Thursday, July 12, 2007  Sky-Hi News
by Tonya Bina

In the shadow of Mount Craig, a once-pristine body of water holds the claim: Colorado’s largest natural lake.

Some 8,369 feet above sea level, this lake has romanced many observers throughout history.

Even when the Colorado-Big Thompson water project was being proposed nearly three-quarters of a century ago, a rare wave of natural resources activism took place in regard to what was then called “The Grand Lake Project.”

Ecologists, environmentalists and Western-Slope citizens alike fought to preserve the beauty of the Colorado River headwaters to the point stakeholders decided to change the project name to “Colorado-Big Thompson” to help steer the focus away from this revered lake.

Today, shore owners, scientists and lake users again are taking up the cause to protect its water quality and scenic beauty.

And the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment may be just the catalyst they need.

Friend of the lake

Leading this grassroots water-quality push is retired mechanical engineer Dr. John Stahl, a full-time resident of Grand Lake’s south shore and president of the Greater Grand Lake Shoreline Association.

For the past two years, he has been burying himself in water data, connecting shreds of evidence that point to a flaw in the water-moving system.

He is building a case for what many already suspect.

This natural lake, in effect, has been used as a filtration system — a sort of glacier-made sanitation pool — for water collected and sent to Front Range users. Because of this unintended role in the Colorado-Big Thompson (C-BT) project, Grand Lake’s water quality is declining with visible algae blooms and excess weed growth.

Water Information Specialist Sara Clements, who has been testing Grand Lake’s water for three years, said the algae bloom of 2005 produced minor toxins, and lake homeowners who use the water for domestic use were immediately notified to take precautions.

The lake’s decline is due to the decreasing depth of Shadow Mountain Reservoir, the water of which is pumped into Grand Lake, compounded by an overall nutrient-rich water system that supplies food to flourishing algae.

Coincidentally, two studies are under way to analyze these topics. The Northern Colorado Conservancy District is paying the Bureau of Reclamation to conduct a nutrient study centered on the C-BT project; meanwhile, the Bureau, along with the Grand County Water Information Network, Grand County and the U.S. Forest Service, is contributing to a separate study that focuses on the results from the Shadow Mountain drawdown of last winter. The drawdown was meant to kill off the reservoir’s choking weed growth.

But Stahl and his group are getting weary of studies.
They advocate solutions.

Clarity is key

Despite the lack of data pertaining to the clarity of Grand Lake prior to 1937 when the U.S. Congress signed Senate Document 80 — which allocated funds to build the C-BT system of dams, reservoirs, canals and one 13-mile tunnel —there is one particular piece of telling information.

A man by the name of Professor Robert Pennak, one of North America’s foremost freshwater scientists, publicized his measurement of Grand Lake water clarity prior to the C-BT project. By using a Secchi dish dipped into the depths of the lake, Pennak recorded a transparency of 9.2 meters, just more than 30 feet of depth.

“To put this into perspective, in 2002, the North American Lake Management Society conducted a major survey of lake transparency evaluating 900 lakes across the country. Of the 900 lakes, only 18, which is 2 percent, had transparencies of 9.2 meters or greater,” Stahl wrote in a March 2007 letter to the director of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment’s Water Quality Division. “Grand Lake was indeed a rarity, deserving of special protection,”

Stahl has since shared with the department how 104 Secchi dish measurements taken within a 16-year period up to 2006 match up to C-BT flow data. The results show a direct link between Grand Lake’s water quality degradation and episodes of C-BT pumping.

Today’s Grand Lake has a transparency that fluctuates between 1.5 and 4 meters, compared to the 9.2 meters of yesteryear.

In 1937, the U.S. Senate incorporated the protection of Grand Lake in its Senate Document 80, saying that the C-BT “must be operated in such a manner as to most nearly effect the following primary purposes, preserve the vistas and future rights in irrigation . . . as well as to preserve the fishing and recreational facilities and the scenic attractions of Grand Lake, the Colorado River and Rocky Mountain National Park.”

“And to us, this (Grand Lake degradation) is not preserving the scenic attractions,” Stahl said.

“It’s taking lake water that looks beautiful and turning it into poor quality reservoir water,” Stahl said. “So, from the point of view from somebody who is here to enjoy the scenery and the recreation, we think this is a big problem. Essentially they have been mandated by Congress to operate this project in such a way that maintains the scenic beauty, but they’re not doing that.”

“They” are the Bureau of Reclamation, which maintains the system, and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is responsible for moving water.

Supplying water to a growing Front Range is no small matter, and for reasons of expense and lack of necessity, these agencies have provided little response to the Grand Lake organization's own study and its hopes to “encourage finding a less harmful means of moving water other than through Grand Lake.”

A pipeline or tunnel bypassing both Shadow and Grand Lakes has been proposed as a feasible alternative for water transport, but the $60 million price tag has Stahl and company, perhaps, tilting at windmills.

Higher standard sought

There are some agencies, however, that are cooperating with the Shoreline Association and its multi-pronged goals.
One is the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“What we have been trying to do,” Stahl said, “is to find the right path to restore water quality in Grand Lake, not just stand idly by as various agencies study ongoing degradation.”

Due to Grand Lake being one of the largest natural lakes in Colorado, the state’s Water Quality Control Division has stated “a site-specific water- quality standard that establishes a water-clarity goal” for the lake “is worthy of consideration.”

Thus, with the help of the county and the Three Lakes Watershed Association, Stahl hopes data on Grand Lake can be included in a tri-annual review of the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins, taking place in November. This hearing is a chance to propose issues that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment might undertake in a formal rule-making hearing in June of 2008.

“We are being encouraged to go down this path, but we have to collaborate with a whole bunch of different people to do it properly,” Stahl said.

According to him, the hope is to create a standard for Grand Lake that maintains a depth of 4 meter transparency and ultimately restores the lake to 9.2 meters transparency.

Successful efforts elsewhere, particularly by groups in Lake Tahoe, are providing hope for Grand Lakers.

Due to pollutants like groundwater, stream channel erosion, air deposition and urban and forestland runoff, Lake Tahoe is less pristine than it once was. For this reason, a two-phase plan has been implemented to restore the lake to its 1960s condition. The 20-year plan will serve as a guide to reducing pollutants affecting lake quality with the goal of improving water clarity to at least 100 feet, as was recorded more than 40 years ago.

Hoping to gain insight as to how something similar can be achieved for Grand Lake, the Greater Grand Lake Shoreline Association has invited representatives from the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, personnel from the Colorado Department of Health and Environment and from Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District to join them at their annual meeting, 9:30 a.m., this Saturday at the Grand Lake Fire House.

And why exactly has Stahl taken up the cause for this orphan lake, essentially, which has become a post-retirement, full-time, unpaid job?

Simply stated: “Personally, my goal — as the Senate laid out — is to preserve this lake for future generations."