Stormwater Expert Panel: What's one thing you wish the Madison community knew about stormwater they don't know or don't seem to understand yet?

The City of Madison Engineering Division is proud to take part in the statewide Wisconsin Stormwater Awareness Week 2026! Wisconsin Stormwater Week is a collaborative effort of organizations throughout the state that work to raise awareness about the sources of stormwater pollution. WI Governor Tony Evers signed a proclamation establishing September 19 – 27, as the 2026 WI Stormwater Week.  Each day this week, we're hosting a blog panel: We'll focus on one question per day, and we will share answers from our experts on staff. We asked our staff, and here's what they said: 

QUESTION: 
What's one thing you wish the Madison community knew about stormwater that they don't know or don't seem to understand yet?

Jim Wolfe, City of Madison Engineering Division City Engineer

“Unlike Madison, a lot of other cities across the country that we're often compared to have at least a portion of their municipality that operates with a combined storm sewer and sanitary sewer system.  Madison has entirely separate stormwater and sanitary systems. This means that we have different levels of regulation and financial incentive & assistance for how we manage stormwater. Cities with combined systems have to be concerned about larger storm events also resulting in discharges of sanitary wastewater from those combined systems, so they need to take additional measures for managing stormwater.  Thankfully, that's not an issue we have in Madison, but we still have other stormwater challenges facing our community that we're working hard to improve each day." 

Greg Fries, City of Madison Engineering Division, Deputy City Engineer – Stormwater and Sanitary Sewer Design   

“The best way to think about urban runoff is that it is what all of us put on the landscape.  Water is an amazing transporter of everything we put on the landscape from fertilizer, to pesticide, to salt – if you hire a company to treat your lawn and you come home to granules on the sidewalk – that all goes away after the next rain but it goes into the rivers and streams  - it does not disappear.  Hold the companies you hire accountable for good practices." 

Janet Schmidt, City of Madison Engineering Division, Principal Engineer and Section Manager for Stormwater Design Section

"Residents and property owners need to be part of the solutions for management of stormwater. They need to understand their roles for drainage issues/flooding and keeping our waters clean.  The things they do, or don't do, have a significant impact on our environment." 

Phil Gaebler, City of Madison Engineering Division, Stormwater Resource Engineer  

“The salt you put on your sidewalk, and the salt in your water softener, all ends up a lake, river or the groundwater.  It doesn't break down or get absorbed. The salt in the system can be flushed out with rain, but we have seen continuously climbing levels of chloride in our lakes, and we don't have a good handle on how much salt goes out into the environment each year." 

Check back tomorrow for a new question, and new answers from our stormwater expert panel. To learn more about what we're up to this week, learn more in our Engineering blog.