Living Here

The salt content of Geneva Lake has been steadily increasing for many years.
Today, although the salt content of Geneva Lake is still considered to be at a safe level, the trend says that unless action is taken to limit the amount of salt that is entering the lake, it will continue to increase and become a crisis. It is not a matter of if; it is a matter of when.

The rate of salt increase is .7576 mg/liter per year which may seem small, but the lake is really not that large in volume. The .7576mg/liter relates to an increase of 308 tons of salt being added to the lake every year. If residents saw thirty ten-ton trucks, filled with salt and dumping that salt into the lake every year, there would be outrage, but since it seeps in from road salt and from the it’s use in water softeners, the salt is not obvious or visible. Few people even know it’s happening. There is already 14,000 tons of salt dissolved in the lake, and it is increasing by about 308 tons every year, as already stated. At what level this salt will permanently damage the lake is not the issue, because unless the trend is changed it will occur and it is better to take corrective action now before it becomes a crisis. Lake Geneva’s decision to use 100% salt in place of a sand salt mixture is speeding the lake towards that salt crisis.

Yes, there are safety issues involved with the use of road salt versus sand or other alternatives, but it is important to know and understand the impact on the lake (the city’s main jewel) that the city’s decision to convert to 100% salt in place of a sand salt mixture will have. To stop this trend and hold the salt level constant, the consumption of salt from all sources that drain into the Lake or its water shed have to be decreased by 308 tons a year, and kept at or below that level every year thereafter. This would not lower the level of salt in the lake, it would only hold it constant and make salt entering the lake equal to the amount of dissolved salt that leaves the lake at the dam and spillway and flows into the White River. The following graph is old, but as reported in the last Geneva Lake Environmental Agency (GLEA) report (the pattern has not changed and some 300 plus tons of salt are still being added to the lake every year. (.7576 mg/liter/year) x (369,035,563,121 liter) x (1 lb/453,592 mg) x (1 ton/2000 lbs.) = 308 tons of salt/year.

Chloride Levels Geneva Lake

Who owns Geneva Lake? 
It’s really not supposed to be the lakefront property people.  That was never intended.  But what is the truth?  The truth is all about access and how far out into the water a property owner can place stuff.  Like piers and buoys.  The Town of Linn has received requests from lakefront property owners to extend their piers out further than a hundred feet, which is the norm for permits issued around the lake in other effected communities.  The bad news is, if this is allowed, that the landowners who own lakefront property will get more ownership out into the lake itself.  The good news is that such ownership would be at the expense of getting rid of some of the buoys they currently have that take up even more lake space because of how far out from the buoys the boats must have cleared circles to turn around in with the wind.  Also, no wake areas have to be extended further out in the lake than they do with boats parked at piers.

The Town of Linn board kicked the can over to the showpiece called the Lake Use Committee.  If you want to put something into a neat fast moving circular file then the Lake Use Committee is the place to go.  What will the Lake Use Committee do after ‘considering’ for a year of two?  There will be a lot of talk and then they will issue a decree indicating that all the communities around the lake should ‘endeavor to persevere.’  The Lake Use Committee, incidentally, already talked about this problem. But not enough, apparently, because when it comes to local community rules, there is never enough talk.  The Town of Linn board will stand by for a report.