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UNIVERCITY ALLIANCE
What is UCA?
UniverCity Alliance (UCA) is a network of leaders across UW-Madison's campus dedicated to ensuring Wisconsin communities are healthy, equitable, and sustainable. Its hallmark program UniverCity Year (UCY) is a three-year partnership that connects local governments and communities across Wisconsin with UW-Madison faculty, students, and research to work toward locally-identified goals.
How the UCY program works
After communities apply to the UCY program, staff help leaders define projects. Then, those projects are paired with a faculty member or instructor's class, which can be at the undergraduate or graduate level. Students in that class work on those projects for generally a semester and produce a final report to the community.
Collaboration with FOKC
Recognizing a shared goal, the city of Sun Prairie, the towns of Deerfield and Cottage Grove, the nonprofit Friends of Koshkonong Creek, and Badger Farms, LLC came together to improve the Koshkonong Creek, an impaired waterway, and to implement a vision for sustaining the watershed for the next several decades. These groups applied to UCY for 2021-24 to partner with UW-Madison campus courses, faculty, students, instructors, and staff to work on issues related to green infrastructure, engineering, communications, governance, and environmental conservation planning. Learn more about the partnership between UCA and FOKC.
COMPLETED PROJECTS
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Environmental: What are the elevation changes in the creek, and with improvements in one area, like Districts 8 & 9, how will downstream properties be affected with the quicker flow? With growth in the development areas, how will creek flow be affected, and will areas become permanently flooded if no creek modifications are made in the long term?
Construction: What are the minimum changes to the current creek design needed, versus what are some options in creek modification design that can enhance natural stream flow and wildlife?
Geotechnical: The City of Sun Prairie is considering installing holding ponds on some current city-owned property, are there other options for building those ponds for the ground to hold water? Additionally, if a pond is built with a blue clay liner, how will surrounding land parcels be affected? Are there potential technological developments in the planning horizon that could radically alter how treated sewer water is ultimately handled, like recharging the groundwater?
Geospatial: This will be critical in the inventory phase, to accurately determine just what is constructed presently, and where does it make sense to make efficient changes?
Hydrologic/hydraulic: Several property owners in the area are affected by flood zone mapping requiring thousands of dollars of flood insurance annually. Is the flood zone mapping accurate? If the creek is modified, could the flood zone change, and if so, how. (The goal here is not to change the FEMA maps, but to come up with alternatives in creek design to help mitigate future flooding, we will therefore need to exhibit that reduction in flooding.)
Additionally, several farmers have had their lands noted as wetlands on zoning maps, but their land can be farmed in dry years. Thereby is the classification correct, and if the creek is modified so that floods can again become less frequent, how does the wetland delineation get corrected?
Structural: What is the preferred construction of revised channels within the creek, and what design is the easiest to maintain in the long term?
Transportation: While the creek is too small to handle commercial transportation in the long run, it certainly is open to recreation aspects and those could be studied. If the creek is to be modified, what will be the costs of bridge infrastructure modifications, and how should creek protection be considered in those improvements
Ecological: What can be done to improve the ecology of the creek and watershed, to possibly improve the scoring of the creek so it isn’t considered impaired?
Construction: What are the minimum changes to the current creek design needed, versus what are some options in creek modification design that can enhance natural stream flow and wildlife?
Geotechnical: The City of Sun Prairie is considering installing holding ponds on some current city-owned property, are there other options for building those ponds for the ground to hold water? Additionally, if a pond is built with a blue clay liner, how will surrounding land parcels be affected? Are there potential technological developments in the planning horizon that could radically alter how treated sewer water is ultimately handled, like recharging the groundwater?
Geospatial: This will be critical in the inventory phase, to accurately determine just what is constructed presently, and where does it make sense to make efficient changes?
Hydrologic/hydraulic: Several property owners in the area are affected by flood zone mapping requiring thousands of dollars of flood insurance annually. Is the flood zone mapping accurate? If the creek is modified, could the flood zone change, and if so, how. (The goal here is not to change the FEMA maps, but to come up with alternatives in creek design to help mitigate future flooding, we will therefore need to exhibit that reduction in flooding.)
Additionally, several farmers have had their lands noted as wetlands on zoning maps, but their land can be farmed in dry years. Thereby is the classification correct, and if the creek is modified so that floods can again become less frequent, how does the wetland delineation get corrected?
Structural: What is the preferred construction of revised channels within the creek, and what design is the easiest to maintain in the long term?
Transportation: While the creek is too small to handle commercial transportation in the long run, it certainly is open to recreation aspects and those could be studied. If the creek is to be modified, what will be the costs of bridge infrastructure modifications, and how should creek protection be considered in those improvements
Ecological: What can be done to improve the ecology of the creek and watershed, to possibly improve the scoring of the creek so it isn’t considered impaired?