While unfunded, exhausted, and beleaguered Madison citizens slog for years begging city, county, and state agencies, and the U.S. military, to do more about the forever PFAS chemicals and a plethora of other poisons spewing into Starkweather Creek and all the Yahara Lakes, the Clean Lakes Alliance–with a budget in the millions and the motto “Healthy Lakes, Healthy Communities”–says and does NOTHING about these poisons. For the last 11 years. [1]

Instead, while toxic chemicals build up in the lakes and fish, CLA hosts events like “Kites on Mendota”–and “Love in the Lakes,” where a DNR expert will explain fish sex.

Is this Orwell’s 1984? “TOXIC CHEMICALS = LOVE”? 

Why would a well-endowed organization that purports to be about “clean lakes” and “healthy communities” completely ignore ongoing toxic onslaughts to the lakes, aquatic organisms, fish, and people who eat the fish–many of whom are low income people of color?

Perhaps it is because Clean Lakes Alliance founders and current funders include Madison Gas & Electric, Alliant Energy, ATC, Spectrum Brands and other corporate entities that have poisoned the lakes for decades? And millionaire-owned Hovde Properties, whose developments spew copious quantities of heavy metal and toxic chemical-laden sediments into the lakes? Oh, and let’s not forget sustaining CLA founder Foley & Lardner, which represents big developers, and the investment firms and banks that fund CLA…

Perhaps these powerful corporate entities are not willing to fund any organization that says anything–forget about does anything–about the toxic pollution they spewed into the lakes (or funded others to spew) for decades?

Do Madison and Dane County’s highly educated, progressive, enviro-liberal leaders and prestigious University of Wisconsin’s Nelson Institute scholars say anything whatsoever about this blatant corporate greenwashing? NO. Instead, they join the Clean Lakes Alliance executive and community boards to share the love. Madison Community Foundation is a “sustaining founder.”

Apparently all these Madison and Dane County progro-liberals drank the Orwellian Corporate Kool-Aid, no questions asked. It’s no wonder the lakes are toxic cesspools.

[1] In July 2019, I attended a CLA “Science Cafe” by Dr. Claire Gervais, Yahara Watershed Pollutants and Health, held at the posh Edgewater Hotel (with high-quality pastries and good coffee). Her talk included PFAS. This is the only time I have seen any mention of toxic chemicals associated with CLA. After the presentation, I asked James Tye, the executive director of CLA, what the organization was doing about PFAS. He said CLA only had resources to work on phosphorus, which it has focused on since its founding in 2010, but once they solved the phosphorus problem perhaps they would move on to address toxic chemicals. Hmmmm. So of their millions of dollars, they can’t even put, say, ten or twenty thousand dollars into addressing–even just saying something about?–the PFAS and other toxic chemicals spewing into the lakes and fish? How convenient for CLA to focus on something that they can blame largely on farmers, instead of polluting industries, chemical corporations, and developments in Madison and Dane County…

Mr. Tye “nicely” (with perhaps a tinge of sarcasm?) thanked me for my work as I walked out after the presentation.