Skip to content
  • Media Downloads
Donate
  • Donate
  • logo
  • logo
  • About the Center
    • About us
    • What we do
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Funding
    • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
    • Public engagement and opinion
    • The Trust Project
    • Awards and honors
    • Project archives
    • Republishing guidelines
    • Be your own watchdog
    • Former interns and fellows: Where they are now
    • Subscribe to our email newsletters
    • Donate
    • Wisconsin Watch store
    • Contact us
  • Contact
    • Contact us
    • Letters to the Editor
  • Newsletters
  • Membership
    • Learn more about membership
    • Join the Watchdog Club
  • Coverage areas
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health & Welfare
    • Justice & Safety
    • Opinion
    • Photo essays
  • Projects
    • News414
    • Lives on Hold
    • Coronavirus Coverage
    • Outbreak Wisconsin
    • Wisconsin COVID-19 Update
    • Narrow Margin
    • Seeking a Cure: The Quest to Save Rural Hospitals
    • The Cannabis Question
    • Beyond Bail
    • Undemocratic: Secrecy and Power vs. The People
    • Countering Concussions
    • Broken Whistle
    • Failure at the Faucet
    • Documenting Hate
    • Flawed Forensics
    • Project archives
  • Be your own watchdog
  • Donate
  • Media Downloads
    • Media Downloads

WisconsinWatch.org - Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

WisconsinWatch.org (https://www.wisconsinwatch.org/series/murky-waters/)

  • About the Center
    • About us
    • What we do
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Funding
    • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
    • Public engagement and opinion
    • The Trust Project
    • Awards and honors
    • Project archives
    • Republishing guidelines
    • Be your own watchdog
    • Former interns and fellows: Where they are now
    • Subscribe to our email newsletters
    • Donate
    • Wisconsin Watch store
    • Contact us
  • Contact
    • Contact us
    • Letters to the Editor
  • Newsletters
  • Membership
    • Learn more about membership
    • Join the Watchdog Club
  • Coverage areas
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health & Welfare
    • Justice & Safety
    • Opinion
    • Photo essays
  • Projects
    • News414
    • Lives on Hold
    • Coronavirus Coverage
    • Outbreak Wisconsin
    • Wisconsin COVID-19 Update
    • Narrow Margin
    • Seeking a Cure: The Quest to Save Rural Hospitals
    • The Cannabis Question
    • Beyond Bail
    • Undemocratic: Secrecy and Power vs. The People
    • Countering Concussions
    • Broken Whistle
    • Failure at the Faucet
    • Documenting Hate
    • Flawed Forensics
    • Project archives
  • Be your own watchdog

Project: Murky Waters

A four-part series examining threats to the Madison area’s spectacular lakes, and ambitious new efforts that seek to improve them. Researchers around the world are watching our lakes in hopes of adapting these lessons to troubled bodies of water in other areas. A collaboration from The Capital Times and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

“There are no trends in the lakes. The lake water quality is not getting better. It’s not getting notably worse. It’s as if the interventions we’re doing are just holding the line, running in place like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland.”

— Steve Carpenter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has studied the Yahara lakes since the 1970s.

Murky Waters

Yahara beach closures highlight algae, bacteria threats statewide

The Yahara lakes — Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa and Kegonsa — are no clearer than they were 30 years ago, despite intensive efforts to improve them.

Adaptive management

Lake experiments explore roles of fish, computers, alum and more

The Yahara watershed is crawling with scientists who keep trying new ways to clean up the lakes.

Murky Waters
Algae blooms on Lake Kegonsa in 2010.

All about algal blooms

How to spot them, what to do if you do, and signs of illness.

Dairy
The community digester located near Waunakee is the stateÕs first to process manure from more than one farm. Roughly 100,00 gallons of manure from 2,400 cows on three nearby farms is pumped daily through underground pipes to the digester. Its purpose is to keep phosphorus from polluting the Yahara watershed.

Manure digesters seen as best hope for curbing lake pollution, but drawbacks remain

Since 2001, manure digesters have been popping up across the state. Wisconsin now has 34, the most in the nation, with two more scheduled to begin operating by 2015. In all these digesters, bacteria eat biomass like manure, food scraps or whey and emit energy in the form of methane gas.

digesters
These seedlings are an example of the digester's potential to spawn side businesses. They are being grown by UW-Madison graduate student Brian Zimmerman and Madison resident Taylor Jacque, in a greenhouse powered by the waste heat from the community digester near Waunakee.

How to make a digester profitable: Veggies and poker chips

The greenhouse and its veggies are one example of a new cottage industry popping up across the country to capitalize on the waste energy, methane gas and the nutrient-rich solids that are emitted from a digester.

Load more stories

In this series

Part 1: Beach bummer More than 1,300 times over the past two decades, beachgoers have been advised to avoid beaches of the Yahara lakes because bacteria or algae posed health hazards. Researchers around the world are watching ambitious new efforts to fix the lakes for clues to solving pollution in other waters. April 23, 2014
Part 2: Manure mess Manure digesters are seen as the best hope for curbing water pollution in the Yahara Watershed. But a lack of money and political will limit their use. And spills create doubts about their reliability. April 30
Part 3: Urban pollutionUrban areas taint lakes, and an expert worries about the role of leaky septic lines. Developers, often reviled by environmentalists, yield power to make lakes cleaner. May 7
Part 4: Challenges ahead Hopes are tempered by hard realities, particularly at Lake Kegonsa, as experts and residents join forces to clean the Yahara lakes. Success stories can be found. But in one sign of the challenges ahead, Daphnia, a tiny invertebrate that has done much to clean up the lakes, is now threatened by a hungry invasive species, the spiny waterflea. May 14

Reporters

Kate Golden is a reporter and the Center's multimedia director.

Jessica VanEgeren covers politics and other stories for The Capital Times.

Data visualizations

America’s (increasingly concentrated) Dairyland

Illnesses from harmful algal blooms

Wisconsin’s anaerobic digesters

Algae vs. bacteria: Why Madison-area beaches closed

Madison’s ickiest beaches

Interactive map: Find your Yahara beach

Water Watch Wisconsin

This reporting is part of Water Watch Wisconsin, examining water quality and quantity issues statewide. The Murky Waters project was supported by The Joyce Foundation.

The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism is a nonprofit organization.

If you value our work, please help support it.

Donate
  • Topics
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health
    • Justice System
  • Projects
    • News414
    • Lives on Hold
    • Coronavirus Coverage
    • Outbreak Wisconsin
    • Wisconsin COVID-19 Update
    • Narrow Margin
    • Seeking a Cure
    • The Cannabis Question
    • Beyond Bail
    • Undemocratic
    • Countering Concussions
    • Failure at the Faucet
    • Broken Whistle
    • Flawed Forensics
    • Photo essays
    • Project archives
  • About the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
    • What we do
    • Awards and honors
    • Republishing guidelines
    • Ethics
    • Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
    • Funding
    • Pitch guidelines for freelancers
    • Corrections and clarifications
    • Newsletter archives
    • Wisconsin Watch store
    • Media downloads
  • Our People
    • Staff
    • Board of Directors
    • Journalism Advisory Board

Our Mission

To increase the quality, quantity and understanding of investigative journalism to foster an informed citizenry and strengthen democracy.

  • Our Impact
    • Track our stories
    • Stories making a difference
Contact

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
Fifth Floor, Vilas Hall
821 University Ave
Madison, WI 53706

608-262-3642

info@wisconsinwatch.org

Send Us A Tip

Search This Site

Browse Archives

© Copyright 2021, Wisconsin Watch from WisconsinWatch.org

WisconsinWatch.org is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News

Built with the Largo WordPress Theme from the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Back to top ↑

Cancel