Scott Longley

Many lakes in northern Wisconsin were formed from melted glacial ice, and these lakes often have no additional water source other than rainfall.  Other lakes in Wisconsin may be fed by rivers, streams, or springs.  A spring is an area where water comes up through the ground from a water table below it.  An indicator of a spring would be that its temperature is relatively constant year-round.  For example, in the summer the spring water is cooler than the lake water because the springs flow from groundwater and are not heated by the sun, like the rest of the lake, and in winter the spring water is warmer than the lake water because groundwater is not affected by the cool air temperatures. 

Lake Wingra is constantly replenished by various springs.  The number of springs that feed the lake has decreased due to constructional development around the lake.  No rivers or streams flow into Lake Wingra, therefore springs and storm water runoff are the main sources for water replenishment.  When development around the lake began, it affected spring activity.  Specifically the storm sewer and construction caused the springs around Lake Wingra to diminish.  Construction of buildings, sidewalks, and roads caused water to runoff rather than infiltrate into the groundwater.  This caused groundwater levels to drop and some springs to dry out.

With the growing number of roads in the area, the city of Madison began to use road salt as a method of snow removal in 1959.  They began to do chloride tests in the lakes in 1962 to determine if road salt had an impact on lake activity. The use of road salt has already had detrimental affects on the environment.  It not only entered our aquifers, streams, rivers, and lakes but also has dried as the weather warmed causing a powder to spread through the air, on car wheels, and through other modes of transportation.  This spread of NaCl then had negative affects on vegetation, soil, groundwater, drinking water, lake water, aquatic animals, and any other creature that contacted it.  After obtaining some test results with high chloride levels, the city decided to cut back on the amount of road salt used around Lake Wingra in 1973 because they noticed changes in the lake.  They also realized that a small body of water, like Lake Wingra, that has a highly urbanized watershed will be more susceptible to negative road salt affects than a larger body of water.  In 1977, the salt reduction project expanded to the entire city in order to protect all of the lakes.  Despite the number of steps taken to reduce chloride levels in the lakes, the level of chloride in Lake Wingra has seen an increase of 15% from 1972 to 1997. 

The use of road salt in the Madison area correlates with the spring water quality due to rising chloride levels in groundwater.  We asked, how has the health of the springs changed from fall to spring?  We will address this question through chloride, conductivity, and temperature testing of springs around Lake Wingra   The springs we tested had been recently found, therefore we had limited data for comparisons. We hypothesize that chloride levels will increase in winter months because of road salt usage around the lake.  We also hypothesize that the newly found springs have similar chloride concentrations, temperatures, and conductivity as older Lake Wingra springs.

We hope to create a project that will spark other students’ interests so they can continue our research in the future.  Further examinations and research on this topic may lead to a better understanding of the reasons that springs are disappearing and reappearing around the lake. 

For more information on Lake Wingra and programs to increase the health of the lake visit: