from Poisoning Paradise: An Environmental History of Madison
By Maria C. Powell, PhD
Madison, “City of the Four Cesspools,” is bane of downstream communities
The new Nine Springs sewage plant discharged effluent to Lake Waubesa, which caused another predictable problem to rear its head—the ire of Madison’s downstream neighbors as pollution and foul odors increased Waubesa and Kegonsa. Passionate and angry letters to Madison newspaper editors from Waubesa and Kegonsa residents, and people who had cottages on the lake, including wealthy people from Chicago, began to appear in the early 1930s about the growing stench on the lake. People were aware of the root cause.
In 1933, “Papoose” wrote a letter to the Capital Times, “Query to the Council.” It began, “Madison, the ‘Four Lakes city!’ Why does the common council think they are good Samaritans if they send dirty sewage into lakes Waubesa and Kegonsa and make them as filthy as the city of Madison has made Lake Monona and Mendota?…Perhaps they might look up and see if there is a law that permits putting sewage into the lakes that acts as fertilizer…”[i]
The fact that Madison had still not resolved its own cesspool problem–Lake Monona—was not lost on Waubesa residents, including this one who wrote to the Capital Times: “The City of Madison feels proud, and justly so, of her wonderful scenic beauty, her parks, her numerous trees, and particularly her beautiful lakes. Indeed. Nature has lavished her grandeur unstintingly on the City of Madison. The Association of Commerce, and various business enterprises advertise widely and loudly the entrancing beauty of the Four Lakes region.” But, she went on, the city “allows her beautiful lakes to be polluted by pumping her sewage, both raw and treated, into them, thereby making cesspools of our sparkling lakes. The stench emanating from these polluted bodies of water has been the cause of much comment, and decided discomfort to thousands of residents of Madison and surrounding towns and outside visitors.”
Living on Waubesa, she said, had become “practically impossible due to the stifling odor arising from the sewage infested lake.” Though for years it was known as one of the best fishing lakes in the state, she said, “Now it is only a cesspool. It started when the City of Madison began to use Waubesa as a back yard toilet.”
The Association of Commerce, she further charged, was doing nothing about this. Madison authorities keep telling “the same old story” that “[s]ewerage does not cause the odor,” which, she noted “everyone knows” is not true. Like other downstream residents, she had harsh words for Madison and the state alike. “Madison…makes no effort to permanently remedy a situation caused solely by herself. The state of Wisconsin sits idly by and permits this pollution to continue unmolested. We get sympathy from the Democratic governor, and sneers from the efficient officers of the State Board of Health, where they still insist that the present condition is just a natural one. But where, among Wisconsin’s thousands of lakes, does such a deplorable condition exist? Only where the lakes are polluted by human agencies…. If not remedied promptly, it will be but a short time and Madison will be known, not as the beautiful Four Lakes City, but as the stench infested ‘City of the Four Cesspools.”[ii]
Chicago residents who had cottages on Waubesa also wrote letters to Madison papers. One commented that the scent of the Chicago stock yards was “like the perfume of roses compared to the smell of Lake Waubesa.”[iii] Another wrote an extensive letter published in full in the Wisconsin State Journal; “We who live here and own property here and spend of our income in your state resent deeply and bitterly the fact that Madison erected the sewage disposal plant with the express purpose of dumping its effluent into Waubesa. After all, Waubesa is some eight miles from the city proper, and with two lakes lying at your doors it would seem that IF this sewage was as harmless as your hired chemists, health officers, and other officials would have us to believe, it would have been much more consistent with economy to have discharge your sewage into Mendota—the largest and best able to handle this of the four lakes and the one lying immediately at your hand. We cannot help but question the sincerity of the statements of all the officials who contend that the discharge from the sewage disposal plant is pure enough to drink—else why travel eight long, expensive miles to find a place to discharge it? Added to this, WHY, we DEMAND, is Waubesa in her present state of pollution? She is still fed by bubbling springs; she is still drained by a river. If not contaminated form some outside source by some foreign matter, why should her waters reek of filth and stench? Since the only foreign matter emptied into her in sufficient quantities to contaminate her waters is the effluent from Madison’s sewage disposal plant, is it not logical to look to this as the source of contamination?”
“I write this letter in no spirit of personal animosity but I do write it in wrath; wrath that a city can be so indifferent to the health and general welfare of her citizens and her tourist-guests that she will deliberately utilize lakes, once virginal in their beauty and purity, for cesspools for the filth of her civilization. When science provides wholly sanitary and entirely adequate means of caring for such filth. I contend any city owes it to her citizens and her financial supporters to utilize such and to go to any limit to protect her lakes and keep them in their original state of cleanliness.”[iv]
Waubesa residents and “cottagers” organize, Alexius Baas advises
In July 1934, 350 people—including Lake Waubesa property owners and residents of Madison, McFarland, Beloit, Rockford, and Chicago—presented a petition to Government Schmedeman asking the government “to initiate proper steps to improve unsanitary conditions at Lake Waubesa.’ The petition said that the lack was previously “sweet and pure” but for the last two years, the water on the lake was covered with a “thick green scum, accompanied by a foul odor, as from sewage, and the shoreline is covered with a copper-colored, foul smelling substance.” It charged, further, that swimming in the lake was dangerous to health and nearby drinking water wells were becoming “impure” and a typhoid or kindred epidemic is feared.” The petition alleged that sewage from the city of Madison caused these conditions. The governor directed the state engineer to plan a weed removal project and also asked city bio-chemist Dr. Domogalla to investigate Waubesa conditions and report to him.[v],[vi]
In a letter printed on the front page of the Capital Times, Alexius Baas—openly admitting that he was exhausted from a 25-year battle for clean lakes, and about to “kiss the affair a last goodbye”—urged the Waubesa advocates to sue Madison for dumping sewage into Lake Monona. The Burke plant was built too small, was never efficient, and “one city administration after another denied the facts.” University scientists were called in “to befog the issue” and they blamed the stench and pollution on “Algae.” However, he added, “[w]hen faced with the fact that the more efficient the plant, the more nitrates it produced and hence the better food for Algae, they said nothing. And the pollution of the lakes went merrily on.” As the city grew rapidly and steadily the plant was more and more inefficient and “the lakes more filthy.” Then the Nine Springs plant was built—again he said, too small. The chemical treatments helped treat some symptoms, “[b]ut the fundamental trouble was and is the same—the city of Madison has made and is making cesspools of the Madison lakes. And until some other way of sewage disposal is found the conditions as we have them will persist.”
“Twenty-five years ago I started, single-handed, a campaign of education through the press concerning the pollution of our Madison lakes. I was called a “dammed fool,” a “fresh kid,” a “publicity seeker,” and much worse (in another letter he said he’d been called “crazy.” I took samples of Lake Monona water to one mayor after another. (They nearly drove the poor men out of the city hall—something the public was never able to do!) But nothing was done about it except to blandly deny the facts.”
He described how when he and others who formed the Clean Lakes Association had lake samples tested by a Chicago chemist, they showed that “the city of Madison has used the Madison lakes as an outdoor toilet for 43 years—and is so using them today!” The “politicians gave heed,” he said, and “the present sewage commission was at length made possible. What these gentlemen have done and are doing I do not know.”
“Waubesa is now bearing the brunt of the evil and, of course, Kegonsa is getting its share….In conclusion, let me say again what I have said for 25 years. There is one way—and only one—permanently to remedy the pollution of our lakes: that is to stop pouring pollution into them. Take the sewage out of the lakes. Tired as I am of fighting for clean lakes, I will gladly join in any movement that has this goal in view.”[vii]
Following the advice of the Clean Lakes Association, Waubesa residents met and agreed to hire an outside expert to study the problem, and also began talking about a lawsuit. [viii] Alexius Baas again advised the group in a letter to the editor: “Sixty-five thousand people use the lakes as an outdoor toilet. Then they hire an expert to treat the stench. Does that remedy the evil—or merely subdue the symptom? I leave the answer to your common sense. Do not expect any aid from the city health department or the state board of health. These officials have known these conditions from the start. They began by denying that they existed. When forced to admit the evil they allay the symptom. When asked to remedy the fundamental trouble they say in effect, “Wotinell are you going to do about it?” Now, he continued, “the city of Madison through its representatives offers to assist you in your present difficulties if you raise $1000 to buy chemicals. Analyze that. Do you think our city officials are making this offer out of big heartedness—or because they know the city is guilty?”
As for the group’s plan to sue Madison Mr. Baas warned that “There is also an attempt by the city officials to hide behind the skirts of the Metropolitan sewage district. But Madison comprises 90 per cent of the district. And they expect you to swallow this childish evasiveness. If the city can be sued, so can the district. And if a suit is won against the district the city of Madison will have to stand 90 per cent of the damages.”[ix]
Public Relations: Association of Commerce, Madison attorney respond
Likely to counter all the scathing letters from Madison’s downstream neighbors, one week after the “City of the Four Cesspools” letter was published the Wisconsin State Journal published a full page Madison promotional for the city’s first Dollar Day, created by the merchant’s bureau of the Association of Commerce. Headlines screamed “Visitors Will Find Joy, Relaxation in Parks and Lakes,” “Visitors View Nature’s Splendors, Man-Made Beauty in Tour of City,” and “Madison, the City Born to Beauty, Offers Its Citizens and Neighbors Pleasure and Profit on Dollar Day.” Photos included a sailboat on Lake Mendota, with the caption: “A bit of charm, a touch of beauty in the millions that have made Madison a city of splendor brightened by man’s heeding careful communion with nature.”[x]
Meanwhile, some city officials began publicly recognizing the seriousness of the problems. At the end of August, 1934, Madison attorney Harry Sauthoff gave a speech on the radio that was also published in the Capital Times. He quoted Adolph Kannenberg from the Public Service Commission: “Perhaps the greatest violation of the rights of the public in public waters consists in poisoning the waters by polluting substances. Rivers and lakes are a convenient and cheap means of disposing of sewage and trade wastes. Sewage and the liquid wastes of industries discharged into lakes, rivers and water courses frequently rob the public of the rights granted by the constitution and laws of the state.”
“We of Dane county,” Sauthoff said, “have been blessed by a beneficent providence with four of the most beautiful lakes in the world… Take these lakes of ours out of the setting, and Madison’s fame would quickly vanish into naught. We have been richly endowed by nature with her greatest gift—water. This great inheritance is not only a source of wealth to our people, but it also administers to the health, happiness, and contentment of our people.”
“What have we done to preserve these gifts, not only for ourselves but also for our posterity?” he asked. “Nothing whatever.” Instead, he said, “we have for years dumped our sewage into these lakes and let nature take its course. The result of this pollution of our beautiful waters has been that our lakes have become foul and unfit for recreational purposes.” Though Mendota was protected when Metropolitan Sewerage District was created, due to pressure on the city from wealthy homeowners on that lake, “Lake Monona has been the dumping ground for the city’s sewage so long that the lake is rank with algae and weed growth.”
Sauthoff admitted that sewage plant effluents into Waubesa contain nitrates that were stimulating algae growth, causing bad odors that would hit Lake Kegonsa in a year or two. “This crime against nature and mankind,” he stated, “should be averted, and we can do it if we want to. How?” He supported copper sulphate treatments, but said they were like “taking an aspirin tablet for a headache” because they provided temporary relief, but didn’t address the root cause of the problem. Instead, he argued that placing the effluent in running water would “mitigate the evil” and proposed to build a pipeline to pump sewage south of all four lakes. The pipeline project could also provide many much-needed public works jobs in the midst of the depression. [xi]
When Beloit got wind of the proposal to pump the sewage plant effluent to the Rock River below Stoughton, an editorial titled “Beloit Wants None of this Bright Idea” was published in the Beloit Daily News. “This proposal would appear to be a plan to pipe Madison’s stench—which has driven property owners and lake dwellers from the shores of Lake Waubesa—out of Dane County and into Rock County,” the editor wrote. “Rock County wants no part of any such silly plan.”[xii]
City and county point fingers, pass the buck back and forth
As Waubesa residents’ advocacy and threats of lawsuits ramped up, government agencies began finger pointing about who was most responsible. At a Common Council meeting, the city lakes and rivers commission issued a resolution saying city is not entirely responsible for Waubesa’s pollution, Dane County should construct locks at the lake’s outlet to raise the water levels, and the county should be “the directing force for any action to remedy the situation.” City health officials and university scientists continued to assure the public and city leaders that odors were not caused by sewage, but by decaying algae. Mayor Law declared that “the county, and not the city alone, should take the initiative in cleaning the lakes” because if the “city should attempt it alone, it would look like an admission of the city’s guilt.”[xiii] [1]
A few days later, county supervisor C.J. Ballam —also vice president of the Dane County Sportsmens League– introduced a resolution to set up a county park committee “to supervise development of parks and lakes” and “to press immediate action on remedying condition of Lakes Monona and Waubesa.” According to the newspaper report, the “immediate cause” of the resolution was “agitation for a cleaning up of Dane county lakes.” Modeled after the Milwaukee county park commission, the Dane County body would include three county board members and four citizens appointed by the Dane County chairman. Supervisors disagreed on the solutions to the pollution; some argued that it should be piped to the Wisconsin River, while others—especially those from outlying townships– said “the city of Madison deposited the sewage there and should take it away.”[xiv]
A few weeks later, after a two day hearing, the county announced that a county judiciary committee would do a “more detailed study into methods of cleaning up Madison area lakes.” The committee would be advised by the conservation department, public service commission, state board of health the metropolitan sewage commission and “all other interested parties.”[xv]
In March 1935, the county board committee recommended the construction of locks and spillways at Lake Waubesa and Kegonsa outlets to improve the condition of the lakes, and would seek federal funds for this. It also recommended that the Nine Springs sewage outlet be extended beyond Stoughton, with CCC labor if possible.[xvi] Madison attorney William J.P. Aberg urged the county board to make the lock construction the number one priority because the lake stench was decreasing the home values of Lake Waubesa residents, but was skeptical of the plan to pipe the sewage south of Stoughton, estimating that it would cost $500,000. [xvii] The Burke sewage plant, he admitted to the committee, was still only 50% efficient and sending raw sewage into Lake Monona, as was the Mendota State Hospital, but both would be eliminated soon.[xviii]
The debates and finger-pointing went on and debates shifted, at times humorously. In April 1935, the chairman of the board of public works recommended that the county form a rivers and lakes commission like the city’s, and argued that even if locks were built, shallow bays dredged, and the Burke plant shut down, the algae problem would continue and require ongoing copper sulphate treatments (his comments here are funny, maybe include). This would require a county body, he asserted, since the city had no control over lakes Waubesa and Kegonsa.[xix] Responding to this a couple days later, supervisor Ballam placed the blame on raw sewage, saying the city of Madison and the Metropolitan Sewerage District were responsible; he proposed that rather than spending money on copper sulphate, the city should prevent city wastes from discharging into the lakes. “This is no new problem,” he told the State Journal, “and its responsibilities have been known to city officials for the last decade. It has been argued back and forth by various city and lake organizations until the buck-passing has become a current joke.”[xx]
Kegonsa residents get into the battle, finger pointing continues
As the city attorney had predicted the year before, Lake Kegonsa began suffering the same algae and stench problems as Waubesa. In August 1935, 250 frustrated residents of Madison, Stoughton, and other towns downstream of the city met in a park near Lake Kegonsa to discuss what to do about these problems, which they said were “driving persons to abandon their lake shore cottages and causing a loss of resort business.” They accused the city of Madison and the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage commission of turning the “once beautiful” Lakes Waubesa and Kegonsa into “nothing more than Madison’s privies’’—and the county and state of “indulging in a dangerous policy of indifference.”[2]
Mayor Law, invited to respond to these accusations, claimed that cleaning them up was a county, not a city of Madison problem. “It is not a fact that the sewerage is piped away from Mendota and Monona and placed in your lakes,” he asserted (also noting that the Burke plant still discharged half-treated sewage into Lake Monona).
Rebutting Law, chairperson of the new Dane county parks and lakes commission told him he had letters from Chicago attorneys “in which it is admitted that the sewerage commission was organized for no other reason than the protection of Lake Mendota,” but “later, when protests became too strong, it was also forced to take Lake Monona under its protection.” Now, he charged, “the attitude of the Metropolitan Sewerage commission is that Lakes Mendota and Monona must be kept clean, but the ‘h—l’ with the others.” He also said that “the more efficient the sewage disposal plant, the more soluble nitrates in the water to feed the algae.[xxi] Many residents wanted MMSD to pump the sewage beyond all four lakes but the commissioner said that would cost at least $800,000.
The Dane County parks commission secretary mentioned the new parks commission formed earlier in the year was creating policies and investigating the causes of the pollution.[3] Efforts were being made to get government aid in building locks and dams to control the water. The county would also be doing chemical treatments on the lower lakes. “It is a large problem and the people of the county can be assured that every effort is being made to get started as soon as possible,” he assured the group.[xxii]
Residents at the meeting were not re-assured, and decided to form the Lake Kegonsa Protective association, which would work “through the courts if necessary to “rebeautify the lake.” The association would hire their own independent scientists because. Mayor Law was supportive but also told the group that it was “too bad that you have to take up a private subscription for this…Government agencies should handle it.” Reflecting deep distrust for the government, including Madison, one attendee said “not one unbiased chemist may be found in the vicinity of Madison.” Another pointed his ire at the state. “Wisconsin advertises its lakes and summer resorts,” he observed, “and yet allows discouraging conditions, such as exist here, right at the very front door of the state.” After sharing that his son had an infected cut from the lake, he said “[t]here is something here which is endangering our health. It is up to the state to protect us.”
State gets involved, meetings at State Capitol
A hearing was held at the state capitol two days later.[xxiii] Governor La Follette opened the meeting and Dr. C. A. Harper, chairman of the state board of health, chaired it. Governor La Follette said the purpose of the meeting was to ascertain what the problems were, how it could be corrected, and if the state could help in any practical way, he would “see that the aid is accorded immediately.”[4]
Finger pointing continued. The mayor and city biochemist Dr. Domogalla argued that the county should pay for copper sulphate treatments—but Lake Kegonsa and Waubesa property owners pointed to the city and MMSD as the main “contaminators of the lakes” and threatened to force the state to act against them. County supervisors felt the county was being asked to be the “fall guy” for the city and MMSD, and wanted proof that Madison’s sewerage system wasn’t responsible before taking action. The county board chair charged the state board of health to find out the source of the problem.
One presenter quoted preeminent scientists Dr. Birge and Dr. Juday at the University of Wisconsin, who, after studying the problem, concluded that sewerage treatment removes solids but increases nitrates, phosphates, and “other materials which materially aid the growth of algae.” Based on these expert opinions, the presenter argued that sewage should be pumped south of Stoughton. Dr. Domogalla and an MMSD representative disagreed, saying the sewer plant effluent was not contaminating the lakes and many other lakes in Wisconsin without sewer discharges had similar conditions. Both advocated for more chemical treatments as the primary solution.[5]
Kegonsa and Waubesa residents continued to express their frustrations that Lake Mendota residents—and they knew this included Governor La Follette—had been treated preferentially. “When the landed proprietors on Lake Mendota object, the conditions are taken care of, but we on Kegonsa and Waubesa have to whistle for our relief,” one said.[xxiv]
About a week later the state board of health met again in the capitol and a committee was appointed to investigate the lake pollution problems and come up with recommendations. A resolution asked Dr. Harper to call a meeting of the board of health, sewerage commission and lakes committee members to figure out a way to get funds for lake improvement. A “five point program of action” was agreed on: 1. Copper sulphate treatments; 2. Construction of locks and dams; 3. Organization of an official Dane county group on the lakes; 4. Dredging of the lakes by Dane county and the Metropolitan sewerage commission; 5. Piping the sewerage effluent around the lakes, to be done by Dane county and the Metropolitan sewerage commission. Recognizing that they had no power to force these steps, the committee called on the state board of health to come up with a “peaceful solution of the problems.” The committee stressed that the copper sulphate treatments were the top priority and this should be a county-wide program.
Notably, some committee members pointed out that the Burke plant was still sending partially untreated sewage to the Nine Springs plant, which could “be used as a driving wedge to show that the sewerage commission is contributing to the contamination of the lakes, and to force the commission to bear a portion of the expense for the treatment.” After the attorney for the citizens group, O.S. Loomis, warned the committee that the Metropolitan sewerage commission would “hedge on its part of the program,” members agreed that this would be met with legal action.”[xxv]
Chicago expert weighs in, more meetings in the capitol
Just ten days later, the Chicago health commissioner, Dr. Herman N. Bundesen—who had been contracted by residents, with supervisor Ballam’s support and participation, to study the lake problems—presented his report to Ballam. Dr. Bundesen analyzed samples of the Yahara River where it flows into Lake Monona and found a large amount of bacteria, indicating sewage–though residents had been told repeatedly by city officials that no untreated sewage was entering the lakes. The reported deemed Monona and the lower lakes “contaminated by sewage and unfit for either swimming or drinking.”[xxvi]
At a state board of health meeting in the state capital the same day, a committee was appointed to decide how to raise the $14,000 necessary for treating Lakes Waubesa and Kegonsa in 1936. The committee included three members of the citizen’s committee, the county park and lakes commission, the state board of health and the finance committee of the county board. Dr. Harper from the state board of health, who chaired the meeting, reported two key decisions at the three-hour meeting: 1. That the lakes must be cleaned up in 1936 and 2. That all parties concerned will cooperate in raising the $14,000. The city biochemist Domogalla said treatment of Lake Waubesa from May to August would require 75,000 pounds of chemicals and Kegonsa would require 100,000 pounds. Funds would also be needed for new barges, labor costs, storing the chemicals, and laboratory tests.[xxvii]
When asked whether the sewage in the lake was responsible for the algae and stench, according to the Capital Times, Dr. Domogalla and Dr. Harper “stated that no one knew just what instigated the pollution in the lakes.” A “squabble” arose about the role of the Burke plant. Harper tried to deflect concerns about Burke, telling attendees who pushed the Burke question that “regardless of what conditions existed in the past, Waubesa and Kegonsa must be cleaned up in 1936. Use of those two lakes is financially important to Dane county and to the communities, to say nothing of the recreational aspects,” he said. Some county board members also continued to blame the lakes’ condition on sewerage discharges, but Dr. Domogalla and Dr. Harper again denied that. “The board of health has studied pollution of lakes for years,” Dr. Harper said, “but we couldn’t make a statement on the witness stand as to what causes the growth of algae. No one in the country knows at this state of experimentation.”
City, county, and state officials argued over who would pay for the chemical treatments. Mayor Law highlighted that Madison pays 95 per cent of the cost of the sewerage district to asking them to pay would put an unfair burden on Madison. Metropolitan Sewerage District commissioner John C. White argued that they had no legal authority to disburse any money and that “we can’t accept the responsibility until we know that sewage is responsible for the condition of the lakes…I know that lakes are polluted with algae even if sewerage isn’t dumped into them.” The citizens’ attorney Loomis didn’t care where the money came from as long as the lakes were cleaned up in 1936 and felt that the Metropolitan sewage district should pay for at least part of it. County lakes and parks commission secretary George Gaffney said the majority of the county board, not served by the district, would not likely approve this plan.
Dr. Bundeson’s report prompted some of the first public comments directly about public health effects of the lake pollution in the debates to date. Supervisor Ballam argued “My ward is being contaminated to the extent that everyone could be put in the hospital. As supervisor of that ward I can say that there will be court action taken unless something is done to clean the lakes.” Most at the meeting, however, focused on the negative effects on tourism and the economy. Stoughton resident F.M. Marsh, president of the Kegonsa protective association chimed in that these squabbles should be forgotten and everyone should work together wards a solution for cleaning the lakes. “The main thing is to clean up the lakes so that tourists can come here.”
The Dane County park commission decided on September 20 to ask the state board of health to ask the sewerage district to kick in money for the treatments, arguing that the county board would not likely approve funding unless the sewerage district did so “if only for good will.”
Mayor Law calls Chicago report “crime,” says publicity hurts Madison
After Chicago health commissioner Dr. Bundeson’s report was released publicly on September 15, Mayor Law was livid, telling the Capital Times that it was “a crime” to report these results “without first making absolutely certain that there could be no possible mistake.”[6] Dr. Bundeson should have taken his own samples, he charged, because nobody could be certain that the water samples were taken from where Supervisor Ballam said they were. Ballam, in response, said he had “eyewitness” that the samples were from the locations specified.
Law also railed on the Capital Times for releasing the report because “that is the type of publicity which really hurts the city of Madison. We go about the state trying to sell the city to others, and then such publicity is given space. How can we paint a good picture of the city when it is continually being knocked at home?” Further, he argued, “with the scrapping of the Burke plant” pollution problems would be taken care of, and that it was a “grave mistake for persons to keep picking on the city while they know improvements are being made.” He compared it to citizens complaining about the city’s snow removal.
A few weeks later, Law again publicly attacked the release of Bundeson’s report, charging that criticism of his administration was unjustified because it was the fault of previous city administrations. “During the last several years,” he told the Capital Times, “the city has done everything within its power to purify and protect Lakes Mendota and Monona.” Criticisms should have been launched 10 years ago when “nothing was being done to protect the lakes.” His administration had already spent several hundred thousand dollars to create the Madison Metropolitan sewerage district, worked to get county cooperation in cleaning up the lakes “over which the city has no jurisdiction,” and spent $15,000 a year for chemical treatments of Lakes Monona and Mendota. The city was also working with Oscar Mayer to construct an onsite waste disposal plant that would be completed in a few months, at which point the Burke plant would be abandoned.
Notably, Law’s comments to the Capital Times were among the first to mention two other obvious and significant sources of pollution to the lakes—city development and farm runoff. “The building of homes and general growth of the city around the lakes also aids in changing the character of the Madison lakes,” May said. Further, he added, “Surface drainage from surrounding farm lands also causes a great deal of pollution during the rain storms with no means available to prevent it.”[xxviii],[7]
Citizens mock Mayor Law and MMSD
Citizens who had been fighting lake pollution were quick to send letters to the papers mocking Mayor Law’s response. A Waubesa lakeshore property owner, Charles Givens, wrote a sarcastic, humorous letter to the Capital Times. “Isn’t it too bad that Madison’s “aesthetic” mayor,” he began “laments the recent publicity given Chicago Health Commissioner Bundesen’s findings, and wide-open report of the scurrilous condition of Madison’s lakes? Too bad that said mayor laments that such publicity is destructive “of all the work” which he and others have attempted to do in order to “sell Madison to the world”!”
To Law’s complaints, he responded, “we public have some ideas of our own on this tragic question…If I were to write a play on this whole nauseating business, I’d name it “The Great Travesty,” a malodorous melodrama in several villainous acts. And my theatre program would read something like this: Theatre: “THE FOUR LAKES” Time: THE PRESENT, Cast of Characters: The Great Offender—The Metropolitan Sewage District, The Sidesteppers—Dr. B. Domogalla, Dr. C.A. Harper, Major Buckpasser—Hon. Mayor James R. Law, The Incensed Mob—Tax payers and Citizens.” He described the setting and first act: “A miasma-laden breeze would be blowing gusts into the faces of the assembled audience…I would have the scene in the first act show the Burke and Nine Springs plant of the Metropolitan Sewage district…The recent Ballam-Bundesen incident, in which a Chicago citizen of spunk also figures, is another fateful episode in this disgraceful drama.”
Givens argued that the “impeccable leaders in this great travesty are no longer able to foist their sleight-of-hand tricks upon a fed-up and sophisticated public,” and asked “How much longer are we as citizens and voters going to stand for this fiasco—this impudence and insult by a handful of private and public officials? … it is absurd and preposterous for any of us to endure the insults and impositions of a private machine which grossly persists, with the aid of political henchmen, in foisting upon our citizens a menacing nuisance such as the dumping of sewage into our God-given lakes…The present lake pollution episode will be remembered as a black page in Madison and Dane county history. Those perpetrating and condoning the crime against us and our children, attempting to cajole us into the belief that we are imagining wrongs that do not exist, that our lakes are still as pure as our grandpas and inhabiting tribes found them, will be labeled with the anathema which they rightly deserve. They are facing a boomerang that will return to destroy them. The stigma falls upon the city of Madison, and not upon any particular lake. People from afar say—“Don’t those lakes at Madison have a terrible odor?” If we really want the lakes cleaned up we will have them cleaned up speedily. It is up to us. We must “get together” and ACT.”[xxix]
Alexius Baas wrote yet another scathing letter to the Capital Times, addressed to H.O. Lord, chief engineer at the sewerage district, rebutting his assertion that the lakes were polluted before the sewer plants were built—calling this “the same old story of denial, evasion and subterfuge to which we taxpayers have had to listen as long as the evil has existed.” As he had in many previous letters, he said before the sewerage was discharged into them, the lakes were “as clean and wholesome a group of freshwater lakes as could be found anywhere in the world. All the older residents of this community will bear me out.” You and the officials who shut your eyes to the truth and who try to kid the world into denying it with you are sowing a whirlwind for this city which we taxpayers one day will have to reap…The time for denials is past.”[xxx]
County takes actions
After the spate of contentious government meetings and scathing citizen letters, supervisor Ballam called for a study, arguing that Madison lakes are “practically stagnant bodies of water” and “[s]tream and lake pollution in Wisconsin by domestic and industrial sewage and waste is the greatest menace to fish life and general health today.” [xxxi] By the end of 1935, the new county parks board had secured $14,500 for chemical treatments for Lakes Waubesa and Kegonsa, “as a temporary measure while further investigations are carried on to get to the bottom of the pollution cause”—and a $500 fund for a preliminary survey of causes was appropriated. Land was being acquired to build locks at Lake Waubesa and Kegonsa. The lakes would be stocked wish fish “to bring in summer tourists.” The committee declared: “The whole purpose of the program is to rejuvenate Dane county. We want to make it a mecca for tourists. Years ago, people used to come here from long distances because of the hunting and fishing, but they don’t any longer. All the fishing has been transferred to the north, and people go right by Dane county.”[xxxii]
[1] Meanwhile, a sportsmen’s group was circulating petitions to raise money for the locks and the city engineer said the state board of health engineer was investigating the issue and would be sharing a report.
[2] They also placed blame on the commercial carp pens in the Yahara River, which they said blocked natural flow, causing stagnation.
[3] According to chapter 27, sections 27.02 to 27.06 laws of Wisconsin
[4] As for the complaint that carp were contributing to the problem, the chairman of the state conservation commission that carp helped to keep the lake clean and that the commission was now planting sturgeon in the lakes as “scavengers.”
[5] He said the Burke plant abandonment had taken care of Lake Monona (not true)
[6] Law told the Capital Times reporter at the end of the interview that he was “wrought up” by a hearing that morning at the state board of health.
[7] He also said floor drains in machine shops had been checked to prevent oils from going into the lakes from storm sewers, beaches were tested several times a week and treated two times a week to protect bathers.
[i] 1933.3.25 CT
[ii] 1934.8.6 CT
[iii] 1934.7.19 CT
[iv] 1934.8.4 WSJ
[v] 1934.7.18 CT
[vi] 1934.7.19 WSJ
[vii] 1934.7.20
[viii] 1934.7.26 WSJ
[ix] 1934..7.29 CT
[x] 1934. 8.12 WSJ
[xi] 1934.8.31 CT
[xii] 1934.9.2. WSJ
[xiii] 1934.8.4 CT
[xiv] 1934.8.8 CT
[xv] 1934.8.25 CT
[xvi] 1935.3.24 CT
[xvii] 1935.3.25 CT
[xviii] 1935.3.25 WSJ.
[xix] 1935.4.7 WSJ
[xx] 1935.4.9 WSJ
[xxi] 1935.8.26 WSJ
[xxii] 1935.8.23, 1935.8.25 WSJ
[xxiii] 1935.8.28 CT
[xxiv] 1935.8.28 CT
[xxv] 1935.9.5 CT
[xxvi] 1935.9.15 CT
[xxvii] 1935.9.16 CT
[xxviii] 1935.10.9. CT
[xxix] 1935.10.10.CT
[xxx] 1935.10.23 CT
[xxxi] 1935.10.25 WSJ
[xxxii] 1935.12.31 WSJ
© 2023 Maria C. Powell. All rights reserved.