(Wahpeton)– There’s good news to report when it comes to bacteria levels in the Iowa Great Lakes. Contamination levels were extremely high shortly following the massive rains that hit June 21st and 22nd. Mary Skopec, Executive Director of Lakeside Lab tells KUOO news with one exception, samples taken this past week from several of the Iowa Great Lakes and Silver Lake at Lake Park show bacteria levels have since dropped considerably…
“Of the 11 samples we took on Monday, 10 of those actually came back low or very low for e-coli bacteria. E-coli is an indicator of potential pathogens, bacteria, things like that, being washed into the water. It is a standard the DNR uses to report on beaches typically throughout the year. So most of those samples came back, the only one that came back NOT low was actually along the east side of East Okoboji. So what we’re seeing is that the lakes are improving with respect to water quality. I think we’ve seen several days of sediment, the dirt that’s been washed in dropping to the bottom of the lake and then as the water clears it actually provides some disinfection kind of power to the water, so bacteria levels are dropping and things are looking much, much, better from a water quality perspective.”
Skopec doesn’t believe the flood has caused any long-term damage to water quality in the lakes…
“Luckily the lakes have been on a long term improvement over the last 25 years. Our CLAMP data shows the improvement. We’ve put a lot of practices on the landscape to hold back some of that. We are going to have a little bit of an issue that happens from all of that stuff washing in, but I think long term ecological damage probably isn’t going to happen. Certainly it sets us back a little bit. We’re hoping of course that the fish barrier at the outlet of the lakes is holding back most of those silver carp. We’re not going to know how that barrier faired in the flood until probably a little bit later. But the lakes are holding up pretty well considering that fact there’s been a lot of practices that have gone on the landscape to hold back the worse of the worse.”
Skopec says Lakeside Lab will continue to collect and analyze water samples from lakes area beaches in coming weeks and will post the results on their website until the DNR is able to resume it’s monitoring.
