Lac La Nonne, a fresh water lake about 25 km south of Barrhead just off of Highway 33, is ailing. The question is why and how long it will take for the lake to recover.
About two months ago, members of the Lac La Nonne Enhancement Protection Association (LEPA) began to notice when they went out ice fishing that a number of the fish in the lake were dead and the fish that were still alive were more lethargic than normal.
LEPA is a non-profit group which started in 1985, to help protect the lake from environmental hazards.
Darlene Sadoway, LEPA Secretary, said that instead of taking the bait readily, as the fish normally would at this time of year, fish ignored the food.
“You can see them. The fish are just below the ice, like they were gasping for air,” she said adding other ice fishers are also reporting seeing a number of dead fish.
What is especially disconcerting, Sadoway said is the number of dead minnows people are reporting seeing.
“You can just see them laying there at the bottom of the lake,” she said, adding that she suspects the minnows are from all the species of the lake: whitefish, jackfish, walleye, burbot and perch.
This did not come as a complete surprise to the group.
Although the group and fishers have only noticed the increasing numbers of dead fish and their lethargic behaviour recently, they believe the issue has been ongoing for a number of years.
“Our lake has been on the decline for some time, since the early 1970s because of all the agriculture and other human activities that are happening near the lake,” Sadoway said, adding that one of the contributing factors to the decline in the lake’s health is from nearby residents’ waste water and septic fields.
In an effort to reduce the amount of septic and waste water that is seeping into Lac La Nonne, the association approached Barrhead County and asked them to start inspecting any residents who may have an outhouse or a cottage with a septic field, to ensure they were following provincial guidelines.
However, because the county is not accredited to do these inspections, the responsibility falls to Alberta Municipal Affairs.
“Unfortunately they only have two inspectors for the whole province,” Sadoway said. “So it’s really hard to get someone out to our lake to do much.”
Mark Oberg, Barrhead County Chief Administrative Officer, confirmed that the county doesn’t have their own septic system inspectors.
“We had a discussion with Alberta Municipal Affairs and asked them what it would take for us to do our own inspections,” he said, adding the process is more complicated because they don’t have an accredited inspector.
Municipal Affairs told the county that the first step would be to create their own bylaw on septic systems. The county would then have to hire an outside, accredited inspector to conduct the inspections.
On Nov. 6, 2012, LEPA made a presentation to county council outlining their concerns about the affect sewage system seepage was having on Lac La Nonne. As part of the presentation, Oberg said LEPA included the results of a number of caffeine tests the group had contracted Aquality Environmental Consulting to do in 2004, 2005 and 2012.
Oberg said testing for caffeine is one of the tests used to determine whether human sewage is leaking into lakes or water tables.
“People drink coffee, tea and pop, all of which have caffeine in them, so if sewer is leaking into a lake, caffeine is often present,” he said.
In the 2004 testing, Oberg said Aquality Environmental Consulting found caffeine in three samples. In 2005, no caffeine was found and in 2012 the results were inconclusive.
In the June 2012 test, Aquality said no caffeine was found in their samples, but that didn’t necessarily mean there was no sewage in the lake.
“There is little evidence of untreated sewage being an acute problem in the lake at the time of sampling,” Oberg said reading from the July 2012 report, adding that the report also said the primary tracers of fecal matter and caffeine could have broken down naturally if they were released into the lake a few months before the samples were taken.
“Council has to weigh the cost of doing inspections on everybody, which they would have to pass on to the residents of the area with the potential benefits,” Oberg said, adding that council decided against passing a bylaw and doing their own inspection, leaving it to Municipal Affairs instead.
“The decision was made not only after LEPA’s presentation, but with our talks with Municipal Affairs who said the increase in algae and nutrients in the lake could be because of a number of factors,” he said.
Duncan MacDonnell, Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource (AESRD) Public Affairs Officer, said he too wasn’t surprised when he first heard about people reporting seeing dead fish in Lac La Nonne.
Earlier in the fall, AESRD visited a number of lakes in the area, including Lac La Nonne, as part of their yearly survey on the health of the sport fisheries.
As part of the survey, an AESRD fisheries biologist conducted a Walleye Fall Index.
In order to find out the size, number, age, sex, growth and overall condition of walleye, AESRD staff lower a series of portable nets at various depths, then brings them up and collects the data on the fish that are caught in the nets.
“We couldn’t find any fish below six metres,” MacDonnell said.
Because no fish could be found at that level, fisheries staff decided to conduct an oxygen test.
“What we found is that the oxygen level in that lake was very, very low,” he said. “So low that it couldn’t sustain fish for any period of time.”
Unfortunately, MacDonnell said the issue isn’t isolated to Lac La Nonne.
According to the AESRD, a number of lakes in the region, besides Lac La Nonne, regularly experience winterkill because of poor water quality.
“What often happens at these lakes is that during the winter, ice and snow cover limits oxygen saturation, and organic matter, algae from the previous growing season decomposes and consumes the available oxygen from the water,” he said. “So that means there is less oxygen available for the fish.”
Contributing to the problem is that for the last 15 years the water level in Lac La Nonne has been steadily decreasing.
“They have only started to recover in the last three years, but the current water level is still below historic levels,” MacDonnell said. “This is in part due to decreased regional precipitation and increases in temperature.”
When asked if septic fields, outhouses and other human activities, such as agriculture, could be affecting the health of the lake, MacDonnell said it was definitely one of the factors.
“The cumulative impact of agriculture, municipal development, industry, intense recreation use and climate change within the watershed have led to nutrient increases and have reduced oxygen levels enough to significantly impact water quality and have reduced fish survival rates,” he said.
As for what AESRD’s next step is, MacDonnell said the ministry will continue to monitor the situation. He also said the provincial government is working on developing a strategy to address the health of the province’s lakes.
“It really is going to be a team effort,” he said, adding that the AESRD wants to work with community groups and municipal governments to initiate a watershed management planning process and educate lake stakeholders about best management practices in watersheds.
