MADISON, Wis. — Earlier this month, Madison, Wis., was host to the city’s 14th annual Frozen Assets Festival. “When our lakes are frozen, they are truly our greatest asset,” says James Tye, executive director and founder of Clean Lakes Alliance, the nonprofit that hosts the festival.
This time of year, frozen lakes are a part of life here. The city was built on an isthmus — a thin strip of land between two bodies of water. Lake Mendota and Lake Monona border the city’s historic downtown on either side, with the strip of land running about a mile wide at its thinnest. The lakes are visible from many places in town. In wintertime, ice fishing, skating, ice sailing and snowshoeing are all common sights.
Historically, people valued the ice for other reasons. “There’s a long history of ice harvesting in this region,” says Hilary Dugan, a limnologist — someone who studies inland waters — at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “So [there was] just a lot of commercial activity on these lakes, cutting blocks of ice out of the lakes all winter.”…