University of Wisconsin–Madison

Category: The Water We Swim In

Lead paint, pipes, and progress in Milwaukee

Episode 15 How does lead contamination affect Great Lakes communities, especially marginalized ones? In this episode, Bonnie and guest host Dr. Deidre Peroff explore the impact of lead contamination in Milwaukee. At Milwaukee’s Sixteenth Street Health Center, we meet Alejandra, who goes door to door doing lead outreach and education on Milwaukee’s south side. Milwaukee’s …

4. Public Trust: David and Goliath

Episode 14 For the final episode of Public Trust, we head to the communities of Peshtigo and Marinette in northeast Wisconsin, where we meet local residents who have been engaged in a yearslong battle with a multinational company that polluted their drinking water with PFAS. We learn how community members have come together to fight …

3. Public Trust: Testing the Waters

Episode 13 Are PFAS in maple sap, wild rice, fish and other harvestable goods important to the Anishinaabe way of life? These are some of the questions the Voigt Intertribal Task Force asked Gavin Dehnert, Wisconsin Sea Grant’s emerging contaminants scientist, after PFAS were found in wolves. These questions became the central foundation of a …

2. Public Trust: Fighting Fires

Episode 12 In this episode, we return to French Island, a community near La Crosse in Western Wisconsin, to learn more about how local drinking water became contaminated with PFAS. For decades, firefighting foams made from PFAS were used at the local airport for routine training and to deal with emergency situations like plane crashes. …

Public Trust: Tapped Out

Episode 11 What happens when an entire Wisconsin community can no longer use their tap water? In this episode, we travel to the small town of Campbell on French Island to find out. French Island resident and local official Lee Donahue gives us a tour of the neighborhood. She explains how the community’s drinking water …

Fire, blueberries and treaty rights

Episode 10 Today, we’re talking about red pine forests, blueberries, treaty rights, and how they all converge around fire on a tiny split of land jutting out into Lake Superior – what we now call Minnesota and Wisconsin Points. The story starts at the opening ceremony of a Wisconsin Sea Grant-funded project called Nimaawanji’idimin giiwitaashkodeng: …