Hydrology Expert Tirelessly Supports Community through Public Engagement

In December 1978, ink barely dry on his doctoral thesis, hydrologist Ken Potter arrived in Madison to take up his new faculty position in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin.

Fast forward thirty-two years, and Potter, now emeritus, is still sharing his continually expanding expertise, teaching Dane County community members about the link between climate change, land use change, and the uptick in rainfall and runoff.

“I have always been practical-issue oriented,” says Potter with an accent that hints at his New Orleans origins. Over the years, Potter has been speaking out as infrastructure, building requirements and land-use decisions started to lag behind the science, making our area more vulnerable to recurring floods.

Potter studied geology as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University. Following graduation, he served as a Commissioned Officer with what is now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps., serving aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean and in Washington D.C. When his commission was up, he returned to school, earning his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University.

“When I first got here, I realized there were all these closed depressions,” says Potter, referring to Wisconsin’s sealed-off low-lying areas or kettles formed by the mile-high walls of glacial ice that crept over what is now Wisconsin ten thousand-plus years ago.

“These ponds have no surface outlets,” says Potter. This means that stormwater runoff flowing from the surrounding land and into them either evaporates or soaks into the ground, providing natural flood protection. Ponds like Esser, Tiedeman’s, and Graber in Middleton are examples.

Ongoing development in the watershed would make the ponds bigger because houses and office parks, paved roads and parking lots can change permeable surfaces to slick impermeable acreages, adding runoff. Fortunately, over the years, stormwater ordinances have been modified to require that development does not increase the amount of runoff to these ponds and cause flood damage as a result, Potter explains.

“The Yahara lake-flooding issue is different,” says Potter. These lakes (Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa and Kegonsa) drain by way of the Yahara River and the slope of the river below Lake Monona is really small. So if new land development is allowed to increase the amount of runoff flowing to the lakes above the natural volume, the lakes can flood like overfilled bathtubs. Current regulations require new development to keep runoff within ten percent of natural levels. But that ten percent is enough to swamp the system, especially in the face of climate change.

“It’s been a long-term wreck that only a few have appreciated, and it’s really accelerating lately,” says Potter. “My initial concerns were with land development. Now we have climate change rainfall increases that make the problem even more critical. We need to improve the way we develop land and install green practices in existing developed areas.”