I am from Menomonie, WI but now live in Madison. I go back to Menomonie a lot to visit my parents. I usually get some fishing in on the Red Cedar River between Lake Tainter and Lake Menomin. Lake Menomin use to be a hot spot back in the early 80's and they had beaches where people swam and people fished and waterskied. Since I moved back to WI in 1997 I noticed the lake is now PURE GREEN from about the 4th of July till October.
Is this normal? I heard the Turkey Store dumps a lot of stuff in the yellow river which dumps into the Red Cedar river not to mention there is a lot of farmers putting down chemicals on their crops in the area.
This body of water is trashed. It turns really green. Almost like the top foot of the water is green paint. You cant eat the fish because of the mercury or phosphorus or whatever is in their. You cant swim in their it would be just to nasty.
Isnt their like a clean water act of 1972 or something?
What can be done? Something is seriously wrong with this area. :(
scubohuntr
07-26-2002, 02:53 PM
There is a Clean Water Act, but it's about toothless for things like that. Chances are that the agricultural contribution hasn't changed in the last quarter century or so; if anything it's probably decreased as farming becomes more efficient. The EPA is probably living in the turkey outfit's back pocket, so they probably aren't dumping much, and what they do dump is probably cleaner than the river water (unless, of course, they've got the clout of Tyson, who got away with dumping countless tons of chicken by-products in rivers in Arkansas for years. Guess who got the kickbacks on that one?)
I'm not familiar with Menominie, but I'll bet if you drove around the lake (don't want to put your boat in a cesspit like that) you'd find that almost every foot of shoreline is manicured, irrigated, heavily fertilized lawns. The riparian vegetation is long gone. Unlike agriculture, there are no controls on fertilizer and pesticide application by homeowners. They just go buy a bunch on sale at Home Depot and spread it until it looks right. Most of the time they are applying fertilizer at anywhere from five to several hundred times the recommended rates, and hardly any of them ever do a soil test. If the development goes back a few decades, many of the sewage systems discharge right into the lake. All that nitrogen, and especially phosphorus, is fertilizing algae when it washes off their overfertilized lawns into the lake. The algae blooms and turns the whole lake pea-soup green until it runs out of oxygen, when it becomes a stinking slime pit from decomposing dead algae. Then they whine about the water quality of the lake in front of their multi-bazillion dollar homes.
Biggestfish
07-27-2002, 12:59 AM
scubohuntr, you hit the nail on the head. This IS the biggest problem with the lake turning the pea soup color. Too many people remove all of the natural vegetation. Take a look around the lake how many people had decided it is more important to have a perfect sand-no weed shoreline. Romove the weeds and all the crap just runs in the lake. Even lawn clippings cause increased algee bloom. I live on a lake here in northern MN and I am ONE of the few people who have left the shoreline in its natural condition. The only place that is cleared out is where my boat motor runs in and out by my dock...In fact I leave at least 5 feet of tall grass on the edge of my lawn before the shoreline. I wish more people would follow my lead, plus it is a lot less work to keep up.