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Water has been creeping up on the summer home of Don Lukas of Janesville on Clear Lake.
Water has been creeping up on the summer home of Don Lukas of Janesville on Clear Lake.
The Clear Lake summer home of Steven Victor of Riverwoods, Ill. is completely surrounded by the rising waters of the lake.
Schrank
Nordlof
MILTON TOWNSHIP — The scene looks familiar to anyone around for Rock County’s record floods this summer.
Water surrounds a gray cabin, nearly touching the bottom of a grill leaning against the house.
Down the street, the waves lap under a forlorn swing tied between two trees and around a flagpole with its American flag still flying defiantly in the breeze.
Months after the water receded from the shores of the Rock River and Lake Koshkonong, it’s still rising around Clear Lake in Milton Township, neighbors said.
“It’s a slow-moving disaster, watching it inch up and inch up,” said Steven Victor of Riverwoods, Ill., who owns the gray summer home, which bears four inches of water inside.
Gail Nordlof, treasurer of the Clear Lake Improvement Association, estimated the lake is six feet higher than normal. It has surrounded at least two homes, covered some wells and flooded at least one basement.
Neighbors were already dealing with high water levels after record rainfall in August 2007 and snowfall in the winter of 2007-08. June’s torrential downpours made things worse.
The lake isn’t fed by streams or rivers, but it’s slowly seeping up the excess groundwater in the area, said Madeline Gotkowitz, associate professor with the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey.
Now, there’s nowhere for that water to go.
“The lake is reacting now to 18 months of much higher than normal precipitation,” she said. “If that continues, I imagine the lake level will stay high.”
Gotkowitz hasn’t seen the lake yet and hopes to learn more by meeting with neighbors at Milton Town Hall on Tuesday. The meeting will discuss why the lake is rising and what, if anything, can be done about it.
Clear Lake isn’t the only body of water facing this problem. Communities near Fish, Mud and Crystal lakes in Dane County and Middle Genesee Lake in Waukesha County have already pumped water out of those lakes.
But Nordlof doubts the area can afford such an undertaking. It cost $46,000 to pump water out of Middle Genesee Lake, not counting the cost of fuel, engineering studies or permitting fees, she said.
Pumping or draining might not be viable options for Clear Lake, Gotkowitz said.
“It can be an enormous, engineered solution, and sometimes when we’re dealing with problems that occur in the natural landscape that occur because of natural conditions, it can be a little presumptuous of us to think we can change these conditions,” she said.
No one is sure when the lake might recede again, though this year’s snowfall total will certainly be a factor. When the lake level has risen in the past, it’s taken years to go back down, Nordlof said.
And no one has ever seen the lake rise the way it has this year.
Bob Schrank’s family has owned property on the lake for about a century, and the family has never seen anything like this, he said.
Schrank’s basement flooded in June even though he lives about 200 feet from the shoreline.
Since then, he’s pumped water out of the basement for 14 minutes every 2½ hours, he said.
“We’ve literally pumped thousands of gallons out of the basement,” he said.
The rising water level raises concerns about wells, propane tanks and septic tanks, neighbors said. They predict the situation will get worse come winter.
“Once the lake freezes, it’s going to wreak havoc,” Schrank said.
IF YOU GO
What: Meeting to discuss Clear Lake’s rising water level and possible solutions
When: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Milton Town Hall, 23 First St., Milton.