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No clear solution for Clear Lake

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

Water has been creeping up on the summer home of Don Lukas of Janesville on Clear Lake.

Photo

Photo by Dan Lassiter

The Clear Lake summer home of Steven Victor of Riverwoods, Ill. is completely surrounded by the rising waters of the lake.

MILTON — Neighbors of Clear Lake in Milton Township know the lake is rising.

What they don’t know is how much it’s risen, how much it will continue to rise, how water enters and exits the lake and what lies at the bottom.

The future of the lake might depend on the biggest unknown of all: the weather.

Scientists are predicting Wisconsin will become warmer and experience heavy rain and snow in the coming years, said Madeline Gotkowitz, associate professor with UW Extension’s Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey.

That doesn’t bode well for hopes that the lake will come down naturally from what appears to be an all-time high, she told a group of about 60 gathered at Milton Town Hall on Tuesday.

It was the unusual weather of the last 15 months that caused the high levels in the first place. Record rains in August 2007, a winter with about twice the normal level of snow and torrential downpours in June all contributed to the lake’s abnormally high level.

Clear Lake is fed by groundwater and possibly underground springs, which react slowly to changing conditions. So even though the Rock River receded from its flood stage months ago, Clear Lake still is rising.

Neighbors estimate the lake has risen about 6 feet in the last year. It has surrounded a handful of homes and flooded at least one basement. They’re worried the water could flood septic tanks and contaminate wells.

“We never dreamed anything like this would ever happen,” Mary Boie, owner of a flooded summer cabin, said after the meeting.

The community has a couple of options if it doesn’t want to wait and see if the water comes down naturally, but all of them have drawbacks, Gotkowitz said.

It can:

-- Pump water out of the lake. The community would have to find a suitable place to pump the water and make sure it can pump the water faster than Mother Nature replaces it.

-- Dredge the lake. The community could remove a few feet of earth from the bottom of the lake, but that would only lower the lake level if there’s something impervious at the bottom, such as clay, Gotkowitz said. If it’s mostly sand and gravel at the bottom, dredging won’t do any good.

Pumping water might seem like an attractive solution, but it’s expensive and might not work, Gotkowitz said. Communities around Fish Lake in Dane County have spent about $550,000—about half of it from the state—to pump water out of that lake. The pumping achieved its goal until this year’s rain and snow brought water into the lake at a rate faster than the pump was pushing water out.

Gotkowitz suggested Clear Lake neighbors invite officials from Fish Lake to speak to them. She also suggested establishing a gage to monitor the lake level and installing a shallow groundwater-monitoring well.

Ultimately, the community has to decide if it wants to interfere with a natural process, Gotkowitz said.

“Do you want to try to control this aspect of the natural system?” she asked. “It’s clearly a personal preference. There’s no right or wrong in that.”