Environment
As rains intensify, sewage surges into Wisconsin waters
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Climate change is bringing heavier rains, making it tougher to keep untreated sewage and stormwater out of the Great Lakes.
Wisconsin Watch Media Partners Center (https://partners.wisconsinwatch.org/series/water-watch-wisconsin/)
Mercury taints the fish. Nitrates, pesticides and endocrine disruptors are seeping into private well water. Trout streams are running dry. In this series, the Center is examining the many threats to Wisconsin’s water supply and water quality.
— the Wisconsin Groundwater Coordinating Council
According to state estimates, nitrate is at unsafe levels in an estimated 94,000 Wisconsin households.
Read: Nitrate in water widespread, current rules no match for it
In Wisconsin, a state whose very name evokes lakes, rivers and abundant water, hundreds of thousands of people may consume drinking water tainted with at least one contaminant. Nearly half the private wells are unsafe, one study found.
Across central Wisconsin, in a region known as the Central Sands, residents have watched water levels in lakes and small streams drop for years. In a state with about 15,000 lakes and more than a quadrillion gallons of groundwater, it is hard to believe that water could ever be in short supply. Experts say, however, that the burgeoning number of so-called high-capacity wells is drawing down some ground and surface water.
The Capital Times and Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism proudly present Murky Waters, a four-part series examining threats to the quality of 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.
Climate change is bringing heavier rains, making it tougher to keep untreated sewage and stormwater out of the Great Lakes.
The latest findings from a study of drinking water wells and their surroundings finds manure from cows that is stored or spread on farm fields poses the highest risk for certain contaminants.
Tests show waste from Kewaunee County’s 97,000 head of cattle contaminates majority of wells, especially after rainfall or snowmelt; human waste also a factor.
The Society of Professional Journalists names ‘Failure at the Faucet’ the top investigative story among small independent news sites for 2016.
Funding for childhood lead poisoning prevention is down in Wisconsin, and proposals to better protect children from lead in drinking water have stalled in the Legislature.
The city of Milwaukee, with more than 70,000 lead service lines, has taken several steps in the past year to lower residents’ exposure to lead in drinking water, but activists say the city has not done enough.
Gaps in federal drinking water standards enforced by the state leave numerous school and day care sites untested for lead in drinking water; numerous lead service lines remain.
Eighteen communities in Wisconsin, including Milwaukee, plan to replace lead lines leading to schools and day care centers. View the areas of the state where the work is planned.
Nine months after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warned against flushing water systems before testing for lead, the state Department of Natural Resources has not yet passed that advice on to public water systems in Wisconsin.
A 2007 survey of private drinking water wells found 1 out of 3 had pesticides or their breakdown chemicals; farm groups oppose push for tougher atrazine rules.
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