The possible answer to the Water Level Situation on White Bear Lake

[RumRiverRat]

So I bumped into a geologist with the DNR this morning while scouting for ducks at a lake near my house.

Had a long conversation about a couple topics.

They recently drilled two Aquifer Monitoring Wells at the Public Access at Pickerel Lake.

I had noticed the drilling rig there the last couple months and wonder what was going on.

Anyway, I asked him about how the aquifer levels affect lake levels and White Bear Lake was brought up.

He told me some interesting things.

Basically the watershed for WBL is very small relative to the size of the lake.

WBL sits on the ground water divide, the water either wants to flow to the St Croix or the Mississippi.

Also he believes that there are 2 faults that run deep under WBL plus there is a Karst formation under WBL.

Info on Karst Formations from Wiki

Quote:

Karst topography is a landscape shaped by the dissolution of a layer or layers of soluble bedrock, usually carbonate rock such as limestone or dolomite.[1]

Due to subterranean drainage, there may be very limited surface water, even to the absence of all rivers and lakes. Many karst regions display distinctive surface features, with sinkholes or dolines being the most common. However, distinctive karst surface features may be completely absent where the soluble rock is mantled, such as by glacial debris, or confined by a superimposed non-soluble rock strata. Some karst regions include thousands of caves, even though evidence of caves that are big enough for human exploration is not a required characteristic of karst.

Various karst landforms have been found on all continents except Antarctica (see below: Notable karst areas).

Karst topography is characterized by subterranean limestone caverns, carved by groundwater.The geographer Jovan Cvijić (1865–1927) was born in western Serbia and studied widely in the Dinaric Kras region. His publication of Das Karstphänomen (1893) established that rock dissolution was the key process and that it created most types of dolines, "the diagnostic karst landforms". The Dinaric Kras thus became the type area for dissolutional landforms and aquifers; the regional name kras, Germanicised as "karst", is now applied to modern and paleo-dissolutional phenomena worldwide. Cvijić related the complex behaviour of karstic aquifers to development of solutional conduit networks and linked it to a cycle of landform evolution. After Cvijić, two main kinds of karstic areas exist: holokarst i.e. karst developed at whole as it is Dinaric region along eastern Adriatic coast comprises deep in the inland of Balkan Peninsula and merokarst developed imperfectly with some karstic forms as it is in eastern Serbia. He is recognized as "the father of karst geomorphology".

The international community has settled on karst, the German name for Kras, a region in Slovenia partially extending into Italy, where it is called "Carso" and where the first scientific research of a karst topography was made. The name has an Indo-European origin (from karra meaning "stone")[2], and in antiquity it was called "Carusardius" in Latin. The Slovene form grast is attested since 1177, and the Croatian kras since 1230.[citation needed]. "Krš" - "Krsh" meaning in Serbo-Croatian "barren land" which is typical feature in the Northern Dinaric limestone mountains could also be a origin to the word Karst.

His contention is that because of a combination of these things WBL is dependent almost totally on precipitation to fill the lake.

With the recent dry years and the leaking of water from WBL through the faults and Karst formations the lake has lost enough water and will need a lot of precip to get it back to normal.

[Slabasaurus]

"His contention is that because of a combination of these things WBL is dependent almost totally on precipitation to fill the lake."

We have a bingo??? is that how you say it? (you just say bingo) Oh. Bingo!!! How fun!! I digress, now where were we... ahh yes...

the storms that hit the metro this year mostly missed the NE metro. The ones that dumped on my place in Lino missed WBL completely.

Due to a handful of factors both natural and man-made, as stated the water goes to the croix or the sippi (through the rice creek watershed to the sip).

"Also he believes that there are 2 faults that run deep under WBL plus there is a Karst formation under WBL."

that's interesting, the Karst makes sense with the geological properties of the area... but I agree 100% that the lake needs direct precip in order to make any headway.

[BassNut33]

I sure hope that they figure out waht is going on and the lake comes back around. I spent many of nights with my Dad on the lake when I was a kid. It is my favorite lake to fish by far. I think it is one of the only lakes you can catch big smallies on in the twin cities. Many good memories on the big bear.

[blakjack23]

White Bear Lake will come back, it will just take a few more years. It was at a record low in the early 90's and came back.

The low watershed and divide info has been known for a long time, but that fault and Karst info is new to me...

[BassNut33]

yeah I know it will, how do you think the water levels affect the fish population?

[popriveter]

Some people feel Goose lake should be attached and allowed to flow into White Bear. Kohler uses ground water to cool it's machinery and expels the hot water into Goose lake. I have been told that they draw 1 million gallons a day from the aquifer and drain it into Goose lake. That figure seems unrealistically high to me, but the Goose Lake water level is very high.

The DNR has not allowed a connection partly because it is not a "natural" way to help restore the water level, but it is not "natural" to draw excessive amounts of water from an aquifer in the first place.

It's tough to imagine how much of an impact a connection like that would make anyway, but it seems like ideas like this should be fair game if the small watershed can't keep up with the aquifer drainage.

[Tom7227]

Couple of observations.

It looks like the Kohler water goes under Hoffman road on the west side and then down through the series of wetlands and ultimately under 35E where you see that water running over that weir all year long. I tried to check it out on Google Earth and it may actually end up in Vadnais Lake.

I also think Goose Lake on the east side of 61 had been used as a sewage dump. Wouldn't want the water to go through that to get to White Bear.

The problem with any change in surface water flow is that it's going to bring unwanted nutrients into the lake.

[delcecchi]

Kohler as in plumbing? Or something else?

[bucketmouth64]

A collegaue suggested that snow should be dumped at WBL. I told him that the problem with that is the salt content might hurt the ecosystem. Would this be correct?

[Getanet]

I've heard that idea from a few people. KSTP posted this response to that idea on their HSOforum on Dec. 15. Seems impractical, even if you didn't have to worry about the chemicals...

From the HSOforum:

Many residents are asking the question, "Why not dump snow on White Bear Lake to raise the water level?" Officials have been dealing with historic low water levels for quite some time now, but would snow on the lake actually raise the water level?

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said Wednesday that dumping snow on White Bear Lake in an attempt to raise water levels, is not a viable option.

DNR Hydrologist Dale Homuth computed that it would take between 50,000 and 60,000 semi-truck loads of water to raise the level of the White Bear Lake by one foot. Snow is less dense than water with a ratio of roughly 10 inches of snow per one inch of water.

And then there were environmental concerns, said DNR spokesman Harland Hiemstra. He said chemicals and other matter in the snow like gasoline, oil, salt, sand and exhaust from cars are not things that the DNR or residents around the lake would want. Hiemstra said he was not aware of any laws against dumping the snow in the lake.

“White Bear Lake is a relatively healthy lake,” Hiemstra said. “This is not something we would support from an ecological point of view.”

The idea began to circulate over the weekend after a massive winter storm that dumped up to 20 inches on parts of the Twin Cities. Some communities were having difficulty finding places to dump the excess snow. White Bear lake relies heavily on rain and snowfall, because there are no major tributaries that flow into the lake.

For anyone who disagreed with the DNR's position, Hiemstra suggested taking a bucket of snow from your street and dumping it in your bathtub.

“You probably wouldn’t want anyone in your family taking a bath in there,” Hiemstra said.

[BassNut33]

I would think that this would be common sense? I guess when you are more concerned with what your shoreline looks like than the quality of the aquatic life and water quality you really don't care what is in the lake.

[delcecchi]

I would think that this would be common sense? I guess when you are more concerned with what your shoreline looks like than the quality of the aquatic life and water quality you really don't care what is in the lake.

So they are scooping up all the snow around the lake and in town to keep it from running into the lake in spring when it melts?

[St_Croix_Banks]

A collegaue suggested that snow should be dumped at WBL. I told him that the problem with that is the salt content might hurt the ecosystem. Would this be correct?

YEP! That would not be good. Nor would it have a significant impact on water level.

[BassNut33]

There are some things we can't prevent, why create a bigger problem?

[50inchpig]

I would think that this would be common sense? I guess when you are more concerned with what your shoreline looks like than the quality of the aquatic life and water quality you really don't care what is in the lake.

excellent quote - i'd apply this to the weed treatments done last summer that souped up the lake for two months as well, hopefully it doesn't happen again this year but it probably will - and there are some BIG smallies in WBL, we've caught some nice ones in early fall on the shallow sand while we're musky fishing.

[BassNut33]

Your right about the smallies,it is the only lake I can think of that you can catch quality smallies like that in the metro. That is why it is so sad to me to see that the lake is down so much.