Oneida County lakes classification project continues

The Oneida County land and water conservation department is working on a project to classify all 451 named lakes in the county. The primary goal of the project is to keep the county’s high quality waters at their current state. In this way it differs from other projects, which have looked at restoring impaired waters. The grant received for this particular project was meant to help protect high quality waters within the county. The committee met recently to discuss the progress that has been made.

The lake classification system considers sensitivity to outside stressors by assessing its natural physical features and its current overall health status, including the health of the lands that surround the water body.

First, the physical features of the lake were taken into consideration. This includes surface area, maximum depth, the shape of the lake and its position with in the watershed, and also how water enters and exits the lake. 

These features are used to assess the sensitivity of the water body. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) High Quality Waters list and the Healthy Watersheds List was used to further assess each lake. All of these metrics were combined to assign a protection level to each lake that would be necessary to keep that water body healthy, or at its current level. These protection levels, then, indicate the classification level for each lake.

A lake with high sensitivity, in general, would be small and shallow with a relatively long and irregular shoreline. The lake would also be located at a fairly high elevation in its watershed, according to the department’s JoAnne Lund, who headed the recent committee meeting. This would mean a headwater lake or a spring.

Conversely, large, deep lakes at the lower end of the watershed with more regular shorelines would be less sensitive. This would include lakes such as lowland drainage lakes or impoundments.

According to Lund, when the department looked at lake health, it did not feel right to say that there were some lakes in Oneida County that scored low on the health scale. When looking at all of the lakes in the state, the lakes in Oneida County were healthy, relatively speaking. For that reason, the lake health categories were changed to healthy, very healthy and extremely healthy. 

In Class 1, the lakes that ranked as most sensitive — the lakes  there is a desire to drive the most protection toward — totaled 133 . In Class 2, the middle classification section, there are 287 lakes. Class 3 lakes, while they are important, ranked in such as way that they would receive lesser protection efforts. There were 33 lakes in this category. A lake with the highest sensitivity rating to outside stressors and healthy rating, then, would merit the highest level of protection. A lake with high sensitivity with healthy lands around it would also merit that level of protection, as this project looks to protect those healthiest waters.

The project also looks at risk factors that can affect lake healthy. The committee, as well as the department, looked at things such as public access, aquatic invasive species (AIS) status and development density, which was found by dividing the shoreline length of a lake by the number of developed properties on the lake. Feasibility of generating enhanced wakes was also seen as a risk factor for lakes.

There are 120 lakes in the county that are at least 50 acres in size and 20 feet deep. Those lakes fit into the category of having potential for having enhanced wakes. 

County conservationist Michele Sadauskas said that while the grant for this project focused on protection, perhaps the lake classification system itself went beyond that. She asked the committee if there was any appetite for adding restoration activities that could take place based on a lower lake classification. She said she was not thinking of restoration under the heading of this project, but that did not mean it could not be part of the actions under the classification system. 

There was also some discussion about point source pollution into different lakes. There was a feeling among some committee members that this could be considered as a potential stressor as well. 

Cold water fisheries and threats to them from climate change was another topic the group discussed. Warming water temperatures, increases in extreme weather events and more dramatic changes in water levels could all play a role as stressors in lakes. Under that same heading, lakes with clearer water will warm more quickly than tannic lakes. 

From there the committee moved to discerning which protection activities would be used to mitigate the outside stressors that were being discussed. Lund said the idea was to define protection activities that could be used by different entities with different capacities, from individual riparian owners to municipalities. 

Protection activities that were part of the discussion included Clean Boats Clean Waters watercraft monitoring. This could look different for different lakes, of course. In the case of a lake with a small boat landing that is not used much by transient boaters, it may be more important to do some native restorations than to have a strong Clean Boats, Clean Waters program. 

Several committee members felt the protection activities could be the same for all three classes in the system, but the approach would be different for each lake based on where they were as far as stressors and what their resources were. 

The higher classification could then just mean a higher priority on those activities. 

Some of the other protection activities the group mentioned had to do with taking care of the land around water bodies by engaging with land trusts and raising awareness about the best practices on land and how those activities can affect the water body.

Capacity building for organizations was also touched upon. 

With all lake groups at different places in their capacity resources, some may need to focus on just doing one thing and doing it very well, where others could expand out and take on more. Helping those smaller or less organized organizations build capacity could be a worthwhile protection activity as well, they indicated.

There was some thought that protection activities could also include a stormwater plan as well. This could be drilled down to the property owner level, or expanded to the level of the municipality in which the water body was located.

On the watershed scale, the formation of watershed groups was floated out to the group. 

This idea was met with positive comments. Lund said she would look into the Minnesota watershed protection initiative. For smaller lakes, especially, this was seen as beneficial.

There was also a fair amount of talk about what the protection activity list would ultimately look like. 

At the outset, it seemed relatively simple to have a list that could be used by lakes in all three classes, but prioritized differently. Ultimately, however, activity list may look quite different.

 It could be split up by the entity undertaking the protection activity as well, from individual landowners to lake groups to municipalities such as towns or counties. A county, for instance, may have more capacity to undertake a larger protection activities than an individual or even a lake group. 

Sadauskas said department staff would dig through all of the ideas, both those that were discussed and those that were put into the chat of the Zoom meeting. 

She said she felt there were many great ideas regarding different ways to look at the protection activities and how to create a great final product. She also asked the group to reach out if they found they had other additional ideas. 

There may be one more meeting before the lakes classification project is finalized, and Sadauskas said she looks forward to seeing the final deliverable of the project.

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].