The Most Costly Mistakes Lake Committees Make
Ever had a lake management plan that sounded great… but didn’t deliver?
Spent a fortune and seen no improvement – or even worse – seen your lake just continue to deteriorate further?
You’re not alone.
But here’s the big challenge:
How can you tell, before you sign the contract, that you are going to get value for money and real results?
If you’ve been part of any recent lake committee discussions, you’ve likely heard and felt the shift – questions are being asked about doing more of the same, conventional wisdom is being challenged.
And that’s because the GAO report has fundamentally changed the conversation.
For years, decisions have been driven by the wrong metrics – surface-level indicators that gave the illusion of progress while the real problems deepened below.
Now, people are realizing that lasting recovery means looking beyond superficial surface symptoms and addressing the aquatic ecosystem of the lake as a whole, top to bottom.
That’s what this video aims to help with – to Simplify the Science, so you can make decisions that truly hold water and be sure that your community’s money is well spent, because lake management is a serious investment and there is a lot at stake.
If you’ve seen our earlier videos, you know the three root causes of lake decline – hypoxia, sediment nutrient recycling, and phytoplankton imbalance – and the three key ACTIONS needed to fix them.
In this video, we’ll walk through how to Measure What Matters to ensure your lake management plan can deliver – before you commit.
Let’s start with the obvious – a healthy lake is one that clears nutrients naturally by sustaining a balanced food web, which means, three outcomes must be achieved:
So here is the evidence of what measurements you need to see before you make any commitments.
Start with full-depth dissolved oxygen data — over time and especially in summer — not just surface readings.
Here the depth is shown along the horizontal axis, and dissolved oxygen on the vertical axis.
Real oxygenation means dissolved oxygen levels of at least 5 mg/L. And you want to see that all the way down to the benthic margin — the zone at the bottom where water meets sediment.
If dissolved oxygen levels drop off, and a lot of the water is hypoxic, that means the sediment is hypoxic, then nutrient recycling will persist and lake health will remain compromised.
You have to measure dissolved oxygen all the way down to the bottom – so it’s not just what you measure, it’s where you measure it.
“Aeration” systems are widely known for failing to reoxygenate the whole water column.
Expensive mistakes have been made, and ineffective systems have often actually worsened cyanobacteria blooms in many lakes. That’s not a risk you want to take or money you want to waste. So do your homework. Google is your friend.
Next you want to see proof of sediment reduction documented by comparative bathymetric scans over several years
Claims are often made about muck reduction, but they’re poorly validated.
Can you believe that some people still use poles to poke into soft, mobile muck to try to measure it, in a few sample spots in the lake — that’s just far too subjective and variable to be relied on in this day and age.
Accurate, mapped measurements of the whole lake are the only way to quantify actual change. You want to see contour maps, you want to see the lake in profile and you want to see numbers and quantified results.
So it’s not just what is measured — it’s how it’s measured.
Lastly you need to see data on the change of phytoplankton composition — not just chlorophyll-a
Often chlorophyll-a is used as a proxy measure for algae.
Here’s something a lot of people don’t realize – Beneficial algae use chlorophyll-a to photosynthesize. Cyanobacteria use phycocyanin – that’s how they got the name blue-green algae.
If you’re only measuring chlorophyll-a – it might appear that algae levels are decreasing — but in reality, beneficial algae may be disappearing while cyanobacteria are thriving.
You need more detailed analysis of phytoplankton than just measuring chlorophyll-a.
So what you don’t measure can be just as important as what you do.
And the vast majority of lakes are making this mistake.
And understand the unintended consequences of the actions being proposed.
Algaecides kill all phytoplankton — but they tend to be more effective against beneficial algae than toxic cyanobacteria.
Also, scientific research has shown that over time, cyanobacteria can develop resistance, to algaecide.
So every time you use algaecide, you are weakening the beneficial algae but strengthening the cyanobacteria as they build up their resistance to algaecide.
So low chlorophyll-a or algae levels following algaecide use are often a warning sign, not an achievement.
You’re likely killing off beneficial algae and when the inevitable rebound occurs, cyanobacteria will progressively become more dominant,
You’re opening the door for cyanobacteria to come in and take over.
The same applies to herbicides. They eliminate weeds, but the resulting decomposing biomass depletes oxygen and adds to the sediment load — fueling the next algae bloom.
It’s critically important to understand whether what you are spending your money on is going to give sustainable results — or just short-term fixes with long-term costs.
It’s not uncommon to see lake reports filled with tables of data on water clarity, pH, conductivity, nutrient levels, chlorophyll-a.
But those are either symptoms of things that can’t be acted upon and improved – how are you going to change the pH or conductivity of your lake? – or symptoms like algae and invasive weeds that can be acted upon by using biocidal chemicals, but doing so only gives temporary relief, and worsens the situation over time.
Treating symptoms is spraying yourself with deodorant and perfume everyday instead of taking a shower – your deodorant might smell nice to you, but you’re going to smell worse and worse, and everyone is going to notice.
If you are not effectively targeting root causes you are wasting time and money.
If oxygen is still lacking at the bottom, if sediment continues to accumulate, and algae/weeds return every year – then those reports are just documenting the demise of your lake, not its recovery.
So before you make a decision for your lake:
• Ask for case studies and relevant data.
• Ask to see real bathymetric maps, dissolved oxygen profiles, and phytoplankton reports.
• Ask about success in fixing the root causes — not just playing Whack-A-Mole with symptoms.
Because if that can’t be shown from past projects – it’s probably not going to happen on your project either.
The next video you have to watch!
We’ll dig into exactly how to Measure What Matters
We’ll show you what to measure, how to measure it, and what sort of results you can expect from a scientifically constructed Lake Management ACTION Plan.
There are links below to download both our Lake Management ACTION Plan e-Book and our Simplify the Science e-Book.
Quite a few people have done so already and got back to us by email with questions, so we’re in the process of figuring out how to do a Q&A type of video to answer them right here on YouTube.
If this video has given you some useful new insight, share it with others in your community or lake committee.
And if you want be notified when our Measure What Matters video goes live, press the subscribe button and you’ll be the first to know.
