[Above: slide presented at the Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc Committee at its October 19 meeting]
*****
When it dumped refuse along the Lake Monona shoreline from the 1930s to the 1950s to create Law Park, the City of Madison also made a perfect shoreline–well, almost perfect–for the Mad City Ski team, started in 1963.
At the last Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc Committee meeting on October 19, Mad City Ski Team leaders Jacci Meier and Carin Reynen gushed about how despite some challenges, Law Park is “ideal” for their water skiing. Lake Mendota won’t do. Other places they’ve considered in Madison won’t do. This is the best place, they told the committee. “There isn’t really any other place for us in Madison,” Meier said.
One key reason the shoreline at Law Park is the only place for them, Meier explained, is that it has the perfect depth (six-foot minimum) close to the shore.
These women probably don’t know it, but the water depth there was created by the tons of wastes the city dumped there for two decades, creating a raised berm along the lakeshore with a drop-off at the edge–which is oozing toxic petroleum compounds, metals, and who knows what other poisons into the lake.
But the ski team desperately needs more space!
Unfortunately for the ski team, the city didn’t push quite enough municipal garbage, MGE coal ash, newspapers, foundry sand, construction debris, illegal gambling devices, and who knows what other wastes far enough out into the lake for the bigger and bigger shows the Mad City Ski Team has been doing–attracting from 500 to 1500 people to the lakeshore in recent years. And now, according to Meier and Reynen, they are “trying to grow.”
But leaders of the Mad City Ski Team said they really need more parking space, a loading zone, garbage cans, bathrooms, electrical sockets. And somehow, along with this, more green space too. Also, Reynen said, “we’d like a “stage with some sort of amphiteatre. We’re a show, we’re performers.”
Further, “there is no beach to land skiers,” one powerpoint slide said, so “instead they land on a rocky shoreline and carefully walk to shore on a concrete pad.” They want a wider sandy beach to land 25 or 30 skiers.
Hmmm. Yup–sorry!– no sandy beach was placed on the edge of the landfill for water skiers (though there may be one far beneath it somewhere). The rocks piled along the shoreline there are to hold the landfill wastes in lest they slush out into the lake.
[Below, a slide from their presentation showing their cramped site]
[Below, the landfill being created; the area depicted is right where the ski team now performs]
Mad City Ski team’s “dream scenario” is also great for “the whole community”!
“Everything that we want in our dream scenario will also be great for the community.” Meier said. “It’s an under-utilized park. We’re really the only users there in the summer.” Reynen emphasized that a stage and amphitheatre could be used by the whole community. Having the water as a back-drop “would be amazing” and “good for the community,” she gushed, not just the ski team, though “we would love it.”
Laura Brusson from Agency Landscape & Planning, one of the three firms selected by the city to come up with lakeshore redesign proposals, commented that some in the community are concerned about the shoreline redesign proposals threatening the water ski shows–clearly also a huge concern for the Mad City Ski Team.
These consultants, hoping to be chosen for the redesign, obviously want to schmooze and please the current users of the lakeshore–especially very influential ones like the Mad City Ski Team. In that light, she asked Meier and Reynen, what do you need to “preserve this cultural asset to the community?”
Similarly, Cory Horton from raSmith effusively praised the Water Ski Team for “all of the work that you do, the programming that you create, the awareness you create for water quality in the lakes. It’s just phenomenal to create that sense of community.”
“I sure hope this design team can include you on dreaming big in thinking about what could be,” he told them. “I really appreciate learning about your needs, how you function currently, but I really want to hear, what are your big dreams? What would be on a list of ‘wow that would be fantastic for our group?’ and would be a game-changer for how you operate?”
Meier said “Law Park is where champions are made, because of its challenging conditions,” but we really would like to have the basic amenities–again, she emphasized, for the community. But both women then went on to talk about how much money, what huge economic benefits larger water skiing venues elsewhere bring to those communities–clearly implying that these benefits would come to Madison if they could expand their shows.
What community? Whose community?
Hmmm. Everyone loves to tout “community.” It’s easy to say something is “great for community.”
But great for what “community?” What about the anglers fishing at the Monona Terrace wall, mostly people of color (visible in the slide at the top of the post)? Will it be “great” for them? Does anyone care? Or maybe they aren’t part of “the community” she’s thinking of?
[Right: anglers fishing at the Monona Terrace “wall” in July 2022, just west of the water skiing area. Photo, Maria Powell]
Will these anglers get time at one of the Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc meetings to present what they would like to happen on the shoreline at Law Park? How expanded water skiing shows might affect their access to shoreline fishing and their experiences fishing there?
Bad water quality? No worries! “We just ski through it”…
One brave consultant, Anna Cawrse from Sasaki dared to ask about “impacts of water quality,” which she said she knew were “a big challenge.” She mentioned that last year the beaches were closed to swimming for 48 days (presumably due to dangerous levels of toxic blue-green algae and/or bacteria).
“How does that impact you and your programs?” she asked. Reynen responded. “As former show director,” she said, “we ski regardless. It is a factor, and we have a very short season, and…if the water’s not great by the shore we might pull those floaters out into the middle of the lake and ski where the water isn’t quite so bad. Or we just ski through it. We always talk to our team members…they choose to ski or not to…It’s not great but we do it anyway.”
Of course, nobody mentioned the toxic landfill leachates they ski through, or the giant storm drains that spew PFAS from MGE right into the ski area. These are apparently verboten topics–unspeakable–for this committee and for the city overall.
Do these skiers know they are swimming through these highly potent toxic chemicals, stirring them up from the sediments when they carefully trudge up to the lakeshore after skiing? Do the children who learn to ski there know? Do their parents know?
When these young, healthy water ski team members, and the children they also teach to ski there, develop immune and endocrine system dysfunctions, fertility problems, neurological issues, cancers and other serious health problems later in their lives from swimming and skiing through (and undoubtedly ingesting, on occasion) this toxic water, will anyone draw connections to their swimming through landfill leachates summer after summer? Will anyone even know about these exposures? Public Health Madison Dane County clearly isn’t concerned, nor is the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, even though both agencies are just a few thousand feet away from Law Park.
As for the anglers who eat these poisons in the fish they catch, clearly nobody cares. The chemicals, like the people, are invisible and ignored by the powers-that-be.
But not to worry! As Meier highlighted, the Mad City Ski team started the Clean lakes Festival some years ago (around 2010?), which “morphed into the Clean Lakes Alliance,” Meier said. “We’re really proud of being the initiative to that.”
Haven’t these water skiers noticed that the millions of dollars thrown at CLA by corporate and government sponsors in the last decade have made no impact on the sorry state of Lake Monona? That the thick green guck–often including toxic blue-green algae–they ski through has gotten thicker and greener over the years?
Apparently not. And of course the Clean Lakes Alliance, now Madison’s very well-endowed darling local corporate greenwashing organization, doesn’t even mention, forget about work on, PFAS and other toxic chemicals in the lake. As big supporters of the lakeshore redesign, they won’t even mention the fact that the lakeshore is a landfill. That’s verboten.
A win-win (and win) solution!
Without more space on the lakeshore, how can the Mad City Ski Team get what it desperately “needs”–which the Lake Monona Waterfront Ad Hoc team and consultants clearly want to give it?
Lest anyone accuse me of being too negative, I’ll now pivot to a positive solution–a win-win (and win) proposal for the lakeshore redesign committee and consultants. [Insert irony/sarcasm/parody emoji here…]
The powers-that-be here concluded by 1990 that nothing else can really hurt lake Monona. So what’s a little more garbage, construction wastes, coal ash–and whatever other wastes we want to throw in there–packed onto the lakeshore now? Madison apparently can’t manage to create a decent public recycling program, saying it doesn’t have the funds and needs to tax residents to pay for one. As the city grows rampantly, more and more of its wastes are going to Rodefeld Landfill, which is running out of space. So now the county wants to expand this landfill onto the unfortunate residents of McFarland and other downstream communities.
Here’s my win-win proposal: Why not take some lessons from Madison’s brilliant leaders during the 1920s and 1930s, and keep our garbage, coal ash, construction wastes and other toxic detritus closer to home instead of sending these wastes downstream to other communities? Why not dump them into Lake Monona again, to “make” more land for development? This way we could “kill two birds with one stone,” as the saying goes–or in more positive wording, “win and win.” The Mad City Ski Team could have its expanded water ski site, and Madison would have a place for its burgeoning wastes!
Or maybe we could kill three birds! Win-win-win! If Law Park is extended out with garbage, the city could create all sorts of new developments right along the lakeshore! What a boon for downtown economic development! Why not, since city leaders gave up on Lake Monona decades ago, concluding that nothing else could hurt it further?
And the icing on the triple-win cake? Given that government officials and local media refuse to even mention (forget about investigate) the current poison-leaching landfill at Law Park now–and all who raise questions about it have been, and will continue to be, quashed by the Chamber of Commerce Juggernaut–as the shoreline “reshaping” is being discussed, who would complain?
Win, win and win again. That’s what “best place to live” Madison is all about, right?
[Insert irony/sarcasm/parody emoji here]
