Lake Country Clean Waters

So I gave a little bit of the background in the opening, but tell us a little more about the story behind your work.

Absolutely.

The Pewaukee Lake Water Ski Club is well known in the area and they'd been performing for years and years and years and for generations, to be honest with you.

And and so it was a huge blow to them and to the community when the lake no longer would allow them to put on their show.

Right.

And so people got together to decide, you know, how to educate people about the problem.

I mean, you may, they immediately, when these type of problems come up on the lakes, they immediately try to notify everyone because it's very dangerous to be in the water.

And in particular, you'll find this interesting.

They warn us about our dogs.

Yeah.

I was just going to say that.

The E. coli can kill the animals and the animals are used to swimming in the lake.

And so we immediately they have to get out the word.

But this group, they decided they needed to do more because the water quality, as you know, was compromised and the club was unable to practice or perform.

And so that summer they partnered with the Pewaukee Kiwanis, who had a running beach party.

Oh, OK.

Through interconnections and fellow members and things like that, they decided that they needed to bring awareness to this situation and to start beginning the process, which is the key, educating everybody about not only this specific problem, but the long range problems for lakes and things.

So in 2011, the Lake Country Clean Water Festival was born.

A festival features a large education tent.

And many of our partners and people we do projects with come and put on displays at the festival to educate.

It's geared in many instances to the children, but also for the adults who come to the festival.

And they come in and we, in a very, I think, clever way, start to educate people with the booths and the displays and things like that.

So there was a group dedicated to raising public awareness about the growing need to preserve and protect the lakes.

Then in 2015, two of the Water Ski Club members, Jeff Lee and Joyce Shepard, joined with Susan Buchanan, who was the executive director of Tall Pines Conservancy at the time.

And a local environmental attorney, Don Gallo, created the first organization and started to begin this education process.