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Too little being done about Wooster Lake

Yet another year has again gone by, making it 10 years since Lakes Management headed by now-Director Mike Adam of Lake County Health Department recorded extreme levels of lake-killing phosphorous spilling into and polluting Wooster Lake.

In 2003, biologist Adam had begun measuring during certain months that 17 pounds per day, even 20 pounds per day, of raw phosphorous was pouring in from upstream, particularly during rain. Those are incredibly harmful levels for any lake to handle, much less for 100-acre Lake Wooster, a lake which used to be among the clearest in the county and labeled an ADID Wetland by the state of Illinois.

Ten years later, this department of Lake County has little to show for it, not even producing a single, documented proposal of what needs to be done to mitigate this very real problem.

Why should taxpayers continue to spend handsomely for the personnel in this department if those at the helm refuse to put forth documented, proposed solutions? Why hasn’t the district’s Lake County Commissioner Bonnie Carter insisted on a set of proposals and alternatives?

Commissioner Carter’s pitch as an environmentalist was used to get her regulations on Wooster, an ordinance which has since been rescinded by public officials. Yet never were documented solutions ever required or even proposed to slow the nutrient inputs from upstream.

Why does Wooster’s single “greatest threat” as reported by Lakes Management’s 2003 Report continue to go without proposed solutions?

Kirk Denz

Ingleside

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