from Poisoning Paradise: An Environmental History of Madison
By Maria C. Powell, PhD
Oscar Mayer arrives, lakes get worse, lakeshore residents take action
In 1919, nine years after Nolen’s Model City report was released, and two years before Olbrich’s passionate call to action on Lake Monona, Oscar Mayer began operations just southeast of the Burke sewage plant. For several years before that, the Farmer’s Meat Packing Cooperative was located there, in part so it could send its wastes to the new Burke sewage plant. Oscar Mayer’s growing amounts of feeding, slaughtering, and processing wastes were also sent to the sewage plant and city sewers, where they immediately began presenting trouble to city pipes “owing to the immense amount of grease.”[i],[1],[2],[3]
Residents near Lake Monona—mostly shoreline homeowners—had complained for years about pollution in the lake by the time Oscar Mayer opened. In 1924, a group of these residents formed a “citizens committee,” packed city meetings complaining about algae, stink and scum in the lake, and demanded immediate improvement. R.J. Nickles, a chemistry professor at the university, led the committee.
The meetings were heated. At one meeting attended by hundreds of citizens, a resident brought Lake Monona and Yahara River water and scum samples to demonstrate the problem to officials. He pointed to city sewage and wastes from manufacturing plants, demanding that the city “stop all sources of pollution” to the lakes. Another suggested sending the city’s wastewater to the Wisconsin River. A local attorney working with the group urged the city to “stop using the lakes as cesspools” to preserve the beauty of the lakes.[ii]
Oscar Mayer was repeatedly named by residents and city officials as a key culprit. Oscar Mayer’s superintendent A.C. Bolz was incensed at the public charges, saying it wasn’t their responsibility, but the fault of the engineers who designed a faulty sewage plant at Burke. Because the Burke plant proved inadequate to handle all its wastes, the company constructed a ditch that sent “refuse” from the plant directly to the Yahara River; the ditch, visible to residents, reeked. [iii] But Boltz defended the company, saying it was “doing all in its power to rectify the situation,” including treating the ditch with chlorine and funding the construction of a new sewage treatment plant onsite that was to be completed in two months (it was completed that year).[4]
Not mollified, citizens accused city officials of “failing to make any attempt to stop pollution of Monona” and not carrying out recommendations of Chicago consultants in 1919 and a special committee report in 1921. Responding to citizens’ charges, the state sanitary engineer admitted that “the condition of the packing plant is deplorable” and that “during heavy rains when the sewage disposal plant is shut off, raw sewage is dumped into the lake to relieve the plant.” However, he said even if city wastes were to be funneled to the Wisconsin River, it would not help the lakes because “it is impossible to keep surface water from the lakes.”
Citizen’s health ordinance, rivers and lakes commission created to address lake pollution
In 1921 a state law was passed requiring that the city (and presumably all cities in the state) hire a “full time health officer.” The city then passed an ordinance “providing for a full time Health Officer and a city board of health.[5]
Intense city debates about how to address sewage and lake pollution continued and the new health officer and board were in the heat of it. Following from the contentious common council meetings that year, in June 1924 the city also proposed creating a permanent “rivers and lakes commission,” including members of the board of health, common council, and five citizens appointed by the Mayor.
This commission, according to the newspaper report, would be “responsible for halting causes of pollution” and making recommendations that “will result in the immediate elimination of the stench from the lake.” The body would not have “full police powers,” but would be responsible to the board of health, which would then make recommendations to the common council. [iv]
Rivers and lakes commission says chemical algicides are the answer; anglers strongly disagree
In early 1925, the rivers and lakes commission, then chaired by UW chemist Nickles, decided to treat Lake Monona with more copper sulphate. This ongoing practice, which began in 1918, continued to generate pushback from anglers and fishing organizations, as it had since it began. In 1924, a front-page article in the Wisconsin State Journal titled “Fish Murdered by Treatment of Lake to Prevent Growth of Algae” was accompanied by a photo of a “monster bass found dying” in Lake Monona. The author of the piece, Frank Weston from the Isaac Walton League, charged that the city’s treatment of the lake with chemicals had “murdered” this bass and as well as thousands of big perch, bluegills, silver bass, rock bass “found belly up” in the lake after the chemical treatments. The Isaac Walton League, he told Madison’s Mayor, worked hard to preserve the habitats of fish, but that “here in our beautiful lakes” they were dying of unnatural causes. “Putting poison into a lake to kill algae is about the silliest thing I ever heard tell of…any sane man knows that you cannot load the lake day after day and year after year without doing harm to life.” The fish, he charged, were “poisoned by the health department of the city.”[v],[6]
In February 1925 meetings with the rivers and lakes commission–flying in the face of Weston’s observations–university biologists and chemists unanimously agreed, and advised the commission, that copper sulphate would not be harmful to fish and other aquatic life. In 1925, the city had also hired its own biochemist, B.P. Domogalla, a PhD graduate of the University of Wisconsin, who monitored lake quality and became one of the main proponents of pesticide treatments in the lakes for many years after that. [vi]
The commission also sought advice from the state conservation commission (precursor to the Department of National Resources, DNR), which agreed to an experiment the following summer to study what amounts of copper sulphate would kill fish. University experts proposed, and the city agreed, that in doing these experiments, Madison could be the leader in developing treatments for algae and stench in lakes, which were becoming problems all over the state.[vii],[7]
More dredging, more toxic chemicals—or addressing sources?
In June 1925, following recommendations of the rivers and lakes commission, the board of health issued emergency orders to address Lake Monona stench, especially around Starkweather Creek, the focus of most resident complaints. Ongoing copper sulphate applications in the lake had apparently not been effective, so officials proposed buying a bigger chemical sprayer to broadcast more copper sulphate in shallow parts of Starkweather Creek where it enters the lake—and further dredging of the east shore of the lake, using dredge materials create the park that citizens and public officials wanted there.[viii] A formal plan released at the end of 1925 included considerable funding for this dredging, but a citizen referendum later voted it down. [ix],[x]
In 1926, William Newton Nichols wrote a detailed letter to the State Journal editor saying that Lake Monona could not be “de-odorized” by dredging alone. First, he wrote, “there is the cement overflow at the sewer plant that dumps sewage into a ditch leading to Starkweather Creek. As long as this is permitted, there will be stench on hot days along the eastern and northern shores of the lake.”[xi] Much of this waste came from Oscar Mayer; that year, in fact, the city had approved a “separate force main” from Oscar Mayer to the Burke plant to better handle the company’s growing amounts of greasy animal wastes.”[xii],[8]
In 1927, a special “Lake Monona Dredging Committee,” a subcommittee of the rivers and lakes commission, recommend that chemicals should be used to treat the east end of Lake Monona near Starkweather Creek instead of dredging. The Common Council approved this, and more chemical treatments of copper sulphate and arsenic compounds commenced.
Citizens, anglers, and city officials, however, disagreed on whether these treatments were working. Commercial fishermen said the treatments were too expensive and were not effective. City officials responded that they wouldn’t work well unless the whole lake was treated, which they said they didn’t have the money to do.[xiii] City health officials later suggested seining and selling carp and using profits to pay for more treatments; there was a commercial carp fishery in the lakes at this time—a strategy that was later pursued.[xiv]
In 1928, the city health officer said treating the lakes with chemicals would produce “no permanent results” as long as “debris” continued to flow into Lake Monona from Starkweather Creek—noting that the effluent from the sewage plant on the west branch of the creek is “turned into the stream.” He also supported dredging the creek and using it to fill the northeast end of the lake, opining that if the northeast end of the lake was filled with debris and muck from the creek “it would be dumped into the deep water and disappear without causing growth of algae in the lake.”[xv] Just a month later, dredging at the mouth of the creek began, and the muck was used to cover a “city dumping ground” next to the creek; this dump was expanded in 1933 to become one of the city’s official landfills—Olbrich Landfill.[xvi]
At a fall 1929 meeting of the rivers and lakes commission, officials reported that from 1925 and 1929, a total of 535,730 pounds (almost 270 tons) of copper sulphate were dumped into the lake, most of it near the Starkweather Creek outlet.[9] Further dredging of the eastern shore of Monona was again suggested by a meeting participant, but city biochemist Dr. B. P. Domogalla said that dredging would not eliminate the weed and algal growth, which was found up to 40 feet deep. Responding to another scientist, who noted noted that nitrates were coming from the Burke sewage plant and drainage ditches into Starkweather Creek, Dr. Domogalla said the city was studying ways to remove nitrates and phosphates from sewage effluents.[xvii]
Olbrich Park
Michael Olbrich continued to work to make a public park near the Starkweather Creek outlet even as controversy stormed on about the horrific pollution there. In 1916, he had proposed a park along 4,000 feet of Lake Monona shoreline east and west of the Starkweather outlet “to blot out the unsanitary and unlovely marsh on the east end of the lake” and to create “a place for the working man of the Sixth ward, and his family, to spend a happy hour.” He had good intentions; he was concerned that if this was not done, private property owners would build homes there and “exploit the beauty of the spot which should always be enjoyed by all the people of Madison.” He proposed naming it La Follette Park.[xviii]
Park plans moved slowly and would require significant dredging and filling of remaining marsh areas. In 1920, a city committee was formed to consider this park, which they wanted to name Monona Lake Park or Memorial Park. At this point, the city already owned 2000 feet of shoreline along the lake called “Lake Front Park,” and Olbrich owned the rest of the 55 acres. A Capital Times article gushed that the proposed parkland “has one of the finest, if not the best bathing beach on any of the lakes. The sand is fine and almost white like that of the ocean, and would afford good and safe bathing for the hundreds of little ones.”[10] The plan was to fill in 2000 feet of shoreline out 300 feet into the lake “still leaving a good bathing shore” and the expense would be minimal because the lake is very shallow there.[xix] John Olin, the leader of the Parks and Pleasure Drive Association, endorsed the plan.[xx]
By this time, the U.S. Sugar Beet Company had been discharging wastes into Starkweather Creek for years, causing a disgusting stench—so bad that State Lab of Hygiene and state engineering department experts were brought in to investigate it. On November 4, 1920, these experts, along with local public health representatives, Association of Commerce officials, an alder and the city attorney, toured the plant and observed its discharge into the lake. Officials reported that 1,500,000 gallons of Sugar Beet Company “refuse water” runs into the marshes next to the lake every day. Dr. R. J. Tully of the state engineering department asserted that the odor was “partly due to sulphur compounds used in the manufacturing process.” He blamed the “summer odors in Lake Monona” on “growths of algae” but admitted that “untreated refuse entering the lakes fertilizes the water and probably make the growths more prolific.”[xxi]
In 1921 the State Health Board ordered the Sugar Company to change its filtration methods and discharge the effluents of the filtration process into Starkweather Creek instead of Lake Monona. If their changes didn’t eliminate the problems, they would face steep fines. A few months later, an attorney general filed a suit in circuit court on behalf of East End lakeshore property owner R. J. Nickles asking for a permanent injunction restraining the the Sugar Beet company from discharging wastes into Starkweather Creek. Mr. Nickles charged that the filtration process changes made by the company in 1921 had failed, refuse continued to be discharged, and the “objectionable waste matter is offensive and unhealthful and is an objectionable pollution of the waters of such creek…constitutes a public health nuisance, dangerous and injurious to the health of the community.” Don E. Mowry, secretary of the Association of Commerce, said “The waste discharged into Starkweather Creek pollutes Lake Monona, into which the creek flows. I am glad to see someone take action against the factory, and I hope the action will be successful. Madison does not want any industry which has liquid waste to be dumped into our lakes.”[xxii]
The U.S. Sugar Beet Company finally closed up shop in 1924, and in 1925 the city accepted Olbrich’s deed of land for the park.[xxiii],[xxiv] However, even with the sugar beet waste stopped, stench and algae continued. In June 1925, Leo T. Crowley, the president of the board of health, inspected the area with city engineers and members of the rivers and lakes commission. The city engineer blamed the U.S. Sugar Beet Company, which he believed had left behind “beet roots and other waste matter” that continued to pollute the creek. Copper sulphate treatments hadn’t been effective, city experts said, because of the hot weather, and because the lake was too shallow there for boats to spread the chemicals. Crowley issued “emergency health orders” to rake up algae and treat it with hypochlorite (chlorine).[xxv]
Dane county jail prisoners were brought in the same day, according to the Wisconsin State Journal to rake up dead fish, weeds and other refuse that “permeates the air with its stench” and “[t]o prevent their idling in confinement.” Prisoners buried the refuse in the sand and then spread “chlorinated lime and 600 gallons a day of by-products from the General Laboratories, B-K (?) manufacturers” over it.[xxvi] At the end of 1925, the city approved significant funding to again dredge the east side of the lake to use for fill for the planned park there.[xxvii]
Olbrich dies, “industrial area” proposed at old sugar beet factory site
Park plans continued to slog along. In 1928 the city had finally secured all the land it wanted for parkland up to the mouth of Starkweather Creek.[xxviii] The previous year, common council had closed the public dumping ground next to the old sewage plant on E. Washington (next to the Yahara River) and proposed that the “east end” area along the lake near Starkweather be the new public dumping grounds, in part to fill remaining marshy areas for the planned park.[xxix],[xxx]
In 1929, the last in a series of blurbs written for the Association of Commerce in The Capital Times “with the intention of arousing civic consciousness,” Olbrich again quoted John Nolen’s statement that “Madison has the greatest possibilities of becoming a “model city” of any in America.” Since this time, he wrote, “substantial progress has been made in park development.” He admitted, however, that “the ideal for which he strove lies mostly unobtained.”[xxxi] He died by suicide about a year and a half later, after a financial deal turned sour, and the mayor named the “East End” Olbrich Park.[xxxii],[xxxiii]
At the end of 1929, gushing celebrations of Madison’s north and east sides’ industrial success occurred in the newspapers alongside articles bragging about how much water was being pumped from the aquifer to serve the city’s burgeoning population.[xxxiv] In early 1930, the Wisconsin State Journal announced that a new “industrial area” was being created by J.R. Garver and his associated adjacent to the landfill at the old sugar beet plant site. Apparently the city had forgotten—or had decided to ignore–the Chicago expert’s 1924 advice that no more industries be located next to the creek.[xxxv],[xxxvi]
[1] Although originally Oscar Mayer harvested ice from Lake Mendota, it eventually began making and selling its own “artificial” ice made from a deep Madison well onsite. The ammonia needed for refrigeration and ice production also leached into lakes in various ways—and ammonia is a potent contributor to algal growth in freshwater.
[2] Around this time, the city began discussing the construction of yet another sewage plant (or even sending its wastewater to the Wisconsin River (1924.1.2).
[3] 1921.7.27. Treatment of sugar beet waste
[4] Even in the midst of ongoing citizen complaints about odors from their plant, Oscar Mayer officials bragged “Sewage disposal as well as offal is taken care of by an up-to-date plant that permits only a stream of water absolutely without odor to flow away.” 1928.1.1
[5] The original ordinance was for a board made up of five members, one to be selected by the Board of Education from its own members, and alderman to be elected by the council, and three citizen members, at least one of whom shall be a woman, to be elected by the council. But later that year, a special election was held about the confusingly named “Citizens’ Health Ordinance,” which said that the mayor would appoint the people on this new health board, instead of the Council. Debates on this were very heated. A group called the “Committee Representative Government” ran an ad in The Capital Times on July 25. It said: “If you want the affairs of your city conducted by its legally elected representatives, instead of having its policies dictated and controlled by a self-appointed committee, headed by a University Professor, and intolerant of anything except their own autocratic opinions; if you believe in representative government, go to the polls tomorrow and vote against the “Citizens’ Ordinance.”[5] A July 28, 1921 WSJ editorial suggests that it was defeated, but it’s not clear what happened after that.
[6] Just two months before this “Fish Murder” article was printed, another Wisconsin State Journal article titled “Lakes, Lagoon, Zoo and Parks Make Madison a Place of Scenic Beauty” bragged about having water frontage on Lake Monona of 1,350 feet, which “affords ample bathing facilities in the waters of Lake Monona.” (1924.5.10, WSJ)
[7] In these meetings university scientists and a state sanitary engineer told the rivers and lakes commission that “the effluent from the sewage plant added a great deal of pollution to the lakes” caused by nitrates that fertilized aquatic plants and weeds and also “by worms and other insect life which is carried with the effluent into Yahara River where it eventually dies.” Oscar Mayer was also named as a problem by the Burke sewage plant superintendent, who said their waste would be treated in a separate part of the plant. 1925.2.27 Cap Times
[8] He also proposed a lock at the outlet of Lake Waubesa to control lake levels.
[9] From article: 113,280 pounds in 1928, 125,275 in 1927, 85,075 in 1926, 107,200 in 1925. Between 1925 and 1960, over 1,545,000 pounds of copper sulfate were applied by the City of Madison to control algae in Lake Monona.
[10] The Cap Times described the potential park land adjacent to the marsh areas near the creek as “hilly and well-sprinkled with large shade trees,” including “two of the largest hickory trees in this part of the country, as well as some fine elms and box elders” that “commands a magnificent view of the lake and surrounding country.”
[i] 1923.12.15, WSJ
[ii] 1924.6.20 WSJ and Cap Times
[iii] 1924.6.14, WSJ
[iv] 1924.6.24
[v] 1924.7.18 WSJ
[vi] 1992, The Fishery of the Yahara Lakes, DNR Bulletin 181
[vii] 1925.2.27 WSJ
[viii] 1925.6.2 Cap Times
[ix] 1925.12.5. Cap Times
[x] 9.29.26 WSJ
[xi] 1926.12.19
[xii] 1926.7.10 Cap Times
[xiii] 1929.9.27, 1929.9.29 WSJ
[xiv] 1929.10.17
[xv] 1928.6.11 WSJ
[xvi] 1928.7.27 Cap Times
[xvii] 1929.10.17 Cap Times
[xviii] 1916.8.13. WSJ
[xix] 1920.8.10. Cap Times
[xx] 1920.8.12 CT
[xxi] 1920.11.6. WSJ
[xxii] 1923.10.23 CT
[xxiii] 1924.1.2. CT
[xxiv] 1925.5.23
[xxv] 1925.6.2. CT
[xxvi] 1925.6.5. Wisconsin State Journal
[xxvii] 1925.12.5. CT
[xxviii] 1928.5.10 CT
[xxix] 1927.3.28 CT
[xxx] 1927.4.11 WSJ
[xxxi] 1928.5.2 Cap Times
[xxxii] 1929.10.11 Cap Times
[xxxiii] 1928.10.12 WSJ
[xxxiv] 1929.12.31. East side sees new era, WSJ.
[xxxv] 1930.1.2 WSJ
[xxxvi] 1924.8.24 WSJ
© 2023 Maria C. Powell. All rights reserved.