Opinion

Problems in city’s environment vast

When I was a freshman, I wanted to live next to Lake Mendota. I knew the southeast dorms were not for this small-town boy. I felt lucky getting my first choice of Kronshage Hall, and when I moved in, my view of the lake from my room was one of the best in Madison. Even now, I still go out to Chamberlin and run along Lakeshore Path down to Picnic Point because it is one of the most serene runs in all of Madison.

When I read the Wisconsin State Journal on Sunday, I learned that what is the best running path in Madison was part of a landfill 36 years ago.

Last Friday, water officials for the city of Madison recommended closing the city's oldest well, located on the near east side, due to high levels of carbon tetrachloride in the water. In addition, these chemicals — which possibly came from an old paint factory on East Johnson Street — may have leaked into the aquifer.

With the growth of the city in the last century, there was little care for the environment. What we now consider prime real estate along the lakes were dumps for the city's garbage a few decades ago. In addition, much of the fill for low-lying swamplands on the isthmus and in the campus area came from the trash of our grandparents. The foundations for the Monona Terrace and Lot 60 were created from the tin cans and newly invented plastics of the 1950s. Also, the industries of Madison during the baby boomer era took little care for the environment, and now the paint factory that dumped carcinogens on the ground behind the plant is poisoning the ground water.

To make matters worse, the city has no idea exactly what was buried in many of the former landfills. This includes the University Bay Landfill that is less than a kilometer away from the lakeshore dorms.

Madison, a city that prides itself on being environmentally friendly, was built on the garbage of its past that is poisoning its current residents.

It should be no shock that the massive growth of American cities was accompanied with a sheer lack of care for the environment. After all, houses had to be built, the university had to expand and new industries fueled this migration of Wisconsinites moving from the rural areas to Madison. Development took precedence over the environment, and what we treasure now, such as the lakes, were seen as convenient dumping grounds for the byproducts of our city's progress.

While there is value in debating the history of the city's growth and the havoc that growth is now wreaking on the city's environment, this debate will not solve the more immediate problem of Madison's groundwater and other potential environmental problems. Currently, no one knows the full extent of the damage to these areas. Due to the nature of modern chemicals, we do not understand how they interact with the environment after disposal except that they are pervasive and potentially dangerous.

The recent news about our local environment has raised more questions than answers: What exactly was dumped 40 years ago on the edges of the isthmus? What are the types and levels of pollution coming from industrialization? How are these pollutants interacting with our air and groundwater? Most important, what can we in Madison do to clean up our lakes, groundwater and land?

Fortunately, there is something the campus community can do to help our city: use the Wisconsin Idea. Developed a century ago and often misunderstood today, former Chancellor Charles Van Hise sought to bring the University of Wisconsin into the home of every Wisconsinite. With the current problems of the city's groundwater and potentially worse problems that our environment could face in the future, the city of Madison needs the Wisconsin Idea more than ever. Additional funding for undergraduate and graduate research, aspiring environmental studies, chemistry and soil science students, to name a few, can help the city identify and provide recommendations to solve this problem.

While the closing down of a well on the near east side and the realization that parts of our city are built on landfills may not seem like a huge impact for UW and Madison, it could very well impact the future. There is only one way to determine just how toxic the city is: send out students to research our community in the true spirit of the Wisconsin Idea.

Jeff Carnes (jmcarnes@wisc.edu) is a senior majoring in linguistics.