Pair of residents monitor quality of Grand Lake as weeds, silt become common in water

Deborah Frazier

Published January 9, 2000 at 12:15 p.m.
Updated July 3, 2008 at 12:15 p.m.

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Logging, dirt bikes, four-wheelers, home building, forest fires, lawn chemicals and oil in road runoff are sullying Colorado's deepest natural lake.

And, until 11 years ago when vacation homeowner Stoddard White started sampling Grand Lake's water, no one paid much attention.

``There is no one responsible for Grand Lake,'' said White, who has called, written and met with local, state and federal officials to sound an alert.

``It's a huge vacuum that's going to get everyone in trouble,'' he said.

White remembers the lake in 1936, when it was crystal-clear. After World War II, he remembers that the water was a little cloudy. By the time he bought a lakefront cabin 20 years ago, he could see only 20 feet down.

In the two decades since, the lake has turned murkier still.

White wants to know why.

For the past few summers, White and Pat Raney have trolled Grand Lake's waters in the early-morning quiet every other week. White sits at the prow of his 17-foot green and white motorboat, probing to 260 feet.

``We haven't found any gigantic red flags,'' said Raney, who recently moved to Grand Lake. Mostly, they've found algae, weeds and silt. ``We want this lake to look as good in the next century and solve the problems.''

Colorado is rare among the states because the water supply flows from mountain snowpack, unsullied by industry, agriculture or other human activities.

Grand Lake, topped by paint-box blue skies, is a natural catch basin for snowmelt from the Never Summer Mountains in Rocky Mountain National Park.

But unlike the secluded high mountain lakes and reservoirs, Grand Lake is surrounded by residential and commercial development and roads. The excavations funnel soil, salt, vehicle-related chemicals and other byproducts of growth into the water.

Growth has tinged the purity of other high mountain lakes. Studies in the Mount Zirkel wilderness, near Steamboat Springs, found elevated acid levels in streams and snowpack. There's a warning on mercury levels in fish from three southwestern Colorado reservoirs.

So Grand Lake's clarity isn't the only water quality puzzle in high mountain lakes.

``It's degrading slowly,'' said White, a retired Denver bank officer and former freight-line owner. He's become the lake's unofficial guardian, monitoring water quality and, when necessary, sounding alarms.

White's role at Grand Lake began when he learned no agency routinely checked the lake's water quality.

The state Department of Health and Environment, which is funded to test only every few years, lent White the equipment and helped with the analysis.

Raney moved to Grand Lake a few years ago and heard about White's testing. She grew up along the toxic-tainted Mississippi River and signed on to help White.

They've found that homes and condos built along the pine-studded shore and hillsides eroded tons of soil that have been carried into the lake. Traffic in the area leaves salts and fuel residues on roads that wash into the water.

Forest fires have left charcoal and ash that have been flushed into the lake along with refuse from logging.

And motorized recreation that cut new trails has disturbed soil that rainstorms have swept into the streams feeding the lake.

``The monitoring is important so we see the changes before it's impossible to turn around,'' said Bill McKee of the Health Department's Water Quality Division.

White's and Raney's volunteer work hasn't been ignored.

Last year, White won an Environmental Protection Agency grant for the state Health Department to do additional testing. White and Raney - still as volunteers - will add phosphorus, nitrogen and other substances to the monitoring regime. And a special water quality district has been formed.

The lake guardians also found that the lake's unique ``plumbing'' contributed to the change in clarity.

In the 1940s, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District built Shadow Mountain Reservoir and Lake Granby directly downstream of Grand Lake.

The plumbing - known as the Colorado-Big Thompson Water Project - pumps water from Shadow Mountain uphill into Grand Lake. Part of the year, Grand Lake water is sent through a tunnel to northeastern Colorado - for use by farms, homes and businesses. Water stored in Lake Granby goes to western Colorado for the same purposes.

``It's probably the most complex water supply system in the country,'' said White, who ran Grand Lake Lodge in the late 1940s.

The two-way plumbing flushes the underwater jungle of algae and leafy weeds nurtured in Shadow Mountain's relatively warm and shallow waters into Grand Lake, normally too cold and deep to have plants.

``The weeds don't poke out of the water, but a lot of times, you can see different shades and textures in the water,'' said Dave Gloss, a Forest Service hydrologist. The agency manages the lakes' recreational activities.

The water conservancy district and the Bureau of Reclamation, which operate and own the plumbing, don't control vegetation or silt in their reservoirs. However, after years of persistence by White, both have contributed money to studying the changing water quality.

And in 1991, the water district partly emptied Shadow Mountain for repairs. White rallied 300 schoolchildren and residents. Using pitchforks, wheelbarrows and dump trucks, they took out as many weeds as possible.

A few years later, after years of campaigning by White and other Grand Lake property owners, the Forest Service bought a $100,000 underwater weed harvester - which looks like a farm combine on a raft.

For the first few years, the agency cut the underwater flora but left the seed-bearing tops. These seeds were drawn into Grand Lake and thrived. Now, boats pick up the seeds and tote them to shore.

White isn't the first to stand up for Grand Lake's water quality.

In the 1970s, septic systems around Grand Lake, Shadow Mountain and Granby contaminated some areas for swimming.

The state Health Department threatened to close at least one lake, but homeowners, businesses and the county balked at funding a treatment system for the summer resort area.

The legislature stepped in and created a special district that obtained an EPA grant to pay part of the costs for a sanitation system.

But now, waste water from that treatment system, seepage from septic tanks outside the district, erosion, runoff from pavement and pet waste have nourished the underwater greenery and altered the lake's purity.

The residential development around the three lakes has increased natural erosion and helped build an 11-acre delta at Shadow Mountain, dry-docking boats at homes that once had lake access from their porches, Gloss said.

And each year, some of the silt flows into Grand Lake when the water supply masters flip the switch on the plumbing to send water to northern Colorado instead of the five states downstream from Colorado on the Colorado River.

So White and more recently, Raney, have watched Grand Lake's water change with more weeds, more algae and more silt.

``I have no authority, but when you get the idea things are going wrong you better get going,'' White said.

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