Full interview text

The following interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

Stacy: you’re listening to the VMO Show. I’m your host Stacy Harbaugh. I’m in the studio today to interview a local clean water advocate Lance Green who is the co-chair of the Friends of Starkweather Creek and we’re here to talk about what’s up with the creek and what you can do to get involved and protect the water in your backyard. So welcome to the WVMO studio Lance.

Lance: Glad we can let people know about our creek. It’s such a gem on the east side of Madison.

Stacy: It is a gem. And we love our water in the WVMO listening area. So tell us a little bit more about the Friends of Starkweather Creek, your purpose and what you’re out there to do.

Lance: well, we organized in 2002. We’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that’s run by volunteers and we advocate for the health of the creek. We have a bunch of canoes over by Olbrich park. Sometimes we paddle, sometimes we take bicycles along the creek or take nature walks along the creek. But we also do a lot of surveying – and a lot more too. One of the things we do, of course, is to try to improve the habitat for the critters that live along the creek. We’re out there removing invasives with work crews and planting a bunch of native plants so that we have a lot more native habitat along the creek.

Stacy: I think that’s amazing that you do so much as a group of volunteers and really passionate people who want to see that little part of our ecosystem thrive and be healthy.

Lance: We’ve got a 25-mile square watershed that empties at Olbrich park. You can see the creek going out there where there’s boat landings. The whole east side of Madison, out past the airport, past the interstate, all of that drains into Lake Monona through our creek. Our concerns are what goes on in that area and what’s draining into the creek.

Stacy: And in such an urban area, too, you mentioned that we have the airport, we’ve got highways and byways and neighborhoods, and lots of humanity that’s all packed in to that area of our community. It really does take that thoughtful group of committed citizens to be a voice for something that doesn’t have a voice.

Lance: It’s true. And all the critters that live there don’t have a voice so we advocate for them. It’s a large area, and a lot of things go on in that area, so we work with city engineering on projects that are going on near the creek. They are doing a watershed study since we had that 2018 flood. They are studying the various watersheds in the city to see if they can help improve and not have such a big risk of flooding in there. So we work with them on projects that are going on.

We work with parks department. For instance there is the Voight property, just off of Milwaukee street was this big old farm that’s been there for 150 years. The Voights decided a few years ago to sell what’s left of that property between Highway 30 and Milwaukee Street and so, we looked at that very carefully, noting that the creek runs right by there, north of Milwaukee. One of the things we focus on is a green corridor for life. From Olbrich Park and north of Garver to O.B. Sherry Park, there’s a nice new bike path that goes through O.B. Sherry and ends on Milwaukee Street. That’s going to be extended along the creek. The north part of that 65 acres we’re hoping for Starkweather Conservation Park so look forward to having a nice place to go to watch birds and nature and get that nice peaceful nature feeling in the future. We’re working with parks on the planning of that area.

Stacy: when I think about the bike path and the beautiful green spaces that are there out behind Garver Feed Mill. It’s because of citizen groups like the Friends of Starkweather Creek that are a part of the process, that are talking to government, that are part of the planning process. If it weren’t for you guys to speak up for that creek, it might not have even been a top priority for developers to even consider that green space.

[music break]

Stacy: As we know as a part of the watershed that goes right around and encompasses the Dane County Airport, there are some serious pollution concerns that have been in the headlines lately. So, Lance, I’d like for you to talk to us more about what those pollution concerns are and what your organization is doing in a very hands-on way to test the water and figure out what’s going on.

Lance: We have several issues that are going on with the creek, and I’ll talk about three of the chemical issues that we have there. But first I’ll talk about PFAS. It’s a group of chemicals that have been shown to cause all kinds of nasty health effects and we really didn’t know about this more than about eight years ago. We started finding out that long ago, in the 50s and 60s and 70s, the Dane County Airport worked with the Air National Guard and said “you can set up here in the airport” and all you gotta do is pay us a buck a month and also provide fire services for the airport. Well what that involved was using chemical foam that the military had adopted all over the world and that foam is basically PFAS. Along a couple of spots in the creek the Air National Guard had set up training sites where you’d put a bunch of metal and stuff and you’d pour a bunch of jet fuel or whatever on it, set it on fire and show how you can put it out with the PFAS foam. Of course it was right next to the creek.

At that time people didn’t really know much about or have much concerns about it like we’ve heard about so many other chemicals. So a whole lot of it was dumped right there next to the creek and ever since it’s been oozing down into the ground and seeping into the creek. The airport was basically a wetland, and it was very shallow groundwater there and the water just seeps right into the creek, and also seeps down into the ground. You probably heard that a few years ago the Madison water utility found out that Well 15 right there on East Washington was getting higher and higher levels of PFAS oozing a mile away from us and a thousand feet down into the ground. So this stuff really travels. Well 15 now has a nice filter system, but it’s still oozing out into the creek and as I said, that creek goes into Lake Monona, into Lake Kegonsa and Lake Waubesa. So if you’ve got 50, 60 years of pollution going in there, all the lakes, all the fish, all the plants, all the sediment are polluted with PFAS.

The DNR has done some measurements and found some of the high levels that we have. We have some of the highest levels in the state coming out of the west branch of the creek, just south of the airport. You might know where Anderson Street is. When we take measurements there, we find some of the highest levels in the state. And we wanted to start a regular program to monitor what’s going on with that issue. In 2024 we put together some funds and got some monitors and we monitored all different parks of the creek, all of the Yahara lakes, and several other places around Dane County to see what the background level of PFAS was. We found extremely high levels in the west branch of Starkweather, where Starkweather goes into Lake Monona, in Lake Monona, Kegonsa, Waubesa, others where there’s levels that are higher than the standards for sure. The levels just south of the airport are thousands of times higher than the standards.

As we looked at the data from the DNR, we found that the fish have levels that are hundreds of thousands of times higher than the standard we now have for water, so one of the worst environmental injustice situations in Madison. There’s a lot of people fishing, taking those fish home to feed their families. So it’s one of our big concerns. Dane County has recently put together a project to help out with the sources of that PFAS. They’ve injected some biologically active materials and some microbes to hopefully chomp up those PFAS and break them down. So we’re really hopeful for that. We did see this past year in 2025 when we repeated our measurements slightly lower levels in the creek, so we’re wanting to be real hopeful about that.

Stacy: That’s incredible. And what hands-on work you guys are doing to measure those. The DNR can’t be everywhere, they can’t do everything, and it really takes folks who care to get out there. So that’s PFAS, and we know that’s been in the headlines, but you’re monitoring for a couple of other substances too, right?

Lance: Sure, absolutely. One thing everybody’s real familiar with is salt. We put salt down out there all winter and we don’t want any slippery spaces, so we put salt down. And for years and years and years it was kind of done willy-nilly on all the sidewalks, all parking lots, all the streets. But people started realizing 15-20 years ago that we have rising levels of salt both in our drinking water and in our surface waters, not just in Madison but a whole lot of places in Wisconsin. There was a program started called Wisconsin Salt Wise, started right here in Dane County and now it spread so that other states want to know “how do you reduce your salt?” and control your salt. The City and the County trained people to put lower and lower levels of salt on.

For five years, the Friends of Starkweather have had grants to monitor the levels of salt. First we started with people with little test strips and finding what the salt was everywhere. Couple of years ago we installed some permanent monitors at eight sights along the creek so they can constantly measure and show in graphs regularly to the public what the kind of salt levels we have in there. And I think we’ve had some real success reducing the amount of salt going into the creek. That’s our chloride study. Chloride is very dangerous at high levels for life. We have fresh water and not salt water here, so that’s what we do.

The other issue we test for is phosphorus. Phosphorus is not that bad in Starkweather Creek because we don’t have a lot of agricultural land and fertilizer going into it. We have a lot above Lake Mendota coming in from agriculture and you’ve probably heard of “Suck the Muck” to get the phosphorus out of the sediment. We wanted to see what’s the contribution of Starkweather Creek to this issue. That’s another project we do.

Stacy: well kudos to your organization for being these community scientists who are out there and testing. It really is one of the most hands-on things that people can do to take care of their water is just knowing what’s in it. We really appreciate it. And you have a lot of fun while you’re doing it.

[music break]

Stacy: We know that with Earth Day coming up it’s a great time for water protection and environmental protection organizations to talk to folks in the community about what they can do to protect the water and the green spaces in their backyard. I’m sure the Friends of Starkweather Creek is no different. Lance, tell me a little bit about what events you have coming up and how people can do their own hands-on clean up, testing, and water protection work.

Lance: Yeah, we as an organization start our year with Earth Week and on April 18 at 10:00 at Olbrich Park you can help us out. We have a creek cleanup and a paddle. If you come down there and you want to paddle in a canoe, we’ve got grabbers and gloves and garbage bags. We send people up the creek to find what they can find there. Sometimes it gets interesting. In the last, oh, 20 years of doing this we’ve seen less and less actual trash put along a large part of the creek. There are a couple of problem areas that we send crews specifically to, but its really wonderful to see that people seem to be getting a little more good-natured about throwing stuff out.

Fifty to 100 years ago, the creek was a dump. It was considered a place where people threw trash. But that doesn’t happen any more. So I hope you can come down there. If you have a kayak or a canoe, bring it on down because we usually have more people than our ten canoes, so bring your canoe down. We’ll send people out and come back while other people are doing groundwork on the sides.

We do a lot of other events too. Every third Saturday of the month, every month of the year we have nature walks or events along the creek. Sometimes it’s a bike ride, sometimes it’s a talk about what we find in the creek and how do we monitor it, and look at all these little creatures that are in the creek. Sometimes it’s a flower walk. We do a lot of different things to show people that there is nature right here on the east side and you can really enjoy it. We are certainly always looking for people to help us out with our monitoring and you can find out everything about us on our website, starkweatherfriends.org and we’re also on a Facebook page that announces our events, and we have a newsletter if you’d like to sign up for that. We’re really looking forward to Earth Week and all the wonderful things we do… Oh yeah, we also have work days where people plant plants and rip out nasty invasives. A lot of variety of what we do and we hope you can join us.

Stacy: I think that’s great. And remind us one more time when is the April 18 event, what time of day is it?

Lance: Ten o’clock in the morning at Olbrich, the inner boat launch.

Stacy: It sounds like a great time to get out to do some hands-on clean up work, to learn a little bit more about the science that gets applied through your organization, bring some friends, bring some family, and get out and clean up a creek for Earth Day.

Lance: Thanks a lot, Stacy.

Stacy: well I’m so glad you could come in and thanks for being a guest of the VMO Show, Lance. And I encourage you to take a look at the waters that are in your backyard and think about what you can do to protect them. For the VMO Show, this is your host, Stacy Harbaugh. Thanks for listening.

– Stacy Harbaugh, Communications Director

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