Madison's Lake Monona described as "cesspool" by Clean Lakes Association
- Date Range
- June 8, 1931 – June 8, 1931
- Title
- Madison's Lake Monona described as "cesspool" by Clean Lakes Association
- What occurred
-
"The lake has become a cesspool." This was said of Madison's Lake Monona by Alexius Baas of the Clean Lakes association. On a summer night in 1931, citizens gathered at a meeting hosted by the association to demand that Madison clean up Lake Monona, which over the past decades had served as a reservoir for sewage and wastewater effluent. Namely, the Burke sewage treatment plant was blamed for this pollution-- a plant which had been primarily receiving heavily polluted and toxic wastewater from the Oscar Mayer meat packing company and discharging it into the lake. Baas even reported that the city had permitted the plant to pour "raw sewage into Monona without even sending it through the inadequate treatment of the plant" and also claimed that "3,200,000 gallons of effluent is being dumped into Lake Monona daily." The lake was described several times as having a "stench." 80 people attended the meeting, with the purpose of calling on the city to shut down the Burke treatment plant and address the pollution affecting the lake.
In 1936, the first addition of a new sewage treatment plant, Nine Springs, was completed, and that development allowed for the Burke plant to be shut down.
The picture attached features Burke sewage treatment plant's 'trickling filters,' built in 1916, which were credited as the first to be built in the country. - Location
- 1780 Moorland Rd, Madison, WI 53713
- Image Citation
- https://www.madsewer.org/About-Us/Who-We-Are/History — https://madison.newspapers.com/image/396779143/ — https://mejo.us/pfas-found-in-groundwater-under-former-sewage-treatment-plant/
- Student name(s)
- Hailey Stoltenberg
Part of Madison's Lake Monona described as "cesspool" by Clean Lakes Association