New plants at Fernan Lake to help with excess phosphorus
<p>NIC student Tyson Steigers digs a hole for a serviceberry plant on Tuesday near the shores of Fernan Lake to slow the erosion and phosphate loading of the lake.</p>
<p>INBRE interns, KEA and UI Harbor Center volunteers planted 150 different types of plants on Tuesday, including these common rush and water sedges shown.</p>
<p>Corey Korner, an NIC student, arranges the dirt around a newly planted serviceberry bush along the roadside of East Fernan Lake Road on Tuesday.</p>
Volunteers from North Idaho College and the Kootenai Environmental Alliance donned bright orange work vests Tuesday morning as they set out to restore the natural vegetation buffer along Fernan Lake’s shoreline. The group planted 150 plants along 150 feet of shoreline.
In recent years, the lake’s water quality has deteriorated due to excess phosphorus, a chemical in soil essential to plant growth. Because of the steep, eroded banks, runoff water easily brings phosphorus-rich soil into the lake.
The phosphorus from runoff soil has triggered prolonged annual blue-green algae blooms that give the lake its pea-green color in the summer, sometimes lasting into winter. This algae produces neuro and liver toxins that can lead to skin irritation or illness in humans, and illness or death to pets and wildlife when they ingest or come into contact with the water, according to Kootenai Environmental Alliance leaders.
Brush and shallow water plants along the banks of the lake can create a natural strainer and sponge, absorbing the phosphorous-rich soil and letting the water through. This is called a vegetation buffer.
Adrienne Cronebaugh, executive director of Kootenai Environmental Alliance, said the organization is currently involved with the update of the Kootenai County ordinance that mandates a 25-foot vegetation buffer on lakes and a 75-foot buffer on streams and rivers.
She said in Washington, the required buffer zone is 50 to 100 feet.
“That’s what keeps our water clean,” she said. “Nature does it for us if we can just keep that buffer.”
The group of volunteers planted bushes and brush plants to strain the sediments running into the lake and to help hold the dirt in place. They planted rushes and sedges, or wetland grasses, as a last resort. Rushes and sedges have a high phosphorus uptake that helps them grow. The goal is to have the plants take in the phosphorus in the soil carried by runoff water before it gets to the lake.
Cronebaugh said all the plants they selected are native, drought-tolerant and also serve as beaver food. Historically, beavers inhabited Fernan Lake. Their dams served as another natural strainer for minerals and pollution from logging activity upstream.
Fernan is the most fished lake in Idaho, acre for acre. Cronebaugh said she has heard the fish are OK to eat, despite the algae blooms, but people shouldn’t eat the skin, eyes or other organs.
“Not that you’d want to anyway,” she said. “But all the fishermen here are very supportive of this project. People love this lake, but it’s aging rapidly.”
An intern from North Idaho College’s Idea Network of Biomedical Research Excellence program worked with Kootenai Environmental Alliance on the project. INBRE gives students real-world training for work they might do in the field that is bio-medical related.
Tyson Steigers, who is going into his third year at NIC, is responsible for gathering water samples before and after the shoreline restoration to see if it makes a difference and determine the lake’s current baseline water quality. Steigers will be evaluating water samples this week for nutrient content.
He will also be in charge of taking care of the plants he and other volunteers planted Tuesday as they grow. After a year they should be well-rooted and stable.
A natural resource student, Steigers heard about the internship and “jumped on a good opportunity.”
“I’m concerned about water quality around here,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing about it and I want to do something about it.”