Hello all, welcome to WFHR's Rapid Support, proudly brought to you by Cracket Sceptic for
this June 26th, 2025.
Have your host James J. Mailoff here, welcoming into the studio one of our favorite people
to talk to.
Jen McNally from UW Extension Wood County, she is their groundwater natural resources
educator.
Jen, how you been?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me, James.
Always good to talk with you.
Always learn and have fun when we have conversations and today we're going to be getting
into water issues to be aware of in the summer.
Interesting, especially in Wisconsin here, this tends to be a topic almost, I know I talk
with this with the YMCA, we're talking about swimming classes for kids.
It seems like this topic affects a lot of different areas.
Absolutely, and I want to caveat this to James because I want to say, these are things
that people should be aware of when it comes to water quality in the summer, but by no
means, am I discouraging people from getting out there and enjoying our water resources
at all?
The last thing I want people to think is there's some crazy lady talking on the radio
saying, do not go swimming in our lakes and rivers because that is not the case.
No, but it is a topic that I do think that sometimes people can shy away from maybe
because of some of that or just the knowledge or I mean the information not necessarily
being common and everything, so it's great to be able to touch on this.
Absolutely.
The reason I wanted to bring this up today is so that if folks do hear about it or they
see a press release come out from the county health department, that they know what it's
about and what they're talking about, and so I feel like if people have more information,
the more they can make informed decisions, so that's why I wanted to talk about some
water quality issues.
Yeah, and diving in, the temps are rising, so that has, you know, that kicks things off
really.
Right?
Exactly, and that's when people not only really start to use the water and go swimming
and boating and stuff because we're situated in a perfect spot for that with the river
and like with Zecha and NEPCO, just down the way, but that's also when these water quality
issues kind of start to pop up, you know, warm temps really fuel growth of anything.
And two things that we're going to talk about today is we're going to talk about bacteria
and we're going to talk about blue-green algae.
Both of them love warm temperatures.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, the algae thing is something that I've learned more and more about in the
conversations I've had with you guys at Extension.
I'm glad we're diving into these.
Why don't we start with beach monitoring and bacteria?
Sure, absolutely.
So beach monitoring starts to happen.
We have a fantastic Wood County Health Department that routinely monitors all of the county
beaches in the county, and that starts late spring, usually around Memorial Day, and
then happens routinely throughout the summer.
And they are collecting samples and looking for E. coli bacteria accounts at each of
the beaches.
There's a threshold that is set by the EPA for what's considered safe.
And if the water exceeds that threshold, then the health department actually has the
authority to close that beach to public use, just to protect the safety and well-being
of county residents.
Which is incredibly awesome that we have a system like that.
Yeah.
The idea, I think the only thing worse than that to me is the idea of how long it went without
these kind of things, you know, in society, and that's not anybody's fault in appointing
your fingers or anything like that, just the idea that this exists is one of those things
that I think that, and this is again nobody's fault, this is the way life works, we normalize
things a lot.
We get used to things.
I'm like, oh, we got this.
Oh, we have that.
So of course we do.
They should be there.
They should be doing this job.
But it doesn't hopefully get us to appreciate them any less.
And these kind of things, I think, are noteworthy.
You know, you make plans to go to late NECCO or check out with each other or something and
then you get a press release or you hear us talking about a press release that you can't
go down there because of this or that or something.
That's a good thing.
Like that's a good thing.
The alternative is you still, you stuck through your plans and now you've got E. coli or
something.
These things are going to happen.
We're talking about, we're talking about a school pool and even to that, a pool can be
infected.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it can happen.
And this is just part of this is the give and take we have with nature.
Exactly.
And water is one of those things to, you know, warm temperatures, water moist conditions
are really kind of key factors to these growing.
And by no means when like when we say E. coli bacteria, a lot of times people think
of like animal waste or something and that and that absolutely is the case.
So E. coli comes from either human or animal fecal contamination, but that doesn't mean
that there's, I think a lot of times when we use the word contamination, people think
of something like a manure spill or like catastrophic that happens and that really isn't the
case.
I mean, a lot of times when we get an elevated bacteria account at a beach, it's from
something as simple as like heavy rains that are occurring beforehand that are washing
runoff into that lake.
And so with that comes a lot of extra stuff.
And that can spike if the conditions are ready, can spike that bacteria growth.
Goose poop is one that we see frequently.
You know, we have, we have these populations.
So it's even naturally occurring and it's just a combination of all of the right factors
coming together.
And what we're really trying to do is to, you know, to keep people safe is really the
reason that we're out there looking at this stuff.
You know, and this is kind of a positive in some ways.
I think our resources have done such a good job on this and we don't have, I don't know
that it's common to know somebody that's, you know, been in effect with E. coli or something
along those lines.
They've done such good job at this.
At the same time, I think people hear that and they don't immediately know the, oh,
well, why?
Why, what, what happens if I do get infected or something, maybe we touch on that just
a little bit to just remind everybody, hey, this is important.
You don't get infected with this.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think that's one of the common things too is like, you know, most people want to
create like swimming or recreating in water with some of the outcomes of that.
And they're things like diarrhea and nausea and vomiting, you know, that can come from
a whole host of different places.
And so a lot of times I don't think people may necessarily connect that.
Yeah.
Maybe not everybody.
I'm sorry to cut you off.
No, I didn't mean to do that.
I just, I immediately thought of something that I was talking about my mom a little bit
about when it comes to this topic.
And maybe you haven't dealt with E. coli, but we've all been that kind of sick where you're
dealing with basically like three out of four of these or something.
It's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good.
Avoid it all you can.
And listen to our, our business, our non-profits out there are people working so hard to keep
our waters clean and work on that yourselves.
I think that's something else to keep in mind throughout this conversation that we can
also make an impact on this ourselves and trying to keep our water clean.
What is the primary risk of an ingestion?
Is it ingestion of the water?
Yeah.
So ingestion when it comes to E. coli is the ingestion or drinking of water.
And so that's why swimming is probably the most high-risk activity when it comes to
E. coli contamination.
That accidental ingestion, you know, I don't think a lot of people are out there, you
know, purposefully drinking the lake water when they're swimming, but it always happens.
And so swimming is the big one, you know, boating at things like that, you're fine, that
isn't a big deal.
And that's why it's primarily focused on the swimming beaches for that one when we're
monitoring those is where we're really looking.
Would you say even without a report or a test being done, we've just had here in Central
Wisconsin some pretty consistent heavy rains?
Is it a good idea to kind of avoid swimming even after a good rain?
Yeah, especially like where we had an all day rain yesterday that just was steady.
Yeah, I always say, you know, waiting 24, 48 hours after a heavy rain is always a great
idea just to be on the safe side of things that gives it typically enough time, especially
with our systems, you know, the Wisconsin River, NEPCO and was each are both impoundments
of the river.
And so they still have a fair amount of flow going through them in those situations where
that's flowing 24, 48 hours is going to give it a pretty good chance to move through
that system.
So, so that's a great role of thumb generally.
And kind of piggybacking on that, Jen, it does feel like when we do get these reports
from our parks and rec department or anything and it's shout out to them and they let us
know about these things, it doesn't feel like it's many much longer before they're opened
up again.
No.
Usually a couple of days or something like that, is that about the average time?
Typically, you know, a week, maybe two at the most, you know, when things are, they'll
generally go through kind of like that gross period where, you know, that count gets really
high and then a little time to tape her off after that.
So what generally happens is if there's a beach that tests high, they're going back out
there routinely testing, you know, every so often to see when that's going to happen
and as soon as it comes down into those safe levels again, they're removing that post.
And so in that case, it's a great idea.
If you have concerns, check the Wood County Health Department page because they usually
are posting.
If there's a beach that has tested high, they're sending out a press release, the County
Parks Department is always a great one to check in with too because they have that information.
And so yeah, just paying attention to those information sources is a great way to know
what's going on.
We are speaking with our friend Jen McNally, groundwater and natural resource educator
with UW Extension Wood County and Jen let's dive in the blue green algae now a little
bit.
Yeah.
There's a lot to cover on this one.
It really is.
No pun intended there.
But this blooms another issue in our area.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is another one.
This one maybe gets a little bit more press.
I think probably because it's more visual for people, they can see it a lot of times.
And so the Wisconsin River system also has experienced this a little bit farther down
like Pete and Long Castle Rock have had issues with this and pretty significant issues.
So fun fact, blue green algae, even though it's called an algae, not really an algae, it
is a bacteria.
I remember that now.
I forgot about that.
That's right.
That's just one of those well.
Right?
I don't know how I'd ever got its name, but it's actually a cyanobacteria.
Very common in Wisconsin, so not surprising that we have it.
And there are lots of different species of blue green algae.
Generally, like when we say blue green algae, people think of like a toxic algae.
And that's true, but there are lots and lots of different types and not all of them are
toxic.
Some are.
Some aren't.
Some are only toxic during certain time periods.
So yeah, just to make it difficult.
Right.
Exactly.
There is no easy catch all for that one at all.
When it comes to the conditions for this, it doesn't take a lot for it to be right either
for it to grow.
No, no.
So a lot of times, one thing we do have work in in our favor is again, because we live
on more of those river systems.
Those are more common here.
They generally like more stagnant water.
So you know, NEPCO and Wasisha are a little less flow, so those might be potential areas.
And then lakes are prime candidates for this to happen.
But we have seen them on the Wisconsin River as well.
So by no means is that exclusive.
So either stagnant or slow moving water warm temperatures, that's a big one.
And then they usually they need food in order to grow.
So if we have extra nutrients in the water or you like phosphorus and nitrogen, that's
going to provide their food base for them and that is can be the catalyst.
So again, things like a big runoff event can really feel all that, you know, so warm
weather, runoff event, you know, it's the mix of all the right combinations that can
do that.
And I kind of got ahead of myself a little bit, Jen, I'm sorry, we were getting into the
colors a little bit.
And I thought that was a really good part, especially one of the things I saw in your
notes, they're a reddish purple or bright.
I've never seen that color.
Yeah, no, no.
I'm calling you up.
Exactly.
So you know, a lot of times when we, when we say blue, green algae, the first picture
that pops to mind is kind of like a pea soup or it will look like if there's a bloom.
So what a bloom is is when that bacterial growth like happens really quickly and they replicate,
you'll get a big bloom happening or a big growth period.
And so when a bloom happens, a lot of times what that'll look like is like pea soup,
and sometimes people will say that it looks like paint being thrown on top of the water,
typically kind of like yellow, green, bluish, green, lime, green colors are pretty typical,
but yeah, they come in a wide variety of colors.
Like you said, the rounds, reds, browns, purples, I mean, they show up in all sorts of funky
things.
So yeah.
Yeah.
And kind of coming back to the point about the environmental conditions and everything,
they don't necessarily have to be perfect for the algae to show up.
It can form in different times of the year, in particular.
Yeah.
Most of the time we see it happening in the summer because that's when we have the warmer
months, but I mean, these things have happened rarely, but they have happened even under ice
conditions as well.
So it's just a matter of if they have what they need in order to grow, it can happen anytime.
So they're a little bit more heightened and a little pain, a little bit more attention
when that weather starts to get warm and that component starts to get happen.
But it's good to be on the lookout anytime.
And you mentioned that there are so many different species and not all of them are necessarily
toxic.
No, no.
So what happens is certain species will grow and then there's actually toxins that form
inside the cells of certain species.
And like I said, not even the species that can produce toxins don't do it all of the
time.
So there's really no good way to tell if a species is toxic.
But what happens is when those cells break open, those toxins are released.
And so that can happen either when algae is dying back and like naturally decomposing
and breaking open.
It can happen if the water goes through a really rough disturbance and those cells break
or even when water is ingested or those algal particles are injected when they mix with
stomach acids and start to break down, those toxins can be released as well.
And those toxins are what poses the health risk.
It's not actually the algae itself, but it's the toxins that some of those produce.
Well, it sounds like if you just look at them funny.
They're the lactops.
So it doesn't take a lot of time.
Right.
No.
And this one is a little bit trickier because those toxins, you know, if like your water
skin or something like that, they can aerosolize.
And so if you can inhale them, that also poses a risk.
So this one is one that we, you know, we encourage a little bit more caution with, you know,
the coli and bacteria is really, you have to ingest it.
This one is, you know, we want you to take a little bit more caution when, if you're
water skiing, paddle boarding, um, boating is usually on the lower risk side.
So that one isn't quite a big concern, uh, swimming.
This one is also unique that, uh, this one can also affect pets and have some pretty
detrimental effects on pets, not just humans as well.
I remember, uh, one of the first girlfriends I had out here, she had a wonderful lab and
we used to take them for walks.
We're taking them to the beach and she was going to take them off the collar and just let
them go.
That's what she usually did.
Uh, she was just about to like caught them at the last second and it was because there
was algae in the water.
Yeah.
And I, as a city kid thought, oh, she just didn't want them to just coat, you know, or something
like that.
It's going to be hard to clean out.
I'm in the butt to clean for sure.
Yeah.
It's such a good note about that with animals because, you know, as owners, we want
the best for them and everything.
But sometimes we don't always, you know, do the, oh, well, they shouldn't go in the
water.
But boy, they love it so much.
Right.
Exactly.
They'll have other chores.
They'll have other chores.
That's a hard thing to do.
And so, you know, it's not even just, so for them, swimming as a risk, retrieving toys
in and out of the water too, where they might accidentally ingest it.
But it's also, even if they're just walking through it and have algae on the outside and
then they lick their coat, they're ingesting it that way.
So yeah.
So kind of one of those situations, we, best rule of thumb when it comes to blue-green
algae is when in doubt, stay out.
Yeah.
So like, if you see something that doesn't feel right or doesn't look right, better to
be cautious, the only way to know for sure with blue-green algae is to submit a sample
to a lab.
Unfortunately, right now for our inland water bodies, nobody is routinely sampling for
blue-green algae.
And that's just because of, you know, there isn't enough people or resources.
In certain areas, if you have a concern, you can actually call in and report a potential
blue-green algae, which is super helpful because that puts the DNR on kind of like an alert.
And if they have the resources, they will come out and confirm whether it is or not.
So the place that you can report that is dnrhabs.com or .gov, I don't remember, that was gonseng.gov.
And habs is harmful algal blooms, so that's the easy way to remember that.
And then you can also contact the health department as well.
They might be limited in what they're able to do, but I do know that they appreciate
knowing if people have concerns because oftentimes if you're calling about it, you are not
the only person calling about it.
And more data the better for what they're doing and everything.
It's a great chance to really, really impact things by sharing that information and reaching
out and letting them know.
We touched on this a little bit before about the reasons to avoid this and everything.
But I don't think it would be a bad idea to just touch on what some symptoms might be
because you could do all the right things and still run into this and not even realize it
maybe.
Exactly.
You know, that's a tough one.
So human symptoms related to this one, kind of similar to E. coli, a little bit different.
So the stomach cramps, the diarrhea, vomiting, headache can be one of these ones.
Difficulty breathing, sometimes especially if it's aerosolized, it can kind of cause
some some breathing or along issues.
And muscle weakness is another one for humans.
To be aware of in pets, again, the vomiting or diarrhea.
And then for them, two seizures can be a big one.
So if you have been in or near water and then experience these systems, something to tell,
you know, seek medical profession, help, and then make sure you're communicating that
with your medical professional or your veterinarian too, that look, we were in or near a water body
and then these symptoms appeared, and that will be helpful for them in Germany.
And two gens pointed, kicked all of this off where we don't want anybody to do anything,
you know, but enjoy their summer and have a great part of it.
And however, it may be come across on Mayan, I think you're doing an amazing job.
We encourage you, we can not encourage you enough to enjoy your summer, be out there.
In fact, I think that's really what we're trying to do here is make sure that you,
because if you run into some of this stuff, you are not going to have a fun summer.
There's no, at least a couple of days there are not going to be fun.
Exactly.
We want people to go out there and enjoy the resources and enjoy the water and the beautiful areas
that they're in, but with just a little bit of safety sometimes and awareness.
No, we do this with a lot of things in life.
As we're kind of wrapping up here, Jen, are there kind of activities that can be a little
more problematic than others?
And again, something that you touch on a little bit, but just kind of hammering home a little bit.
Yeah, exactly.
So for both Blue Green and LG and Ecoli swimming is the big one, ingestion of water to,
you know, none of us really use surface water for drinking water in Wood County.
But if you're camping or something like that, you know, don't drink the surface water.
That's always a good rule of thumb or filter it before you do.
If for Blue Green, LG, those sports where you're kind of recreating in or close to or stirring
up the water.
So again, the water skiing paddle boarding, those type of things we want to avoid.
And then pets, of course, keeping pets out of the water, that's a big one.
Now if you do run into something like we were talking about and everything, if you suspect
Blue Green, LG bloom or anything, is there somewhere to go to to report that?
Yeah.
So again, that's that DNR website that DNR Habs at Wisconsin.gov.
That's the best place to report that.
You can also go through the County Health Department as well and just give them the heads up on that
information.
That's always super helpful.
If you want to just learn more about it too, both the DNR and the Department of Health
Services at the state level have excellent resources on it.
DNR also has a mapping feature that shows like where in the state these things are happening.
And so that's a great visual, especially if you're traveling outside of Wood County and
you want to know like is there something I should be aware of DNR's website is a great
place to go for that.
And if people have followed questions for you and like to know more, Jen, how can they
reach you?
Yeah, absolutely.
So great place to do that is to look for the Wood County Extension website.
All of my contact information is on there, including my email or they can just call the
office number, which is 715-421-844-0.
Love talking with you, Jen.
Thank you so much for the time and the information that we appreciate you so much.
Say hi to everybody over at Extension Forces.
We'll do, absolutely.
And thank you, everybody, for joining us for another edition of WFHR's Rapids Report.
Probably brought to you by Crockett Septic.
