Can Madison clean its lakes?

Steve Carpenter, a UW-Madison limnologist, said people should keep in mind the history of the lakes and understand that improvements are likely to take a long time, even with measures such as the phosphorus bans. Some people would find it hard to believe, he said, that all direct sources of lake pollution, including human waste, were not eliminated until the 1970s. In fact, Carpenter said, the lakes are much cleaner than they were in the 1950s when they were the repository for raw human sewage.