Whitewater in the Madison, Wis. area?
Badfish Creek Whitewater
Thanks to the Madison Metro Sewage Dept.,
the water flows all summer
By Mike Ivey The little riffle section wasn't daunting by any means.
A few backpaddles slowed my 12-foot plastic Necky kayak into position. Two strong forward strokes were enough to get on a decent line through the shallow rocky area. Still, the water was moving fast enough to offer that brief rush of excitement from being carried along by the current.
Maybe the best feeling, however, was knowing we were just 20 miles from Madison on the Badfish Creek.
Paddlers around Wisconsin's Capitol City are only beginning to discover the Badfish. The long-neglected rural stream twists from the edge of Madison's southeastern suburbs before joining the Yahara River past the town of Cooksville in northern Rock County.
A mix of rocky bottom and soft mudflat, wooded sections and open areas, the Badfish has seen plenty of abuse over the years.
Agriculture took its toll with cattle finding their way into the creek with frequency. Like many small streams it also made a convenient dumping spot.
But the Badfish is now beginning to benefit from man's impact – at least in terms of making it a dynamite place for paddlers to play in its surprisingly swift waters.
"It's probably the closest thing we have to whitewater around Madison," says Kevin LeRoy, one of the region's top canoe racers and a big fan of the Badfish. With
information garnered from the USGS website <wi.water.usgs.gov> LeRoy has kept track of water levels in the Badfish since he started taming it in 1996.
"At about 200 cfs (cubic feet/second) it's doable. At 300 it's a lot of fun and at 400 it's a little on the scary side,'' says LeRoy, a Birkie skier who boasts he spent this year's race day canoeing on the Badfish.
So what gives the Badfish such a consistently strong flow, even during summer droughts? Where does all
the water keep coming from? Thank the Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District.
The district pumps some 38 million gallons of clear effluent into the Badfish Creek daily – even more, the joke goes, on football Saturdays when the city of 195,000 comes alive for home football games with the Rose Bowl champion Wisconsin Badgers.
Fortunately, the discharge is water that is deemed clean enough for entry into a public waterway by the state Department of Natural Resources. Sewage
district officials at "Madison Met" don't advise that anybody drink creek water by the glassful. But in terms of risk to paddlers or swimmers they say not to worry.
"If you held two glasses up next to each other you really wouldn't be able to smell or see anything different,'' says Jon Schellpfeffer (SIC), assistant chief engineer for the sewerage district, who cautions that his sensitivity to smells has been crimped by years on the job.
Schellpfeffer admits there was a time
when nobody would have considered paddling Badfish because of the poor quality of the effluent. But major advances in sewage treatment over the past decades has led to dramatic improvements.
Today while enjoying the Badfish, you'd no have idea that effluent was responsible for nearly all the water in the creek near the initial discharge point – a 54-inch pipe off County Highway B about five miles from the sewage treatment plant.
By the time the creek reaches the Yahara River
some 30 miles later, effluent makes up about 50 percent of the water flow. The rest is picked up along the way from smaller streams and through runoff into the Badfish directly.
The district began diverting water into the creek in 1959 as a way of keeping it out of the Madison lakes. Water quality has been improving to the point where scientists are finding the Badfish is really good for fish.
"We have some big trout in there,'' said Jeff Steven, a district research biologist,
adding that fish counts made during shocking sessions has found northern pike, panfish and last summer a 24-inch walleye.
But while just a few anglers have discovered the Badfish, the creek is a popular spot for a growing number of Madison-area paddle types.
LeRoy, for one, isn't too unhappy that more kayaks and canoes are finding their way to the Badfish.
"Having people know about a secret spot is really a good thing. Hopefully people will respect it more," said LeRoy, 32,
a consumer policy analyst with the State of Wisconsin.
A favorite put-in spot for paddlers is the bridge at Old Stage Road on the Dane-Rock County line, just west of State Highway 138. Here, the creek bisects the DNR's Badfish Creek recreation area. Just a mile downstream from the public land, the creek hits a riffle section passing under an iron-truss bridge that once served wagon traffic to the Leedle Mill.
Continuing on, the creek brushes past the historic town of Cooksville,
a settlement that features homes dating to the 1840s. Farther downstream, the creek gets into its best riffle sections near the bridges of State Highway 59.
"I'd say most of it is Class 1 but in that section before it joins the Yahara, it's probably Class 2,'' said LeRoy, who has paddled the Badfish in both solo and tandem canoes.
The third Highway 59 bridge, after the Badfish joins the Yahara, makes a good takeout spot for a two-hour trip. Or paddlers can continue downstream for
another hour on the Yahara to the town of Fulton. Most canoe maps show a dam at Fulton but it has been removed, replaced by a park, leaving an ideal takeout and picnic spot.
A couple of cautionary notes, however. Much of the Badfish run through farmland, meaning it's important to watch for obstacles across the stream erected by landowners to keep their livestock penned. Last fall, a pair of orange plastic snow fences presented a minor hindrance just downstream from Cooksville. Both had
openings large enough for 17-foot touring canoes. But when paddling small streams it always pays to be on the lookout for barbed wire, downed trees or other dangerous obstacles.
On the other hand, some portions of the Badfish are so serene it's easy for the mind to drift along with the current.
Rounding a corner, I surprise a great blue heron, which shrieks as it awkwardly rises out of the marsh. I watch for a moment, then turn my attention quickly back to the stream as it
starts to bounce again down a rocky little ledge. The boat scrapes briefly on the gravel before finding easier going in deeper water, leaving me wondering how that section of the Badfish might paddle right after a good summer thunderstorm.
Mike Ivey is a writer with The Capital Times in Madison.
| 
