The LSU Lakes are dying. Can they be saved?

With a slight shove, the kayak slips the banks around Stanford Pier. I dip my paddle into University Lake. It’s a still day. Overhead, a veil of clouds stretches over the skyline. There were stars up there moments ago, but now it’s like a small fire has been built on the horizon. The clouds begin to glow from beneath. The lake reflects their watercolors.

With a few broad strokes of the paddle, the busy sounds of the world fall away. It’s a bit like stepping into a chapel. The water magnifies some noises—the screech of birds; the private conversations of a pack of runners, those denizens of sunrise, along the bank; the distant rush of traffic on I-10.

But the quality of the silence sitting here, in the center of the water, is something you have to seek out. We paddle and watch the pelicans swirling in the distance. A turtle peeks a shy eye my way, then disappears with a small splash.

Scenes like this one play out nearly every moment on any one of the series of six lakes that stretch from LSU to the Garden District.

Runners, kayakers, duck-feeders, golden retrievers and fish-seekers flock here to rest and shake or stroll off the concerns of the day. Tailgaters gaze out at these earthy crucibles of water, throwing back brews and discussing strategy. The homes here, whose windows reflect the hourly glimmer of the lakes, are some of the stateliest in town.

You can argue that the future of the city exists in revitalizing the downtown area, and you’d have a good point. But the heart of the city? Well, many would tell you it’s right here, on these waters that remain mostly unknown to outsiders. You can walk around Baton Rouge’s lakes in less than a morning, but that doesn’t diminish their significance to the people who live, work and play around them.

Ask the experts, though—scientists and researchers who study the lakes on a cellular level—and they’ll explain that the lakes are sick. If we don’t take action, we’ll lose them. Not next year, maybe not even in five or 10 years. But eventually.

The lakes’ edges are eroding as they become more shallow. Their drainage infrastructure is damaged. Fish kills, the result of diminished oxygen from heat and algae blooms, happen nearly every year.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has prepared a strategy for improving the lakes, and they’d be on it tomorrow if it weren’t for the lofty price tag that’s ballooned from the $7 million the Corps estimated two years ago. Right now, the cost for saving the LSU Lakes sits at $21 million. The further the Corps has moved into the specifics of the project, the higher the price has gone. BREC, LSU and the City of Baton Rouge have agreed to work together in funding a portion of the project. But none of them can imagine coming up with enough cash this year, or next, to make it happen.

“Until the city, LSU and BREC can come to terms with how the cost will be shared, how they are going to come up with that, we cannot move forward,” says Nick Sims, project manager with the Corps.

Everyone’s and no one’s lake

Tyler Hicks is my kayak guide this November morning. He’s a bearded LSU grad, sporting horn-rimmed glasses, who manages the the Backpacker, an outdoors store in Baton Rouge. He’s not a scientist, but as an avid kayaker, he knows University Lake about as well as he knows the living room in his Capital Heights home. He dreams of seeing kayaks by the dozen on these lakes on a morning like this. Before he discovered kayaking on these lakes, he says, he was counting down the minutes until he could leave the city. The lakes have become his refuge.

A few weeks ago, though, he pulled an entire bicycle and a mini-fridge out of the water. Customers tell him of falling into the lakes and, a few days later, seeing their skin break out in rashes. With certain, commanding strokes, he pulls his kayak to the bank beside the bird sanctuary that sits on University Lake’s shores.

“It’s like a scavenger hunt of trash around here,” he says, yanking at a pair of pants half-buried in muck. He fears that disregard and lack of ownership among Baton Rouge citizens will cause the lakes to become nothing more than a beautiful cesspool: Okay to look at, but impossible to enjoy up close.

“As long as it’s everybody’s, it’s nobody’s,” he says, referring to the lakes’ joint ownership by BREC and LSU. LSU owns four of the lakes, including University Lake, Lake Crest, Campus Lake and College Lake. BREC owns City Park Lake, while Lake Erie’s ownership is currently in question.

When asked if he and others who have been championing the lakes’ cause are crying wolf—making a big deal out of a problem that could take years to become apparent to your average passerby—he says, “We’re raising a stink. But if you don’t raise a stink, the lake’s going to raise its own stink.”

The Army Corps of Engineers’ Sims says the lakes aren’t polluted, according to his research.

“You can say that all you want, but the smell in my car and the people who come into my shop will tell you differently,” Hicks says.

In the beginning

Cypress-tupelo swamps grow darker at night. Mosquitoes lift by the generation like black veils, swarming into nearby homes, carrying with them disease and discomfort. Legends of vampires and voodoo are far too easy to tell while looking out at the dark recesses of a natural wetlands habitat. It’s simply not something most people want to see through their windows in the middle of town.

By the 1930s in Baton Rouge, it was decided that our cypress-tupelo swamp had to go. Workers with the Works Progress Administration hacked down the cypress trees and left behind the stumps. What had been a dank, murky swamp was then a lake, a bowl of light shimmering beside the university and the city, and for three decades the city grew up around it.

By 1979, though, it was clear something was rotten here. Every year, fish would die off, their white bellies drifting along the surface of the lakes. The lakes were getting shallower, reverting back to a swamp. In the summer, they heated up and grew an abundance of oxygen-hogging algae, which killed the fish.

The city decided it was time to dredge the lakes. We sent boats into its shallow depths with the goal of digging out enough muck to make the lakes livable again. Their efforts were thwarted, somewhat, by those stumps the WPA had left behind. They scratched and tore at the dredging equipment, but the job was completed. The muck pulled from the lake was used to build up Baton Rouge Beach and the LSU bird sanctuary.

But the dredging couldn’t hold. The slow creep back toward swamp is happening again.

Jason Soileau, assistant director of the Office of Facility Development and Campus Planning at LSU, has a slide presentation he takes to civic groups to make the case to preserve the lakes. One of the slides shows grass and willows growing in the small lake that sits between Sorority Row and Stadium Drive.

“That’s the sign, right there,” he says. “It’s filling up with vegetation.”

From the ground, up

On our November kayak trip, we pass a canary-colored carbon fiber buoy bobbing in the middle of the water.

From his office in the second floor of LSU’s Department of Natural Resources, Dr. Jun Xu (pronounced “shoe”) logs onto a Web site. He leans in, scanning a table of figures. Every 15 minutes, the buoy sends Xu detailed data about the quality of the water in the lakes, such as how much oxygen it holds at that given moment and how deep it is, a measurement that fluctuates depending on rainfall.

Since 2002, Xu, an associate professor, has been studying these waters. He agrees that the lake is trying to turn back into a swamp.

To understand why that is happening, Xu tells of a single rain drop. It falls from gunmetal clouds during a summer gullywasher into the Garden District, say. It rolls over the streets and lawns, picking up such things as dirt, magnolia seeds, fertilizer, a child’s soccer ball, motor oil, detergent jugs and any bit of riff-raff it hits. All of this is carried to the lakes system.

“The bottom rises,” Xu says. He holds his hands about a foot apart, then widens them. “More and more trash accumulates, and then your lake becomes shallow.”

Is Xu worried about the lakes’ future?

He’s a scientist who grew up in South China under General Mao’s dictatorship, he says. He’s happy to study this body of water, no matter what shape it takes, filthy swamp or clean, deep lake. But as a person who lives in this city?

“I have not asked myself,” says Xu. “But I would much more prefer to see a lake here.”

Xu talks of bringing his son, a cross-country runner, to train around the lakes. He enjoys bringing colleagues from distant lands to peer at the water.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plan for saving the lakes, which would take around three years to complete once they got the go-ahead, involves draining them, then digging out the bottom using earth movers. That dirt will then be used to build up the banks of the lakes as a linear park for biking and walking trails (at a cost that isn’t included in the improvement estimate). Those pesky cypress stumps will be taken out, one of the factors that made the estimated cost rise, and a series of trickle tubes will be placed in the lakes that will catch debris and keep it from building up on the bottom of the lakes. It’s a sustainable solution, says LSU’s Soileau.

But Xu presents an additional, very frugal one, one that any person living, working or playing around the lakes can put into practice today.

For starters, he says, people need to stop dumping grass clippings, trees and other debris into the lakes. “They may think it’s a good thing for the fish, but no. It’s too much. The lake has too many nutrients.”

Weed killers run directly into the water, as do fertilizers and dog waste. These pollute the water and help algae to grow, which leaches oxygen and kills fish.

Xu wishes he could put up an LED display next to the lake that’d let residents know how their water is faring at any given moment. He’d like to see the local weathermen report on how the lakes are doing. He’d like to take his scientific show on the road to educate locals on the importance of keeping their wetlands at the top of their minds.

These things could all affect how quickly the lakes revert to swampland.

When asked if the lakes are polluted, Xu simply says, “The sewer system in Baton Rouge is not good.”

He tells about visiting the sewage plant and doing the simple math that indicates there could be sewage in the lakes. “You know how much inflow there is, how much outflow, and how much got lost in between,” he says with a chuckle.

In discussing the plight of the lakes, you can’t underestimate the power of the lakes’ residential neighbors, who arguably have the most to lose if the lakes are diminished.

From my kayak, I see the sun rise behind the Crescent Condominiums. A one-bedroom condo at this new, glittering complex costs upwards of $340,000. A three-bedroom, two-bath model can go for as much as $699,000.

Mike Wampold is the developer of the condos. Clearly civic- and business-minded, he came out-of-pocket to improve Baton Rouge Beach, BREC’s park across from the condos.

“It would be such a black eye for the entire community and city and state to allow something like that to go back because they don’t have the dollars to re-dredge it,” he says. During our conversation, he exhibits a pure faith seen in both visionaries and ostriches who keep their heads down while waiting for someone more powerful to fix the problem. The politicians won’t let this happen, he says. The city won’t let this happen.

Due to Corps restrictions, a corporation such as Wampold’s couldn’t directly fund the lake improvement project. Any funds that go toward improving the lakes have to be funneled through a sponsoring organization such as LSU, BREC or the city.

“Now, if one of those … were to partner with someone like that to come up with some of that cost share, that might work. But we cannot officially have a non-federal sponsor,” says Corps Project Manager Nick Sims.

Back at the Stanford Pier, I run into Harvey and Mary Ann Hales. They’re from Monroe, but their daughter lives in Baton Rouge. Each Saturday, rain or shine, they come to drink their Community Coffee and munch on muffins while gazing out at the lake’s waters. It’s a ritual that centers them and gives them time to talk. Seeing the lake as it passes through its various seasons gives them appreciation for their own lives.

Today is homecoming at LSU. Across the lake, giant tissue-paper people in fiesta colors sway on the breeze, their bright hues falling across the ripples of University Lake.

“It’s a special place,” Harvey Hales says. “We don’t see this every day.”