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Saving the lakes

Photo by Tim Mueller

The plan to restore the Baton Rouge lakes is a work in progress with no easy solutions

The LSU and City Park lakes are not natural bodies of water. With a maximum depth of about five feet, they’re barely lakes.

During the 1930s, the federal Works Progress Administration converted a cypress and tupelo swamp into University Lake, City Park Lake and four smaller water bodies. But the water suffers from urban refuse and a dearth of oxygen, plants are taking over the shorelines, and the whole mess will revert to swampland if left alone.

Enter the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, which hired lead consultant SWA Group, an international landscape architecture, planning and urban design firm, to try to save the lakes. At a packed January meeting to gather public input, BRAF Executive Vice President John Spain acknowledged that whatever’s being considered will make someone mad.

“Rest assured, you’ll find some things that you really like, and some of you will find some things that you don’t particularly care for,” Spain said.

LSU Lakes Design 008
At a public meeting in late January, residents view early renderings of plans to restore the lakes. Photo by Angela Major

Early glimpses of the still-evolving plan reveal an effort to improve the amenities around the lakes, not just the lakes themselves, which tends to elicit one of two reactions from locals. Either: This will bring more people to the lakes; this is great! Or: This will bring more people to the lakes; this is terrible!

“It’s easy to screw up a project like this by doing too much or by doing too little,” says Kinder Baumgardner, who is president of SWA and grew up in Baton Rouge.

The ecological problems would be confronted by hiring a contractor to dredge the lakes for the first time since the 1980s. The sediment could be used to build up the shorelines and create small areas of wetlands that would help filter some of the chemical runoff.

Baumgardner says temporary enclosures called cofferdams could be erected so one section of the lakes at a time could be drained and excavated, minimizing the impact on wildlife. A more gradual slope along the shoreline could reduce wind-driven erosion, he adds.

Bike and walking paths around the Baton Rouge lakes.
Bicyclists and joggers use pedestrian paths that are dangerously close to vehicular traffic along the roads that wind around the lakes. Improved pedestrian and bike paths may be part of plans for the lakes. Photo by Stephanie Landry

As for amenities, Baumgardner says the most common words he hears from locals interested in the project are “paths,” “bike lanes” and “boating.”

Baton Rouge can create a “world-class destination” at the lakes, he says—we just need to define what that means. Maybe the whole system could be one big bird sanctuary, he muses.

LSU biology instructor Jane Reiland says improving the water quality, which is in the low-oxygen “danger zone” for fish kills, is paramount. But she also likes the idea of making the area inviting for families who aren’t interested in running 10 miles around the lakes.

“You can’t take a 4-year-old down there,” she says.

But bringing out more people could disturb the bucolic peace enjoyed by the owners of some of the most expensive real estate in town. Elise Allen, who lives on South Lakeshore Drive, forcefully objected to some of the ideas being floated at the January public meeting, and says other members of her homeowners’ association feel the same way.

“I object to a bridge over water that leads right to my front door,” she says.

Local biking activist Mark Martin likes most of what he’s seen so far from the project. He says the consultants seem to be making an effort to elicit “the least amount of grief” possible from homeowners, while creating amenities that the rest of the community will enjoy, but he’s doubtful that both sides can be satisfied.

The primary goal is making the lakes viable and sustainable, Martin says. But if you do that, they become more usable and attract more people.

“But how do you not attract too many people?” he wonders.

Martin recalls a public meeting years ago to discuss making a stretch of East Lakeshore one-way. Lots of neighborhood residents showed up, he says, not to complain about the plan, but to denounce all the pedestrians who get in the way and jaywalk. Those residents, it’s safe to say, are wary about bringing even more people near their homes.

“This is a social engineering problem,” Martin muses.


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A portion of the renderings of proposed expanded shorelines (light green) and wetland fill (blue-green) along the lakes, which will help develop a more diverse ecosystem and improve water quality. Courtesy BRAF

JUST THE FACTS:

There is not yet a timeline or budget associated with the project. The master plan, expected to be completed in July, will include a proposed funding mechanism. Saving the lakes themselves has an estimated price tag of more than $21 million; BRAF says the overall project might cost between $30 million and $40 million.


SPEAK UP:

The next public meeting about ongoing planning for the lakes project is scheduled for April 29. Find out more at batonrougelakes.org.

UPDATE: The open house public meeting has been moved to May 12, 6 p.m.-8 p.m. at LSU’s Lod Cook Alumni Center. Designers will reveal a draft of the master plan and seek comments from people who attend. Find more information and RSVP at BatonRougeLakes.org/OpenHouse.