Rick Fox grew up on Lake Michigan in Kenosha, always on the water. He was a SCUBA diver by age 13, and by 15 years old knew he wanted to be an oceanographer when he grew up. He ended up with a career as an environmental scientist, consulting with large companies and government agencies. He worked on superfund sites, including the removal of PCBs in the lower Fox River.

“I’m proud of my career, but it was not as satisfying as it could have been,” Rick said. Working on billion-dollar projects to remove pollution involves collaboration between corporations, lawyers, non-profits, and government agencies, and too often they didn’t work well together.

Groups with different perspectives would point fingers at one another rather than working toward solutions. “I’m not looking to accuse anyone,” Rick said. “Let’s build a coalition and just move forward.”

When it came time to retire, he and his wife ended up on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago. “We didn’t know anything about Lake Winnebago,” he said, “except it’s a big lake with good fishing.”

As they were moving in, the town was facing problems with runoff. With large spring storms becoming more common, no one could ignore the rain that would race across the fields and flood the community. “All this water, milky brown with manure and top soil, it’s going in our garages and basements,” Rick said.

His neighbors knew Rick had worked in that field and quickly connected him to the new community committee. “The first thing I did,” Rick said, “was get a hold of Korin and other staff at Fox-Wolf.” He learned that Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance was already working in the area on the Pipe Creek Watershed. And Rick noticed that Fox-Wolf was working hard to build bridges between groups with different perspectives. “In particular,” he said, “I see it as you work with farmers.”

Property owners on the town committee were blaming farmers, until they realized that farmers don’t want to lose that topsoil either. “There was a convergence of interest for all of us. It wasn’t us/them, but we,” said Rick.

“What we’re all realizing is we can’t point fingers. We have to line up and work together.” That meant not only a town committee, but starting a farmer-led group as well. And now the town committee and the farmer-led group are working toward the same goals, in collaboration and alignment with Fox-Wolf.

Rick is thankful for the chance to get back to the grassroots type of cooperation. “To me, it’s all about partnerships. We can do this better. I spent 30 years trying to do projects better. I am so impressed with Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance. You are amazingly efficient and get things done. I want to help champion that. That’s why we decided to write the check for a lifetime membership.”

Rick said he became “more retired” just yesterday, but he’s clearly not slowing down. “I got a little bit of mud in my garage,” Rick said. That’s how it started. “But I’m really here for the blue-green algae. I worry for my dogs, the swimmers in the lake… it’s got to be bad for the fish too. Cyanotoxins in the water is scary.” And while that may seem like a daunting task to take on as a retirement project, Rick sees how to break it down to make it manageable for all of us.

“Every little thing you do has an effect. So it’s worth doing the small things that may not seem like they’ll add up,” said Rick. “Take three feet of your lawn and convert it to native plants. It’s a step. Go from three applications of fertilizer to two; that’s a step. Pick up that piece of trash. What the heck can we do? Everything we can.”

Travis Coenen grew up on the river in Wrightstown, fishing, canoeing, and launching from the boat ramp. As an adult, he works for the community as the Village Administrator of Wrightstown.

He was aware of the pollution in the river, even when he was young. He didn’t know what was causing it, but when the algae would bloom in late summer, “all of a sudden the river would turn bright green – like in Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day when they dye the river. It didn’t seem right.”

His family enjoyed fishing, but his parents would encourage him to bring home a perch from the bay or up north. “We would go north to Clintonville or Tomahawk,” Travis said, “and the lake waters were so much clearer than the Fox River.”

By the time he was taking biology and chemistry classes in high school and college, Travis had his aha moment. He understood that the problem was what we were putting into the water. At that time, it was the PCBs in particular, coming from the manufacturing along the Fox River.

But that wasn’t the only thing. Travis also noticed that as generations changed and property was handed down, people were adding septic systems to old cabins. And he realized the dirty water from those buildings used to go straight to the lake. “I was just swimming there!” Travis said. “How can that be? We need to do something better.”

While the DNR sets regulations for stormwater treatment according to the size of the community, Wrightstown is working to exceed those expectations. Travis knows that “water quality is part of our community,” so the Village has partnered with area municipalities to meet higher standards.

The Village is also partnering with Fox-Wolf to restore Plum Creek. There’s so much erosion and sediment in the creek that Travis says it looks like “a chocolate milk stream coming into town.” This project will start at the mouth of the creek and provide almost a mile of shoreline restoration.

A project of that magnitude is often beyond what a small community can fund. “This is a million-dollar project, but we’ve only had to pay 20%,” said Travis. The grant money brought in by Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance has dramatically increased the impact the community can afford.

The Plum Creek project isn’t done, but the Village is already seeing the benefits of doing more than is required for water quality. Travis says you can see it in the fish.

There’s a small, family fishing tournament in Wrightstown every year, trying to see what is the biggest fish of each species they can catch. At first, they only caught carp, catfish, and bullhead. But recently, they’re also catching perch, walleye, muskie, crappie, and bass. Not only are there more species, “the coloration of the fish is so much better. The clarity of the river is so much better.”

And that’s how Travis knows the work is making a difference. “I feel blessed that I got acquainted with Fox-Wolf. The collaborative efforts they’ve initiated, created, or facilitated have been amazing,” he said. “They’re stewards out there trying to actually fix things. Their feet-on-the-ground initiatives are actually happening.”

Plum Creek flows into the lower Fox River carrying so much sediment it looks like chocolate milk.