With many in the area concerned about the state of their dying lakes, the North Oakland Headwaters Land Conservancy (NOHLC) met to determine if it’s too late for saving.
Recently, Lake Waldon Village residents, living on Gulick Lake, spoke out about their once healthy 18-acre oasis, now dried up to only a half an acre of water.
“It’s gone. There’s no more lake. We used to ice skate out here. Go out on the boat. No longer,” resident Chuck Hamann said of Gulick.
At the NOHLC meeting, Saturday, Oct. 25 at the Lewis E. Wint Nature Center at Independence Oaks, other residents were in attendance with concern for Deer Lake said to being overtaken by exotic invaders like zebra mussels.
And even other lakes were represented at the meeting, each with their own problems. All in common amongst the residents though, was the desire to save their water.
“Water is really what this part of the country is all about. We’re on wells, lakes; it’s our life blood,” NOHLC President Bob Inskeep said.
So, the NOHLC enlisted the help of Howard Wandell, water resources manager and limnologist with the Michigan State Department of Fisheries, to find an answer.
Wandell explained many of Michigan’s 11,000 lakes are being enriched with nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen.
“We often think of enrichment as being something good, but when it comes to lakes it usually is not,” Wandell said.
These nutrients are being washed into the water from human activities on the land around such as lawn fertilizers, septic systems, storm water runoff, agricultural fertilizers, and pet and animal waste, among other sources.
“As the phosphorus increases the water quality in the lake tends to decline,” Wandell said, turning the lakes weedy and turbid with mucky bottoms.
To further explain, he noted lakes are categorized four different ways — Oligotrophic (high quality), Mesotrophic (good quality), Eutrophic (poor quality), and Hypereutrophic (very poor quality).
Typically, oligotrophic lakes are characterized by clear water, sandy bottoms, little plant growth, and tends to have an abundance of trout. With nutrients being added now, a mesotrophic lake is no longer a good home for trout, but will usually be home to much perch and bass. Plant growth begins and muck appears in shallow areas. Eutrophic lakes are very weedy and turbid. And an abundance of plants as well as muck characterize hypereutrophic lakes.
Wandell, who worked 25 years with the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Natural Resources, said the DEQ tested 800 of Michigan’s lakes over a 30-year period and concluded 16 percent were oligotrophic, 51 percent were mesotrophic, 28 percent were eutrophic and 5 percent were hypereutrophic making Michigan lakes in the upper tier of states blessed with high quality lake resources.
But, Wandell said, “In our present society and culture, we often operate by the principal, if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. Well, when it comes to lake situations that is not a good type of philosophy to work by. You can’t sit and wait until something goes bad and then try to fix it. Once a lake hits eutrophic it gets very hard to bring it back.”
Since the state does not have the resources to provide strategic management and can only provide good umbrella management, Wandell said, citizens are asked to step in to do their part.
“We still have the opportunity to manage and protect our lakes if we take action.”
He suggests working in collaborative partnerships with citizens, government and school systems.But most importantly, Wandell says, training and education should be top priority.
“Citizens need training and information to be good stewards of the land and to be effective local resource managers.”
One example of citizen training that Wandell leads through Michigan State University is the seven day program, “A Lake and Stream Leader’s Institute.” Oakland County also offers similar classes.
Sue Julian of the Shiawassee River Task Force offered a list of 50 ways to preserve your watershed with action encompassing everything from composting leaves, participating in a yearly river or lake cleanup, establishing a recycling center, to reading books and article about water issues.
“These are things you can do,” Julian said. “Move forward from what you are already doing, and take the next step.”
For more information contact the NOHLC at (248) 846-6547 or NOHLC@hotmail.com. Also visit www.nohlc.org.
For details on the MSU Leader’s Institute call Wandell at (517) 432-1491 or e-mail at wandellh@msu.edu.