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Whitewater asks residents to take stock of lakes

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WHITEWATER — City officials want to know how much residents value Cravath and Tripp lakes and to what extent they support efforts to improve the lakes.

Questionnaires mailed this week will gauge lake usage, potential uses, the community's perception of the lakes and support for lake improvement efforts, said Matt Amundson, city parks and recreation director.

A $10,000 grant from the state Department of Natural Resources is helping pay for a study of the lakes and the community survey. Surveys of water quality, aquatic plants and recreational use were completed last fall.

Years ago, families flocked to Tripp Lake to swim and lie on the sandy beach. Today, Tripp Lake has an average depth of 3 feet, and the beach closed in 2001 because of water quality concerns.

Cravath Lake also is shallow, with depths ranging from 3 to 10 feet.

"We hear a lot about water quality, and we hope the survey data show that the community … has a true concern for preserving these lakes for generations to come," Amundson said.

Mark Eiswerth, associate professor of environmental economics at UW-Whitewater, wrote the questionnaire.

"In order to do a better job of protecting the lakes for the future, it's essential to know how people feel about them, how they use them and how they'd like to use them," he said.

Eiswerth said the survey includes questions about recreational offerings on the lakes, what people do when they go to the lakes and how often people do those things on the lakes. He said the survey also asks about lake use elsewhere in the state.

"If you can get some idea of how much lake recreation people engage in and what kinds of things they like to do at other lakes, it can help you to manage the particular lakes you're looking at," he said.

Eiswerth said the survey includes questions about aquatic weeds, sediment and water clarity. It asks what problems residents are most concerned about and how those problems affect their use of the lakes.

Eiswerth said the questionnaire also aims to find out the extent to which residents would be willing to support efforts to improve the lakes and what sort of organization would be best suited to manage the lakes.

Jeffrey Thornton, a lakes management expert with the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, with which the city has contracted to implement the grant, said the questionnaires will be an important part of planning the future of the lakes.

"The plan will, to a certain extent, govern how these lakes are managed into the future," he said.

Thornton said he expects a sizeable number of responses that indicate the lakes are of significant value to the community and that people would "like to see the geological clock turned back" to a time when the lakes were used for boating, fishing and swimming.