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A change of plans for Jessie Lake

The Lakeland Industry and Community Association (LICA) has had a change of plans when it comes to ridding Jessie Lake of its smell.
LICAtownweb
Environmental program manager for LICA Colin Hanusz (right), and education and outreach coordinator for LICA Erin Ritchie (left), made a presentation to the Town of Bonnyville on Tuesday, March 12.

The Lakeland Industry and Community Association (LICA) has had a change of plans when it comes to ridding Jessie Lake of its smell.

During their regular meeting on Tuesday, March 12, Town of Bonnyville council heard that further testing revealed the lake is too shallow for aeration to make a significant impact.

“When we did the detailed testing it only showed it to be 1.75-metres deep,” noted Colin Hanusz, environmental program manager for LICA.

Previous information LICA had claimed the lake was 4.2-metres, which would have allowed aeration to work.

“The change in depth has a huge impact on the ability to aerate the lake, so that’s going to be impacting it quite a bit... Basically what we’re looking at with the aeriation, due to the shallow depths, in order to get any kind of current in the lake it would require a lot of aerators,” Hanusz said, adding the price of maintenance would also be high.

The subject of aerating the lake was introduced by LICA at the beginning of last year to deal with the smell from Jessie Lake that occurs in the spring and summer.

The odour is caused due to the high phosphorous levels, which Hanusz described as “through the roof.”

“It’s the phosphorous nutrients that drive the algae growth, and the algae then decomposes. It’s the decomposing algae that causes the odour. The root cause of that is the phosphorous levels at over a thousand units per litre.”

Instead of aeration, one of the options LICA offered was continuing to clean up the algae by hand, like they did last summer, with the help of town staff.

“As (the algae) is rotting, there’s so much of it. If we continue to haul that away it’s going to decrease the odour in town. When it decays, it releases the nutrients back into the water and cycles. Pulling it out should help break that cycle,” he detailed.

Allowing the water levels to remain high was another suggestion, as it acts as a natural filter for the water.

LICA also recommended continuing with the tree planting along the shoreline. Last summer, 5,500 seedlings were planted along Jessie Lake.

“Those riparian species will root deep, pulling nutrients out of the water and that will help reduce them over time,” noted Hanusz.

In order to see if the measures being taken are working, Hanusz suggested continuing with the water quality checks in five-year cycles.

Coun. Elisa Brosseau noted that the odour wasn’t as bad in 2018 as it had been in the past.

“I felt like I was waiting for it to hit and waiting for it to hit. I felt like it never did (smell) like it had in previous years,” she said.

Hanusz agreed.

“I know last summer, being a town resident, I didn’t notice the smell as bad that year.”

Hanusz believes sticking with the methods LICA currently has in place will have an impact on the smell in the long run.

“The mechanical methods of cleaning up lakes have been effective, it’s just really expensive and difficult to shovel algae. People are looking for the easy way out, but the town has a lot of summer staff with lawnmowers and strong axes... The phosphorous levels are so high that it’s probably going to have to be done every year until the levels come down into normal range.”

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