Lindenhurst residents that live along Lake Linden, one of the village’s manmade lakes, spent the weekend in their pontoons, fishing boats, kayaks and canoes, but not for recreational purposes.
Instead, residents were raking and pulling chara, an algae that grows in water, out of the lake and paddling it over to the boat launch area, while other residents raked it out of the water from the shore along their yards.
There were about 30 people helping to clean the lake on the first day, according to village Trustee Pat Dickson, and by the end of the weekend it took two dump trucks to haul away all of the chara that residents had collected, which will be turned into compost.
The collective effort was spurred on by a number of problems the lake had been facing over the summer.
The area surrounding the Lindenhurst lake is facing the largest drought the area has faced in “about 153 years,” Dickson said.
Water levels are down about a foot, which is significant for a lake that has a maximum depth of around 11 feet. The drought has led to an overgrowth of the chara, which has made the lake unusable for some area residents.
That hasn’t been the only problem. The lake’s oxygen levels dropped significantly, which led to a massive fish kill. Chara can contribute to fish kills by absorbing the oxygen in water, depriving fish of it.
According to Lindenhurst resident and a member of the village’s Lakes Commission, Carlos Menor Salazar, a healthy oxygen level in the lake is around 9 milligrams per liter), and the levels in Lake Linden had dropped to 1 milligram per liter.
Residents who live along the lake came together to pick up the dead fish, eventually collecting more than 1,500 bluegill, bass, muskie and catfish from the surface of the lake and its surrounding shores.
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“A lot of individuals around the lake spent days and days picking up fish carcasses,” Dickson said. “We got that out of there, and there seems to be life returning to normal.”
The fish kill, the low water levels and the overgrowth of chara led to 31 community members attending the most recent Lakes Commission meeting on July 17. Dickson said that in his four years of attending the commission’s meetings, there’s “never been more than a handful of people” in attendance. It was at the meeting that the idea came up to have a community effort to clean up the lake.
“It was a pretty organic thing,” Dickson said. “I overheard someone say Charafest, and after the meeting I went up and talked to [Menor Salazar] and said, ‘What do you think? Do you want to do it this weekend?’ It was really just a question of coordinating a few things with the government bodies that need to be aware of what’s going on, and then we were off to the races.”
Dickson said that he coordinated with both the Lindenhurst Park District, as well as the village of Lindenhurst to help pull off the project. He contacted the Park District to see if residents could deposit the chara that they collected at the Linden’s Landing beach.
“The Park District owns the beach area … so we had to make sure they were on board with us making it stinky,” Dickson said.
Menor Salazar, an environmental scientist, said that chara, although always present in Lake Linden, can create problems when it overgrows, as it has been doing.
“It’s natural and it’s normal, but the excess of anything can cause problems to other resources that the lake can provide to residents,” Menor Salazar said. “For swimming and navigating with pontoons, it can be problematic.”
While the chara did present problems for the health of the lake, Dickson said that it also limited the community’s recreational use of the lake.
“More than anything, it was unsightly and smelly,” he said. “A lot of people were having trouble taking their boats out, so it was important for us to get this back to a healthy-looking lake, and a useful lake, recreationally.”
Kathy Zuhlke has lived along Lake Linden for five years, and said that the chara has impacted her use of the lake. It started to become more of a problem for residents in 2022, she said.
“I felt strongly that we should be doing something about it, but I never addressed the folks who had a say in the matter,” Zuhlke said. “This year, it was twice as much.”
Menor Salazar believes that residents removing the chara themselves will help to make a difference for the fish population, as it would otherwise have to be treated with chemicals to help reduce the overgrowth.
“In a very small area of my beach, I was able to fill up my SUV and drive it over,” Zuhlke said. “In front of my house it doesn’t look like anything was done. It’s a huge lake, and it’s not going to all go away in one weekend.”
Residents plan to continue cleanup efforts in the future, and aim to have another weekend cleanup in August.
“This event went really great,” Menor Salazar said. “After the fish kill, I think we were pretty sad and pretty worried after collecting so many dead fish from Lake Linden. I think this helped everyone cheer up and collectively create ideas on how to remove large masses of chara. It was a good community effort.”