Throughout its history, the state of Wisconsin has been associated with pristine lakes and clear streams that are filled with fish and are transparent to their rocky bottoms.

Now governmental agencies are taking steps to ensure that connection continues.

Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk announced last week an intergovernmental agreement between 19 central municipalities in the county about how they will work together to inform the public about urban–storm water pollution.

“Storm–water runoff from urban and rural areas is the single biggest pollutant of our lakes and streams,” Falk said.

Falk said controlling the flow of storm runoff into the county’s water resources is a “high priority.”

Dane County is not the only Wisconsin community with water woes. Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade told the International Joint Commission on Great Lakes Water Management Study in January “the waters of Green Bay are contaminated with PCB’s and Chicago blames Milwaukee for their water contamination problems.”

Paul McGinley, assistant professor of engineering and extension groundwater at the University of Wisconsin, said for the most part PCBs are not included in storm runoff.

“PCBs are complex chemical compounds that stick to sediment and can accumulate in the food chain,” McGinley said. McGinley said that while PCBs can poison fish and challenge ecosystems, they are not considered a runoff contaminate.

McGinley said PCBs are generally byproducts of manufacturing plants and are the focus of an organized clean up in Wisconsin’s Fox River.

In last Thursday’s State of the State address, Gov. Jim Doyle promised protecting the state’s water resources would be a major focus of his administration.

“After years of deadlock and fighting, we are moving forward to cleaning up the dangerous toxic chemicals that have polluted the Fox River,” Doyle said. “Yesterday, the state, the EPA and one of the paper companies announced a down payment to start what may become the largest cleanup of a river in North America.”

Doyle called the action “a good start for this, the year of water.”

In Milwaukee, storm runoff has continued to cause overflow dumping of sewage at various levels of treatment since the installation of the city’s deep–tunnel system. A state audit of the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District found in July of 2002 that 13 billion gallons of overflow sewage into Lake Michigan since 1994.

MMSD spokesman Bill Graffin said steps were being taken to control the problem.

“Realize Milwaukee has two treatment plants, which on a typical dry day treat 200 million gallons of sanitary waste,” Graffin said. “On a storm day, that amount can multiply by five or six times, and its not because people are flushing their toilets more.”

Graffin said the city’s deep tunnel absorbs almost all of the city’s storm runoff quickly.

“With a combined sewage system, the storm flow gets to the deep tunnel very quickly,” Graffin said.

In the past, Graffin said, overflows had been because of a lack of consideration for addition storm runoff coming from the city’s suburbs arriving late.

“Keep in mind a tremendous amount of water comes to you, and it’s flowing because of gravity, so you can’t stop it,” Graffin said. “We need to reserve space in the deep tunnel for overflows that come to the suburbs 12 to 18 hours after rainfall.”

Graffin agreed with Falk’s statement that runoff was the largest pollutant.

“Every day it’s dry out pollution collects on the ground,” Graffin said. “When you get rain you get what’s called a ‘first flush,’ where all of water coming into the system has the worst dirt washed into it.”

Those pollutants can include oil and grease from cars, chemicals, pesticides and herbicides, and pet waste.

McGinley said pesticides and herbicides, which are used to help crops grow, also can spark growth of plant–like algae once they runoff into a lake. The algae and plant growth can then overgrow the waterway, wreaking havoc on ecosystems.