Taylor
County Cooperative Extension helps a community travel in a new direction
When the Rib Lake Improvement District and local development foundation asked Cooperative Extension community resource development educator Arlen Albrecht for help in improving Rib Lake, Albrecht knew what to do.
The 324-acre lake is "the heart of the community," according to Albrecht and provides economic, cultural and recreational value to the village and surrounding areas. A small hotel, restaurant and campground operate on its shores.
"But above all, it improves the quality of life," says Albrecht.
In Taylor County, where he's worked and lived for 24 years, Albrecht counsels area business and industry groups, conducts environmental programs, and works with county government on a variety of issues. "My role is to provide education and help implement a process," he says.
The village wanted to deepen Rib Lake and increase its clarity by countering the effects of more than 100 years' worth of industrial timber-waste dumping. Though logging ceased in the 1940s, everything from horse manure to sawdust ended up in the water, creating a 30-foot layer of sediment.
"Different community groups had worked on the problem," Albrecht says, "but they weren't talking to each other."
Bringing people together is key to finding solutions, says Albrecht. "When you live in the same place, shop at the same stores, attend the same churches, and follow the same athletic teams, you know who to bring to the table when issues need to be addressed."
As the community began to learn more about the lake, support coalesced around efforts to improve it. People discovered that Rib Lake might even hold buried treasure in the form of old-growth logs lying beneath the layers of sludge. This was good news, since potential profit from the logs might fund lake-improvement activities.
Albrecht worked with UW-Eau Claire professor of geography Harry Jol and his students to bring a ground-penetrating radar system to Rib Lake to map the lake bottom. Results looked promising, but community members wanted to see for themselves where the logs were located, so they built a barge to probe beneath the lake's surface. Meanwhile, the community managed to secure Wisconsin's only permit to extract submerged logs.
These efforts made it clear that finding and removing the logs would prove to be difficult, so the community took a new approach: What about removing the layers of sediment first?
Again, Albrecht brought university research to bear by enlisting the help of UW-Madison soil scientist Dick Wolkowski, who conducted a study on what turned out to be very fertile lake-bottom sediment.
Based on this information, Rib Lake ["earned" word choice? "received" "was awarded" an applied soil waste-reduction grant to study the sediment more thoroughly this summer.
"Our
work in Extension is never done," Albrecht says. "Rib Lake is not a
community sitting with its hand out. People here want to drive their own futures.
My goal is to help identify university and community assets so people can tackle
problems themselves."
For more details,
contact Arlen Albrecht, arlen.albrecht@ces.uwex.edu
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