KOSCIUSKO COUNTY, Ind. -- The Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, a part of Grace College, was recently given a grant for the creation of a new program designed to protect lakes in Kosciusko County.
“The grant from Lilly Endowment is jump starting our new program called Lake RX, which is developing custom prescriptions for individual lakes that are holistic and evidence-based, so that we can see those lakes get better quicker.”
Dr. Nate Bosch, Director of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams, will be using the $10 million grant for solutions to protect lakes on the land, in the water, and in the community. Kay Young, president of the Wawasee Property Owners Association is excited to see what the grant can do for the largest lake in Kosciusko County.
“It's going to be used for several areas, obviously, to teach us and to provide some direction on how to prevent the runoff and rejuvenate the wetlands, so that they are doing the job that they're supposed to do. Right now, I think there's several areas that are just over saturated, and they're not filtering the water the way they are.”
Each lake will have an individualized protection plan, but they may look similar to start.
"Since a lot of our lakes are suffering from some of the same causes to these problems, those prescriptions will likely look similar from lake to lake, because there's similar influences on each of the lakes”
Dr. Bosch says they’re starting with some of the larger lakes in Kosciusko County first.
“These are the lakes in our area that we have the most data on, and so we're focusing in on those lakes initially to ground truth this new Lake RX program to see how big of an impact we can have and how short of a time. As we learn more about those solutions as part of Lake RX on those focus sets of lakes, we’ll then be ready to expand it out to additional lakes in the future”
Our area's lakes are facing a multitude of threats, but Dr. Bosch points out some of the biggest threats come in the smallest of packages.
“The biggest threat to lakes in Kosciusko County, as well as throughout Indiana and the Midwestern United States, would be blue-green algae toxins, as well as E. coli. Both of those are going to be human health threats, as well as pet health threats, primarily dogs.”
Combatting blue green algae has been a problem with lakes across our area for years, and residents, including Young, are ready for the next steps in protecting the lakes.
“It is for all of the generations to come. We don't want our lake to be a dead lake; we want our lake to be a lake where people can come and not only enjoy the fishing and the boating but just having clean water.”