What's with that E. coli at the Lake of the Ozarks?

Greetings from the Lake of the Ozarks! Caroline Toole, here, working with LOWA (Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance) and AmeriCorps (MO Clean Water AmeriCorps Program, hosted by MO River Communities Network (MRCN)), in service to our community!

LOWA has been putting the finishing touches on the watershed management plan (WMP) for the Lake of the Ozarks (LOZ) and this month I’d like to discuss some of the strategies outlined in the WMP for maintaining and improving the water quality and health of LOZ. When we mention the Lake of the Ozarks these days, the general public often thinks of E. coli, even before they think of Party Cove! Such is the power of the media. The Lake of the Ozarks does not have an E. coli problem yet. Like any other lake, when hard rains come down, material gets washed into the water body from the watershed and last spring, the LOZ Cove testing program sampled according to their testing schedule which, unfortunately, was right after a heavy rain. Lots of E. coli was found through out the sites being tested and then, a few days later, most of that E. coli was gone. This golden opportunity to educate the public about how lakes work was lost as the results, for whatever reason, were withheld. The rest of the testing season showed almost no E. coli at all. All this being said, E. coli is still an issue at the Lake; and, people still want to know what is in the cove waters where they swim and recreate. Sometimes the Cove testing program does find isolated hotspots of E. coli, and then MDNR steps in to trace the bacteria and find the source of that hotspot. One of the “Strategies” (big ideas to tackle the specific issues of sediment, bacteria, and nutrient loading at LOZ) proposed by LOWA in the WMP is to establish more testing at the Lake. Presently, isolated studies are performed by graduate students from time to time, but the 5-year Cove testing program for E. coli being conducted by MDNR (LOWA volunteers collect the water samples for MDNR so that more coves can be tested each season) only samples a small section of LOZ each season and the 5-years is approaching its fourth season. More testing will not, in and of itself, reduce any of the loads to the Lake, but citizens want to know about all of their coves, not just a select few each year.

Several Strategies are proposed by LOWA in the WMP to reduce the amount of bacteria currently entering the Lake and to address the issue of future population growth along the shorelines of LOZ. One set of Strategies specifically targets the wastewater issue at LOZ both from the short-term and the long-term. In the short term, the WMP proposes to establish two programs. One, a Pump-Out Program, has already been tried by LOWA at LOZ on a small scale using a couple of small grants from MDNR. In this program, residents with septic tanks are educated about proper maintenance of their septic tanks and why proper maintenance is so important to the health of the watershed and the Lake. Then those residents who attend the workshop can apply for a discounted pump-out with a local reputable pump-out company. The second program is called Pump Don’t Dump and is targeted at recreational boaters, educating them about why they should take the extra time and expense to properly dispose of the wastewater from their boat’s holding tank instead of just releasing the waste into the lake. This program also picks up from an earlier effort by LOWA which resulted in a brochure of many of the pumping stations at marinas and RV parks around the Lake. That brochure needs to be updated and expanded.

In the long-term, the wastewater issue at LOZ is being addressed by LOWA in terms of proposing the establishment of a Lake-wide sewer district to coordinate the efforts of communities and municipalities, help find funding for their efforts, and to begin the long process of getting rid of the many on-site traditional septic systems around the shoreline that are trying to function in areas simply not suited to that mode of wastewater treatment. This is a huge, highly charged issue that LOWA is tackling. Over 30 years of studies have all said the same thing. To avert a future problem, the septic tanks in areas ill-suited to septic tanks around the Lake’s shores need to be eliminated. LOWA realizes that several types of wastewater treatment will need to be utilized and many sources of funding will need to be found. However, as all of the stakeholders for the Lake of the Ozarks rally to work together, LOWA is confident that the Lake of the Ozarks will remain the vibrant, healthy jewel we all know and love. By working together, we can ensure that the Lake of the Ozarks will continue to be one of the Midwest’s premiere vacation spots and a wonderful place to live, work, and retire.