When it comes to dealing with environmental challenges like erosion and blue green algae, Eau Claire County Land Conservation Manager Chad Berge said these are challenges that the community has grappled with for decades.
“And we’ll be talking about it for the next five decades,” Rod Eslinger, Eau Claire County’s director of planning and development, added.
Now moving forward, the community has greater awareness of lake health, and the county has a suite of informational reports created by University of Wisconsin–Madison students to pull from as officials consider how to address tough issues like sediment accumulation and algae blooms.
Through UniverCity Alliance – a program at UW–Madison that connects local governments with university resources to address community-identified challenges – Eau Claire County worked on eight projects with county staff, community residents, 10 instructors, and 63 students in seven courses. These projects resulted in a conservation plan for Lake Altoona, riverbank stabilization options, educational resources about algae blooms, a cost-benefit analysis of sediment removal, and green tech strategies for addressing blue-green algae.
“Public awareness and education around our water assets benefits the entire county,” Eau Claire County Administrator Kathryn Schauf said. “The projects brought together multiple partners for community learning and a lasting impact on the importance of clean water.”
These projects built on the work that county staff, the Eau Claire River Watershed Association, lake districts, and “friends of” groups have accomplished over the years to ensure area lakes are sustainable into the future. Eslinger described the slate of UniverCity projects as a “launching pad.”
“The partnership helped bring awareness not only from the county’s perspective but from the Lake Association’s side of things as well,” Eslinger said. “It recognized that there are intercepts with public health where we can have further or additional conversations.”
The county shared this work with the community during a “Day at the Lake” event hosted in partnership with the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association to celebrate UW–Madison’s 175th anniversary.
Matt Steinbach, environmental sciences division manager at the Eau Claire City-County Health Department, said he is eager to see how the county will integrate some of the recommendations included in the UniverCity projects.
One of the biggest benefits, Steinbach said, of the UniverCity partnership was the increased capacity to research ideas.
“It allowed people that have day-to-day jobs, that have a lot going on outside of watershed management, to do a deep dive into a few different things, but frankly, didn’t have time to dedicate the type of investigation and conversation on each of these topics that that group was able to do in such a short time frame,” Steinbach said.
UCA Managing Director Gavin Luter emphasized that what makes the UniverCity model effective is the two-way learning. Through this partnership, Wisconsin local governments harness the resources UW–Madison, and those on campus can learn from local experts across the state.
“Wisconsin communities are receiving helpful projects from students, and the university is learning from local knowledge in communities,” Luter said.
Focus on lake health
Addressing lake health, particularly of Lake Altoona, was a focus of the UniverCity projects. Sediment continually accumulates in Lake Altoona due to erosion along the Eau Claire River and experiences recurring algae blooms that can be harmful to human and animal health.
In 2023, there were 71 days when bacteria or algae affected the beach. A group of Nelson Institute students in an accelerated project-based master’s program hoped to change that by implementing environmental conservation strategies they recommended after holistically studying Lake Altoona.
“The process involves looking at all of the contributing factors that impact water quality,” said Shannon Roznoski, who was involved in the project through the Environmental Conservation MS program. “We mapped out all the threats, which include nutrient runoff, sedimentation, and harmful bacteria that comes from various sources leading to algae blooms.”
The recommendations from the Lake Altoona conservation plan will inform ongoing planning efforts for the Eau Claire River Watershed Coalition and the county.
Another project led by engineering students addressed riverbank stabilization along a five-mile stretch east of Lake Altoona that experiences high rates of erosion and regression each year. These designs will be used as a springboard for solutions as Eau Claire County works with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the sediment issue in Lake Altoona.
A thorough study that analyzed the cost and benefit of sediment removal scenarios evaluated the economic, environmental, and social factors of each option and aimed to serve as a reference document for Eau Claire County to use.
“It was good to collectively put that into one document, and we’ll see how that is utilized in the future,” Eslinger said.
In another project, Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology Associate Professor Jessica Hua and her students created educational resources for elementary schools and public libraries and designed a community science kit to support county efforts at measuring lake health.
There’s also future opportunities for Hua and her class to implement the materials that were created for Eau Claire County. This would include connecting with school educators to start using the lesson plan and sampling kits and identifying new sampling locations by communicating with private landowners.
“It is part of my core values as an educator that we authentically invest in the community,” Hua said. “We don’t want to parachute in and just leave.”
Getting outside the classroom
While Eau Claire County received deliverables that will support moving lake health goals forward, UW–Madison students received unique and engaging learning experiences that will help them in their future careers.
Elisabeth Bykowski, who graduated in 2023 with a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, said interacting with county staff was a highlight of the project.
“Working with a community partner enhanced my work by allowing me to get direct feedback on my research and receive helpful documents and statistics that I wouldn’t have been able to access otherwise,” Bykowski said.
Berge emphasized the importance of learning outside of the classroom as a way to prepare for jobs in the field: “You’re not looking at a book anymore. You’re working with people.”
Eslinger said this partnership gave the students opportunities to partner on “real life, real world problems” and know that they were working on meaningful projects.
“This partnership is a benefit for the county and to the community,” Eslinger said. “It rejuvenated me and got me excited to work with students that have a passion for this career path.”
This story was first published in the January 2025 edition of the Wisconsin Counties magazine. Read it online here.
–Abigail Becker