On March 10, Dane County Executive Joe Parisi and his staff will present at a Clean Lakes Alliance “101 Science Cafe” titled “Healthy Land, Healthy Lakes.”
Sadly, our lands and lakes are not healthy. Not at all. In fact, they are permanently poisoned with toxic forever chemicals called PFAS.
Cafe presenters will discuss the Dane County project “Suck the Muck.” The “muck” the county will “suck” is Yahara River sediments downstream of Lake Monona, which–based on the PFAS levels in the water–are very likely also chock full of PFAS, which deposit in sediments and stay there indefinitely.
We encourage you to attend and ask Mr. Parisi if the county is testing for PFAS in the muck it is sucking. We also encourage you to ask him what the county is doing about the epic PFAS mess at Truax Field, the Dane County land where much of the PFAS has oozed from over decades.**
**Truax Field includes the Dane County Regional Airport and its lessees Air National Guard and Army National Guard, the old Truax landfill, the former Burke sewage treatment plant, and Bridges Golf Course. All of them are contaminated with PFAS, which leaches into Starkweather Creek as it flows through Truax Field, before discharging to Lake Monona about 2 miles south.
Before the recent Yahara Lakes PFAS data was released, we asked DNR staff if they required Dane County to test for PFAS in the Yahara River muck in Phase 1 of the sucking. They said no. We asked again–more than once– after the data was released whether they would require PFAS testing in future phases of the muck sucking. They didn’t answer.
