Can Madison clean its lakes?

In July 1832, writing of his passage through Madison during the Black Hawk War, Surgeon's Mate John Allen Wakefield described the Madison lakes as "the most beautiful bodies of water I ever saw.'' The water, he wrote, was crystal clear.

Today, though Madison's lakes remain perhaps the defining feature of the cityscape, they show evidence of years of neglect and abuse. It has been many decades since anyone accurately used the word "clear'' to describe these lakes.

This spring, however, some community leaders are asking why,

With all the science at our disposal, and all the money that has been spent over the years, and all the agencies and governments involved, why aren't the lakes cleaner?

This is among the questions that will be posed at a major conference on the Madison lakes on Saturday, May 18, organized by the Yahara Lakes Association and the UW-Madison's Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

The gathering is an opportunity to foster public discussion on new approaches to lake management, participants say.

One likely subject will be whether the community should create an independent body with authority to coordinate management of the entire Yahara chain of lakes and to track how lake management programs are working.

"Do we need institutional change?'' asked Doug Bach, vice president of the Yahara Lakes Association, and a member of the Dane County Lakes and Watershed Commission.

A speech given by David Mollenhoff, a Madison author, historian and a civic activist, at last year's national meeting of the National Association of Lake Management Society prompted the Yahara Lakes Association to organize the Madison conference. In his speech, Mollenhoff pointed out how complicated our current approach to lake management is. He cited the confusingly large number of local governments and agencies that are involved.

"I think we need a new vision for Madison lakes,'' said Mollenhoff, who will speak at Saturday's conference. "There are so many dots that need (to be) connected and that haven't been connected in the past . . . We need a coherent new strategy.''

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