Madison is known for a few things: a top party school (cheers); a pretty darn good educational place (hey hey Vitamin D); Badger pride (ooo rah rah); pubs and beers (cheers again); State Street (a great mall); the Capital (how ‘bout a tip of the hat to the gold lady on the top?); and maybe a slightly liberal aura that pervades all of Madison’s famous aspects — a “green” place, so to speak.

Conspicuously absent from this list of Madison renown are the geographical marvels which surround the city, none other than the three lakes: Mendota, Monona and Wingra.

Somewhere along the line, however, the “green” that infuses much of the other aspects of the city has gone terribly awry and failed Madison in some of its most historic features — these lakes. Ironically, there is both too much and too little “green” for these lakes to stay healthy.

More specifically, as yet another summer passes with the notorious blue-green algae ooze making its usual appearance, the lake is filled with too much “green” vegetation to perform its regular ecosystem functions precisely due to the fact that the “green” aura, often laced with stalwart environmentalism, has not conquered this blue-green foe.

There are many reasons that it is safe to assume that something is not quite right with the lakes. A powerful stench of stagnant water and dead fish rolls up the shoreline on many a day throughout the summer. Taking a refreshing summer dip in the lakes remains mere musings for most as fears of slimy algae or other unknowns can override fundamental swimming urges. Even dog owners in the 2004 Great Outdoor Games experienced trepidation over allowing their pooches to compete in any of the lakes, choosing instead to use artificial pools for their dilly dogs.

So now, the lakes live in a perpetually blue state because they have become too green. To decipher this perplexing riddle, here’s the city’s secret of the ooze.

The first key to this ironically green phenomenon is, in fact, directly linked to green itself: green lawns. In citizens’ eager attempts to flaunt their green thumb, some bathe their lawns in fertilizers. These fertilizers do indeed allow a green lawn to flourish. However, the problem arises in the fact that Mother Nature’s rather stringent laws follow that when it rains, it pours — all that fertilizer into the surrounding lakes. These fertilizers, which so unerringly produce gloriously green lawns, also beget gloriously green lakes.

Mother Nature’s laws provide an easy transition to the ooze’s second secret. The lakes’ watersheds (all areas draining into a body of water) contain not just our lawns but also much of the abutting farmland, which also receives healthy doses of plant-accelerating fertilizer. Lake Mendota, for example, claims a watershed of which almost 60 percent is used for agriculture. Although some use of agricultural fertilizer is inevitable, proper use and dosage — not always known nor adhered to — can greatly reduce the amount of catalyzing fertilizer that percolates into the lakes.

Another factor in this algal osmosis is the development of land too near the shoreline. Cement obstructs the natural filtration processes that dirt, roots and microbial organisms normally perform. Paving over this natural filter gives fertilizer and pollutants a much easier time leeching into the lake. A larger buffer zone between an undeveloped drainage zone and that of roads, sidewalks and buildings would go a long way in preventing such ooze buildup.

However, this columnist has a few theories of her own about the final and most elusive secret of the ooze, even though they may remain somewhat circumspect and not fully confirmed. While Madison is known for its isthmus geography, it is also known to experience some wild and anomalous occurrences on the night of Halloween. And so Madison officials might consider implementing the long-term Project Q, which this writer is so very proud to have birthed.

Project Q is an attempt to create mutated frog fighters well versed in the arts of Tae-Bo (somewhat similar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), in order to help combat the feral behavior that ensues in the campus area on Halloween night — super double time.

By allowing fertilizers and other pollutants to inundate the lakes, Madison has designed the perfect laboratory and the perfect cover for such experimentation because few people want to venture into the foreboding ooze of slimy algae, let alone other toxins. In essence, less green (lawns) can make the lakes more blue (colored) or more green (environmentalism) can make the lakes less blue (sad).

Kate Flick ([email protected]) is junior majoring in sociology.