HOLMES BEACH – After residents voiced their concerns to city hall, Mayor Bob Johnson said the city plans to address the issues at Spring Lake.
The once-clear saltwater lake, located between Clark and Palm drives, is a man-made feature built over a bubbling spring where residents used to be able to swim and fish. But the days of stepping in the water are over, at least for now. The water is murky, full of silt and a Manatee County engineering analysis of the lake showed highly elevated levels of dissolved solids, chloride and salt in the dark waters.
Palm Drive resident Boyd Grayson, in a letter to Holmes Beach commissioners, said that before the water turned brown and murky, fish were abundant in the lake along with blue crabs, families of ducks and many other types of birds, all making Spring Lake a desirable place to live.
Part of the pollution problem now stems from an incident that happened in late 2015 when a county lift station leaked more than 20,000 gallons of sewage into the lake. When the sewage leaked, it created a large fish kill and left debris on the bottom of the lake that killed vegetation.
Though Manatee County had the lake cleaned and deemed the water suitable once again for fishing, few fish came back to Spring Lake. One reason is that piping that connects Spring Lake to the waters of the bay, running underneath homes and streets to the large canal near Gloria Dei Lutheran Church commonly known as Grand Canal, is partially blocked.
The piping is a part of a project by the city to replace aging and failing infrastructure. The pipe is scheduled to be cleaned out and slip-lined with a new pipe before being fitted with a WaStop valve. The valve is designed to prevent debris and tidal waters from entering the pipe from the bay but will allow water out of the pipe.
While this means that silt won’t be able to enter Spring Lake through the pipe anymore, it also means that the waters of the lake won’t be replenished with fish or water from the bay.
Johnson said in an October commission meeting that he’s in the preliminary stages of coming up with a system to agitate the water in the lake, similarly to the way the spring underneath the lake used to bubble up. Because the fresh water lens underneath the Island is depleted, uncapping the spring is unlikely to bring any new water to the lake at this time. He said a benefit of the city’s new stormwater drainage system is that it’s supposed to help replenish that freshwater lens.
Commissioner Carol Soustek said she recently visited Spring Lake with code enforcement officers and wants to find a way to clean the sediment from the water.
Commissioner Judy Titsworth agreed.
“I think it’s horrible,” she said of the situation at the lake. “We need to make an effort to get it back into shape.”
She suggested using bags of oysters to help filter the water while city leaders come up with a more permanent solution to the problem.
Johnson said he hopes to have a formal discussion with commissioners at an October meeting to determine how to best clean the lake and repair any ongoing pollution issues.
