Bone Lake removed from impaired list

When Dave Bakke moved to a home on the shores of Bone Lake in 2012, he’d often wake up and hear the serene sound of carp spawning along the shoreline. Accompanying that, the lake was often murky and prone to producing blue green algae plumes in the summer.

“It was in really poor shape. During the month of July, you would see blue green algae blooms and so there were a lot of issues with water clarity. I would go to the end of my dock and you wouldn’t see the bottom of the lake,” said Bakke, Bone Lake Comfort Lake-Forest Lake Watershed District manager and resident.

Around that time, it had a grade of D- on the Metropolitan Council’s grading system, which rates how impaired a body of water is, with A being excellent and F being poor.

Throughout the past decade after completing water treatment projects to Bone Lake, its tributaries and nearby wetlands, Bone Lake is scheduled to be removed from the water impaired list this year.

“People who’ve lived on the lake a long time have seen the difference and the improvement in the lake and are really supportive of the watershed district,” Bakke said.

The D- was a result of not meeting water quality standards. There were high amounts of phosphorus in Bone Lake due to neighboring lands’ historical agricultural use, lots of algae, and invasive carp which stirred up bottom sediment, reducing water clarity.

“Rough fish, they stir up the bottom, which releases sediment, makes it cloudy, damages plants. So for some years there were very few aquatic plants in the lake,” Comfort Lake-Forest Lake Watershed District Administrator Mike Kinney said.

In 2013, the average depth that residents could see under the surface was 3.9 feet deep. 2017 became a turning point when the average depth that could be seen underwater was 5.8 feet, with the best water clarity recorded in 2021 when water clarity was 7.3 feet deep.

“I had residents tell me, ‘We’ve been on the lake for over 30 years,’ for example, ‘and this is the first time we can see the bottom of the lake from the end of our dock,’” Kinney said.

In the early 2010s, there were still many unknowns about Bone Lake’s water quality, and the Comfort Lake-Forest Lake Watershed District had restoration projects scheduled further down the line.

The watershed district’s goal to repair Bone Lake “‘Some time off in the future 20, 30 years [away]’ just wasn’t working for me,” Bakke joked.

He began engaging with the watershed district, looking for ways to expedite projects like wetland restoration or alum treatments to reduce phosphorus levels, and carp spawning mitigation systems.

“That’s where it started, cleaning up some of the wetlands around the lake that had farms next to them for many decades going way back. So there was a lot of phosphorus that had developed over time,” Bakke explained.

Before learning more about the history of the lake and contents of the lake bed sediment, Kinney and the watershed district thought it might have taken 50 to 75 years to mend Bone Lake’s ecosystem.

However, through studying lake sediments — dating back to when European settlers moved across the land — allowed the watershed district to understand it overestimated how long improvement projects would take.

“[Kinney] saw an opportunity that we could really make an impact and move that timeline up,” Bakke said.

Projects like transitioning crop rows into perennials, restoring wetlands, and repairing Moody Lake’s water quality helped reduce phosphorus amounts that leach into Bone Lake. While Moody Lake is still graded as a C, wetland restoration and alum treatments reduce more than 700 pounds of phosphorus production annually, which in turn improves Bone Lake.

Even though the watershed district met this goal, the work isn’t finished, since there is a lot of natural restoration along the shoreline that can be done. There are many lakeside homes with nicely kept, grassy landscapes. While that is fine, Kinney views the next steps to maintain the lake’s water quality as replanting native species along the shoreline.

“We’re really talking about reestablishing more natural shoreline area because there would have been … tall grass all around, draining and such,” Kinney explained.

The need to facilitate agricultural expansion in order to survive and put food on the table isn’t as necessary as it was when settlers sowed the land. There’s a generational shift to restore what was altered by necessity.

“When the Swedes first came to this area in Minnesota and settled, it just made sense that they would set up their farm next to a body of water. … But now we’re in a situation where we can clean that up and improve the lakes and wetlands around us,” Bakke said.

Based on Bakke’s experience garnering buy-in from his neighbors to support wetland restoration or carp mitigation projects over the years, he knows support to maintain the good water quality will be continued.

When Bakke was the president of the Bone Lake Association, he wrote the mission statement, which he thinks represents the priorities of the residents along the lake:

“Getting together to celebrate events and to build relationships, but to improve the water quality and the beauty of Bone Lake for future generations.”

Bone Lake is a tight-knit community who took ownership of this decades-long work to get to the end result of repairing the water quality.

“The majority of the people were certainly supportive of the work of cleaning up the lake and seeing the impact that has been made,” Bakke said.

Working to improve the water quality of a lake isn’t something that happens overnight or that often in the land of 10,000 lakes. It takes time and requires focused groups who are dedicated to tackling project after project in the hope of reaping the benefits years down the line.

“It’s been a long time coming. It’s been a lot of hard work on the part of the watershed district but also people around the lake making an effort to improve their lake shore,” Bakke said.

With the Comfort Lake-Forest Lake Watershed District celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, achieving a milestone like this reminds Kinney of the important work they do even though it takes many years to net positive results.

“The watershed district did not exist when I was in college, so that kind of gives a reference point of how much [has changed]. … I have long joked that my job is to put myself out of work,” Kinney said.