Des Moines Register
08-21-07
Warning: Popular D.M. lake 'on last leg'
Man-made Easter Lake produced a housing boom, but now up to a third of the
lake's volume is clogged with silt.
By JASON PULLIAM
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Charlie Finch's modest johnboat would have glided through most any bay in
Easter Lake a decade ago.
Not any more. Heavy silt pollution has choked off access to many areas of the
lake for Finch, a Polk County Conservation ranger, and the thousands of others
who annually gravitate to the county's busiest park.
The 172-acre, man-made lake helped spark a housing boom in southeast Des
Moines. The same development that has helped trigger south-side renewal is
contributing to Easter Lake's fouled water.
"Right now, the lake is on its last leg," Finch said. "It should last a lot longer than
it is."
A recently launched restoration study will help determine how to keep the
shrinking lake from becoming a marsh.
Failure to revive the lake will undermine several million dollars' worth of
improvements proposed for the 464-acre Easter Lake Park, Polk County officials
report.
Plans are in the works for an estimated $1.2 million lodge, a roughly six-mile
recreational trail linked to nearby Ewing Park priced at at least $1 million, and
several smaller initiatives.
The restoration project will dictate the park's future as a magnet for conservation
and recreation activities, said Pat Boddy, Polk County Conservation director.
"It's critical because in the end, people come to Easter Lake Park because of the
lake," she said. "The linchpin to all of it is the quality of water in Easter Lake. It
undergirds everything we do there."
Lake could be gone in 25 to 30 years
In the 40 years since the lake was created, silt has eaten up to one-third of the
lake's volume, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources estimates.
Construction-related runoff and city storm water ranked chief among the pollution
sources identified in a 2005 DNR report.
"If we keep that up, we're not going to have a functional lake in 25 to 30 years,"
said Mike McGhee, the DNR's lake projects coordinator.
Similar Iowa lakes frequently carry life spans of 100 years or more.
Easter Lake is on an Iowa registry for seriously polluted waterways. State
officials consider the lake important enough to be among 35 high- priority lake
projects winnowed from a list of around 130 lakes that were assessed for
restoration potential.
Easter Lake Park was Polk County's busiest park between June 2005 and July
2006 with more than 407,000 visitors, county conservation officials report.
Supporters of the rehabilitation campaign are optimistic cleaner water in Easter
Lake will spur additional interest and investment in Des Moines' southeast side.
Recent research from Iowa State University shows clean water brings in more
visitors from longer distances and improves local sales and property values.
"We should see (water bodies) as economic engines, not at all as liabilities," said
John Downing, an Iowa State University professor who has worked on eight lake
restoration projects in the state.
Development cutting into lake's lifespan
Polk County officials used to cozy boats next to an 1880s-era covered bridge
nestled along Easter Lake's southern shoreline during the summer months to
spread fresh coats of red paint on the venerable structure.
That was a dozen or so years ago when the bridge's bay held around 10 feet of
water.
On a recent August morning under purple overcast skies, Finch and Polk County
Conservation natural resource specialist Loren Lown slowly motored their trusty
olive-colored aluminum boat through the middle of the same bay.
The flat-bottom boat began to bog down in the silt-packed lake bottom well
before the two were able to steer it within 100 feet of the old bridge.
Yellow-tasseled grass -not slow-rolling water - now surrounds the bridge.
Several pockets of Easter Lake have begun to turn into wetland. Such change is
part of the water body's natural life cycle, but county officials say the process has
accelerated alongside rapid development in the area.
"The development around the lake has cut the lake's life expectancy
dramatically," Finch said. "Decades of natural soil erosion have been put in the
lake in a small number of years."
Many of the nearly 1,250 housing units built on Des Moines' southeast side since
2001 are in the Easter Lake area. Several hundred more were built in the
preceding years.
Among the most notorious cases of heavy construction-related silt pollution came
in 1993 when runoff from one of local developer Richard Walters' housing
projects packed a bay on Easter Lake's north side.
"It was a mess," Lown said. "It was just slop. You could walk in it and sink up to
your waist."
State and county regulators later required developers involved in the incident to
remove several truckloads of sediment from the lake. However, much of it
escaped farther into the lake, where it still remains, Lown said.
Finch and Lown said the lake's water quality problems are mostly limited to silt
and nutrient pollution. Routine sampling shows other key water quality
parameters - such as bacteria testing - have been within acceptable ranges.
Action, or inaction, will be costly
Controlling erosion and runoff inside Easter Lake's 6,380-acre and rapidly
developing watershed - the area that drains into the lake - will provide unique
challenges compared with other Iowa lake restoration projects.
Stopping the lake's demise will cost upwards of $5 million, state and county
officials report.
Inaction will further threaten the lake's suitability for swimming, fishing and certain
forms of aquatic life.
"It's not the largest, but it's among the most major restorations undertaken in the
state to date," Downing said. "I think it's one that will have a lot of positive
impacts on people's lives in Des Moines and the Polk County area."
Easter Lake's rebirth won't be cheap or easy, said the DNR's McGhee. However,
the rehabilitation's price tag is relatively small when compared with the roughly
$100 million it would cost to construct a water body like Easter Lake today in
such an urban, well-populated area, he said.
Possible improvement strategies include lake dredging, deepening the shoreline
and installing silt traps and buffer strips. Better storm water management
practices are also likely to be prescribed, state officials say.
The city of Des Moines, over the past 15 or so years, has spent about $7 million
to build seven storm water retention basins south of Easter Lake before much of
the area underwent development.
The basins have been effective in trapping silt and other pollutants, city and state
officials say. However, projects of similar size and scope will be difficult to
replicate in most of the watershed's western territory because of space
constraints, they said.
In some new construction projects, city planning officials have begun to require
developers to use methods such as rain gardens and permeable pavement to
slow down storm water and reduce related pollution.
A critical component of the project will be rehabilitating the various streams in the
watershed, experts say.
Easter Lake's main tributary - Yeader Creek - is also a state-designated impaired
waterway because of chemical runoff from the Des Moines International Airport,
located at the stream's headwaters.
The airport's contamination problems have been curbed in recent years, state
environmental officials report, but Yeader Creek's erosion-prone streambed and
smaller tributaries continue to flush heavy sediment loads into Easter Lake.
State regulations require that silt and nutrient pollution sources in the watershed
are in check before the lake restoration gets under way.
It will take several years to complete the full slate of improvements, which will be
paid for with a combination of state, local and federal dollars, according to the
DNR.
State officials want the fixes to stick for at least 50 years.
Neighbors ready to rally support
The lake means enough to area residents that the Bloomfield-Allen
Neighborhood Association recently rechristened itself the Easter Lake Area
Neighborhood Association.
The name change reflects the group's pride in the lake and their commitment to
improving it, neighborhood president Jim Bollard said.
"It's very important," he said. "We look at Easter Lake as one of the crown jewels
of our area in terms of its ability to draw people."
The land Easter Lake sits on was once considered as a landfill location when a
coal mine shut down at the site in 1959. Area residents of the era rallied to stop
the dump and lobbied to build the park.
Many say it's time to save the place again.
"Easter Lake is becoming even more important," Lown said. "It would be a
shame for us not to fix it."
Researchers to involve residents in developing a plan
Researchers involved in the Easter Lake restoration study will rely upon public
sentiments to help guide the restoration study.
“It’s critical to include, understand and integrate what people believe and
perceive about the lake into the restoration study,” said Mimi Wagner, an Iowa
State University landscape architecture professor who will study social dynamics
within the watershed.
Several thousand people will be invited to participate in surveys that will be
conducted during the study’s two-year period.
The idea, Wagner said, is to see how people affect water quality and vice versa
to better determine which restoration practices are most viable.
Wagner’s fellow ISU professor and Easter Lake restoration project collaborator
John Downing said resident input and participation will be key in the rehabilitation
effort.
Simple adjustments such as how many times homeowners applylawn fertilizers
can have significant cumulative impact upon phosphorus levels in the lake,
Downing said.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize the tight relationship between the green in
their lawn and the green in their lakes,” he said.
Reporter Jason Pulliam can be reached at (515) 284-8214 or
jpulliam@dmreg.com