Millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater and thousands of gallons of gooey black coal tar lie underneath Ashland’s downtown waterfront. It is by far the thorniest cleanup of an old manufactured gas plant in Wisconsin — both because of the difficulty in cleaning it up, and in finding someone to pay for it.

Despite the continued concern over preventable boating accidents and fatalities, Wisconsin lawmakers tried but failed in the last session to pass new laws mandating life jackets for children and cracking down on intoxicated boating.

At University of Wisconsin campuses, most victims do not report crimes. The statistics are inconsistent. And most rapists go free.

Experts say Wisconsin’s high suicide rate, relative to those of neighboring states, could be linked to a high rate of binge drinking, easy access to firearms and lack of available mental health care, especially in rural areas.

More than 65 percent of depressed mothers don’t get adequate treatment for depression, according to a nationwide study released this fall by the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. The study of 2,130 women found that black, Hispanic and other minority mothers, as well as uninsured mothers, were among the least likely to be helped.

Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they defused threats from 125 troubled students, employees and area residents under a little-known program launched two years ago in response to deadly tragedies on college campuses in Virginia and Illinois.

But the program didn’t identify at least three individuals before they caused problems at Wisconsin’s flagship campus, including threats against a campus leader, a bomb threat and a murder near campus.

The man who woke up in a Seattle park with $600 in his sock but with apparently no memory of his identity is Edward F. Lighthart, who graduated in 1984 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a French degree.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is assisting The Seattle Times in an effort to determine the identity of a man, possibly suffering from amnesia, who turned up three weeks ago at a Seattle park. The man says he attended UW-Madison in the 1980s.