Pollution in Madison's lakes is a hot topic heading into Tuesday's Dane County Board of Supervisors District 5 election and, according to one UW-Madison professor, the attention is warranted.
Two of the four student candidates, junior Sean Cornelius and UW-Madison sophomore Adam Korn, have made water pollution a staple of their campaigns for the District 5 seat.
Korn wants the county government to be more active in its role in protecting Madison's lakes.
'Dane County is the only county in the state that has jurisdiction over its lakes and waterways and so there's a big issue with pollution, especially in Lake Mendota,' Korn said. 'Every candidate runs a clean lake campaign and there's been no progress. It seems like good environmental policy seems to end right at inauguration.'
Cornelius, who has said clean water would be his top priority as a supervisor, will draw on personal experience at the UW limnology department to fight pollution.
'As an employee of the UW limnology department, I know first hand the fragility of our lakes,' Cornelius said on his website. 'I don't have all the answers on how to improve our lakes, but I will not allow something as important as our environment to be mired in the county bureaucracy or lost in empty campaign rhetoric.'
A study released in June 2005 by UW-Madison limnologist Stephen Carpenter reported that phosphorus build-up in soil is likely to cause serious environmental problems for several hundred years to come. The amount of phosphorus that runs into the lake in any given year is small but a little bit of the nutrient is all that is needed to disrupt an ecosystem.
'The global pattern is the same,' Carpenter said. 'We are releasing far more phosphorus to the soil than would be released by weathering.'
Higher levels of toxic algae blooms that can make lakes unfit for swimming and increased odor are a few of the results of pollution in Madison's lakes, according to the study.
Dane County passed an ordinance that took effect in 2005 banning lawncare products containing phosphorus, but farmers still apply phosphorus fertilizers, even when soils have a reservoir of the nutrient.
Quality of Madison's lakes is an important issue to district residents, especially students.
'We all swim in those lakes and enjoy them in the spring and summer,' UW-Madison junior David Christopher said. 'I want them to remain clean and usable for everyone,'
