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Highlands Today

Why is Lake Jackson's water so clear?

Jasmina Meyer, Highlands Today

From left: Ann and Gary Frakes load their boat into Lake Jackson at Veterans Beach on Thursday for the first time since October of 2007 becasue of the low water.

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By BRAD DICKERSON

Highlands Today

Published: June 12, 2009

SEBRING - A number of Florida's beaches are known the world over for their crystal clear waters.

It may not be of global significance, but Highlands County residents can enjoy the increasingly clearer, and cleaner, waters of their own Lake Jackson.

A recent transparency test administered by the Highlands County Soil and Water Conservation District on May 26 showed the lake had a clarity of 16 feet, according to lake management assistant Erin McCarta.

"It's not that 16 (feet) is unusually high," McCarta said. "It was just unusual since I went out there after we had 12 straight days of rain."

McCarta was expecting there to be some impact to the lake's clarity after all that rain. Instead, when she dropped the secchi disk - a round, black and white weighted object attached to a tape measure - into the water, she could still see it all the way to 16 feet down in a 20-foot deep area.

So, what brought about these clear waters?

McCarta calls it lake water quality 101. Small lagoons forming inside ridges that are closer to the highways catch storm water runoff from the roads before it can make it to the lake proper.

These lagoons have a lot of organic material that can pick up some of the phosphorous and nitrous coming from the road, according to McCarta.

"The longer the water stays there with the organic settlements, the more nutrients will be filtered out," she said.

Corine Burgess, who also works for the district and often goes with McCarta to test the lake's water, said filtration could also be a result of the lake's shoreline restoration site.

The project was started in 2007 and participants scraped out a lot of the area's "nuisance vegetation," such as willows, according to Burgess.

Once the willows were gone, a lot of the site's plants came back naturally. Volunteers also planted over 600 native plants, turning the area back into a wetland.

"What a wetland does is it filters the runoff (water)," Burgess said. "When the lake receives that runoff water, it's cleaner."

Dirty runoff water from Sebring streets is not the only thing that can make Lake Jackson murky. Burgess added that when vegetation in the lake begins dying, all that dead, organic matter can "muddy up the water."

Water turbulence can also stir up sediment and make the water less than ideal visually. None of these factors appeared to be the case on the day the test was done.

"That day was just a nice, still, calm day and apparently the lake is not having a lot of activity as far as vegetation (dying)," Burgess said.

News of the high level of clarity in Lake Jackson certainly pleased Highlands County Commissioner Don Bates, who is in favor of more up-front money to keep lakes clean as opposed to having to spend more down the road if they become severely dirty or ruined.

"Lakes clearly are one of our most important resources in the county," Bates said. "It's so much cheaper to maintain the lakes than it is to recover a lake once it's become degraded."

The benefits of a cleaner and clearer lake are numerous, including advantages to those who spend part of their day casting a line.

"Most of the fishermen I've talked to have been very pleased with their catches," McCarta said.

Highlands Today reporter Brad Dickerson can be reached at 863-386-5838 or bdickerson@highlandstoday.com.

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