Watershed Moments: Rick Fox

Rick Fox grew up on Lake Michigan in Kenosha, always on the water. He was a SCUBA diver by age 13, and by 15 years old knew he wanted to be an oceanographer when he grew up. He ended up with a career as an environmental scientist, consulting with large companies and government agencies. He worked on superfund sites, including the removal of PCBs in the lower Fox River.

“I’m proud of my career, but it was not as satisfying as it could have been,” Rick said. Working on billion-dollar projects to remove pollution involves collaboration between corporations, lawyers, non-profits, and government agencies, and too often they didn’t work well together.

Groups with different perspectives would point fingers at one another rather than working toward solutions. “I’m not looking to accuse anyone,” Rick said. “Let’s build a coalition and just move forward.”

When it came time to retire, he and his wife ended up on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago. “We didn’t know anything about Lake Winnebago,” he said, “except it’s a big lake with good fishing.”

As they were moving in, the town was facing problems with runoff. With large spring storms becoming more common, no one could ignore the rain that would race across the fields and flood the community. “All this water, milky brown with manure and top soil, it’s going in our garages and basements,” Rick said.

His neighbors knew Rick had worked in that field and quickly connected him to the new community committee. “The first thing I did,” Rick said, “was get a hold of Korin and other staff at Fox-Wolf.” He learned that Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance was already working in the area on the Pipe Creek Watershed. And Rick noticed that Fox-Wolf was working hard to build bridges between groups with different perspectives. “In particular,” he said, “I see it as you work with farmers.”

Property owners on the town committee were blaming farmers, until they realized that farmers don’t want to lose that topsoil either. “There was a convergence of interest for all of us. It wasn’t us/them, but we,” said Rick.

“What we’re all realizing is we can’t point fingers. We have to line up and work together.” That meant not only a town committee, but starting a farmer-led group as well. And now the town committee and the farmer-led group are working toward the same goals, in collaboration and alignment with Fox-Wolf.

Rick is thankful for the chance to get back to the grassroots type of cooperation. “To me, it’s all about partnerships. We can do this better. I spent 30 years trying to do projects better. I am so impressed with Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance. You are amazingly efficient and get things done. I want to help champion that. That’s why we decided to write the check for a lifetime membership.”

Rick said he became “more retired” just yesterday, but he’s clearly not slowing down. “I got a little bit of mud in my garage,” Rick said. That’s how it started. “But I’m really here for the blue-green algae. I worry for my dogs, the swimmers in the lake… it’s got to be bad for the fish too. Cyanotoxins in the water is scary.” And while that may seem like a daunting task to take on as a retirement project, Rick sees how to break it down to make it manageable for all of us.

“Every little thing you do has an effect. So it’s worth doing the small things that may not seem like they’ll add up,” said Rick. “Take three feet of your lawn and convert it to native plants. It’s a step. Go from three applications of fertilizer to two; that’s a step. Pick up that piece of trash. What the heck can we do? Everything we can.”