deer tick population. Indomitable pests, deer ticks can be found in any area with moist, dense shrubbery or tall grass, and are transporters of the notorious Lyme disease. Public Health Madison and Dane County released a statement that warned of the population boom, explaining that there has been a significant increase in the cases of Lyme disease over the past few years. While humans can minimize the chance of being bitten by simply avoiding threatening areas, our beloved pets lack the cognitive ability to do so, making them susceptible to an unfortunate encounter. If a tick is able to stealthy attach itself to a dog or cat, there is a high chance that Lyme disease will be transmitted, and with it many degenerating symptoms, such as fever, swelling of joints, lameness and in severe cases death.