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.
Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/series/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.
— Steve Carpenter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has studied the Yahara lakes since the 1970s.
The Yahara lakes — Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa and Kegonsa — are no clearer than they were 30 years ago, despite intensive efforts to improve them.
The Yahara watershed is crawling with scientists who keep trying new ways to clean up the lakes.
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.
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.
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