One of thousands of freshwater lakes in the US state of Wisconsin, Lake Delton is a man-made lake whose main purpose is recreation in an area popular with regional tourists. Only a dam and an artificial embankment containing a county highway separate the lake from the Wisconsin River. On 9 June 2008, after several days of heavy rainfall, the embankment suddenly gave way. Within hours, the entire lake had emptied into the Wisconsin River and had become a massive mud pit. No one was killed or injured, the flood hurt tourism and several high-end vacation properties on the lake’s shoreline crashed into the pit. The disaster was part of a larger flood sequence along rivers in the American Midwest. Thanks to combined efforts of the state government and private contributors, the lake was refilled and restored.
Contributed by Connor Haas
Course: Modern Global Environmental History
Instructor: Dr. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
University of Wisconsin–Madison, US