As the Village of DeForest – home to the Yahara River headwaters – has steadily grown in population and household size over the last two decades, local elected officials want to be prepared for change and protect the village’s natural resource gems.
“We’ve really tried to emphasize being stewards of our land and water,” said Judd Blau, director of public services and deputy administrator for DeForest. “How do we allow development to happen while balancing the needs of nature?”
These are the types of big questions that DeForest hopes to move closer to answering through its partnership with UniverCity Alliance. Through its multi-year program that connects Wisconsin local governments with university resources, DeForest is addressing focus areas in its strategic plan, including growth and natural resource use.
“Part of the strategy here is to try to get ahead of those changes instead of reacting or putting out fires,” Village Administrator Bill Chang said. “Understanding that we can’t hire all that help out and understanding that there is also a need for being efficient, effective, and resilient, is why we started to look at UniverCity.”
To address environmental sustainability, DeForest collaborated with Heidi Putnam, who graduated in August 2024 with a master’s degree in urban and regional planning, to develop a framework to determine varied levels of protection of natural areas that still allows for a variety of development.
DeForest also worked with two undergraduate students, Carolyn Shumaker and Julia Fechner, who were a part of the UniverCity Alliance Scholars Program to explore, assess, and document sustainability practices happening in the village.
While this partnership is creating relationships between community partners and the university, it also connected Putnam, Shumaker, and Fechner. Shumaker and Fechner both work at the UW–Madison Office of Sustainability. Additionally, Putnam was a TA for a class that Shumaker took and met with the students during the course of their project to share notes, connections with helpful DeForest community members, and insight into how local government works.
“It helped me from reinventing the wheel,” said Shumaker, a senior majoring in landscape and urban studies, geography, and environmental studies. “It feels like we’re carrying the same torch, but in a different way. We’re not running the exact same race, but we’re still moving forward.”
When it comes to addressing complicated challenges like balancing development and natural resource protection, collaboration has to be part of the answer. UniverCity provides a unique resource to Wisconsin local leaders looking to leverage resources at the university to address thorny issues.
“Working with UW–Madison instructors and students can provide a unique perspective to the challenges happening in Wisconsin communities,” UniverCity Alliance Managing Director Gavin Luter said. “At the same time, these instructors and students can learn from on-the-ground experts and incorporate local expertise into their projects.”
Being proactive
For Putnam, working with the Village of DeForest on watershed planning aligned with her research and professional interests. But it also was a continuation of her commitment as a student to community-engaged work.
Putnam had previous experience with UniverCity, including working with local farmers and community members to develop a plan for the Koshkonong Creek watershed and creating a branding plan for Polk County. She said these project-based opportunities were why she chose to attend UW–Madison.
“From a planning perspective, it’s a great way to learn how to communicate better with communities and elected officials and staff members, and so I could get some of those soft skills that you don’t learn in the classroom that I can use as a professional,” Putnam said. “I wanted to do something that made a difference rather than just a plan that sits on a shelf.”
With her project, the goals were to protect surface water quality by reducing the phosphorus load entering the Yahara River from untreated stormwater runoff and to reduce the impacts of stormwater flooding on infrastructure and the natural environment.
Putnam’s project ultimately recommended zones to prioritize for natural asset protection. Moving forward, DeForest staff could use these recommendations in future planning discussions and to start a community dialogue around green infrastructure planning and natural asset protection.
Putnam said she was excited to specifically work with DeForest because of the village’s approach to safeguarding natural resources, referencing the effort to preserve a buffer of 300 acres of land along nearly all the Yahara River within the village’s boundaries.
“It’s a community wanting to be proactive, rather than just reactive to what’s going on in their community, especially the waterway,” Putnam said. “They already have taken great initiatives to plan this giant green environmental corridor going along most of the riverway through the community, which really speaks to their long term commitment.”
Blau said Putnam set a “high bar” with her project. Additionally, he said the UniverCity partnership has been everything he hoped for and that putting in the time to guide students who return a strong deliverable has been worthwhile.
“I really saw it as a win-win opportunity for ourselves in the village to tap into young, fresh ideas that are coming out of university and to do it at an inexpensive cost,” Blau said.
Valuable community connections
In another sustainability project for DeForest, Shumaker and Fechner developed a report outlining interventions on energy use, waste reduction, and flood and climate resilience. They wrote a survey to find out what aspects of sustainability DeForest residents care most about, created an interactive sustainability map that highlights examples of environmental stewardship and sustainability within DeForest, and designed a pamphlet focused on community education.
Through UniverCity’s model, community partners receive tangible deliverables, and students receive valuable experiences working directly with experts in the field. As a senior, Shumaker said this experience made her feel “more capable” as she navigates the post-graduate world and applies for jobs.
Fechner said her academic work through the Landscape and Urban Studies major was applicable to the project with DeForest and vice versa.
However, she said the most important aspect of the project was engaging with the community. Fechner and Shumaker attended an e-waste recycling event in DeForest to recruit residents to take their survey, so their project could focus on what’s most important to residents regarding sustainability.
“We wanted to prioritize what the community actually wants,” Fechner said. “That’s been one of the biggest things that I’ve valued within this project is being able to have those connections.”
This story was originally published in The Commons, a publication of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Read the full March edition, and view the web version or previous editions from the “News” tab on the Nelson Institute website.
–Abigail Becker