Trout Lake, which hosts a nature center used by thousands of Lake County schoolchildren every year, is one disgusting mess and has been for years.
Last year, children learning about animals in the water at the Trout Lake Nature Center had to wear latex gloves to avoid a type of toxic algae known to kill cattle that drink water that has it. Isn’t that a lovely thing to teach a kid?
“It’s pretty sad when the lake they’re sampling is one of the worst, and a lot of the species they want to study are not even present there,” said Linda Bystrak, a biologist and longtime water advocate. “I wouldn’t eat the fish that came out of it, and I wouldn’t put a kayak in it, that’s for damn sure.”
Now, the nearly dead lake is about to get a second chance at life, and the Lake County Water Authority has a rare opportunity to measure empirically whether the effort works.
Trout Lake is a small water body — just 100 acres close to State Road 19 and County Road 44, north of Eustis. The water authority three years ago commissioned a study of two other water bodies along with Trout Lake, which most of the time is considered “hypertrophic” — a polite technical word for “dead.”
The results of the study, which came in last week, are sickening. Trout Lake rated 70 or above from 1993 to 2015 on the total health of the lake in a scoring system that considers any lake over 50 to be in serious trouble.
It has “extremely elevated” levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which is a nutrient that that causes pollution. The level is considered “dangerous,” and the result of all those nutrients in the water is so little oxygen that “few aquatic species can survive,” according to the study by Environmental Research & Design Inc. of Orlando.
The lake long ago turned from a plant-based water body to an algae-based one, which is completely gross. Who wants to ski on toxic algae? Fish in it?
The big question always has been how this happened. Is the culprit the pudding-like muck that lines the bottom of Trout Lake or is it the runoff from the lake’s uncommonly large watershed, which stretches five miles north, four miles east and three miles south?
Finally, Water Authority Executive Director Mike Perry said, the question has an answer: It’s mostly goop coming in with the water from Hicks Ditch to the east. The ditch accounts of 81 percent of the water running into the lake. Unfortunately, water that flows into Hicks Ditch comes from developed areas, along with a former golf course and a sod farm — both heavy users of fertilizers, which cause the nitrogen and phosphorus troubles.
The answer for Trout Lake couldn’t arrive at a more fortuitous time. The state Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services ponied up $5 million to do a project described as a “mini-NuRF,” so named for the bigger Nutrient Reduction Facility on the canal between filthy Lake Apopka in Orange County and scenic Lake Beauclair in Lake.
That project is designed to capture water from the Apopka-Beauclair Canal and lace it with alum, a relatively heavy compound that binds itself to the pollution and pulls it to the bottom of the lake, getting it out of the water stream. Voila. Clean water.
The mini-NuRF is to divert water coming from Hicks Ditch, sprinkle it with alum and let it flow into Trout Lake. When water isn’t flowing in the ditch, the mini-NuRF would pump water back out of the lake and clean it — that’s the new twist on the proposal, Perry said. Money for the project is supposed to last about five years.
A giant diesel pump this week was brought to the end of a canal between Country Club Manor Mobile Home Park and Trout Lake Nature Center. The pipes already had been installed, so the project is to begin quickly.
“When they run out of the $5 million, they’ll turn it off,” Bystrak said. “Hopefully, it will be clean by then.”
But will it stay clean?
Perry thinks it will. The technology of using alum to clean highly polluted lakes isn’t new, and the water authority’s study pinpointed the source of the dirty water. It’s one of the “optimal” solutions, and it’s already funded. Switch that bad boy to “on”!
What a shame that in a county whose jewel is its lakes that such as drastic cleanup is needed. It’s what comes of civilization in the form of highly-fertilized lawns and golf courses.
Too bad there’s not enough money to do the same on Lake Denham, near County Road 470 and Florida’s Turnpike. Count on future residents of The Villages, which is to be constructed near its shores, to demand clean water. That’s something we all want, isn’t it?
Lritchie@orlandosentinel.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at www.facebook.com/laurenonlake.