All of what we perceive as the Chain of Lakes today were actually swamps
(the old term) or wetlands (the politically correct new term) originally.
They were all dredged out to make them lakes with actual shorelines. It is
also true that some of the dredging were dumped in what was then Lake Sandy
which was also a swamp/wetland. (Lake Sandy, by the way, didn't dry up
because of being filled. When the storm sewer system went in, the ground
water level went down and Sandy dried up. It is now part of the golf
course.)
The lakes worked pretty well (staying lake-like) for quite a while,
basically being recharged from primarily groundwater. The City's storm and
sanitary sewers were connected together back then and both storm and
sanitary sewer water were treated at the Pigs Eye plant (that's downstream
of downtown St. Paul - Mpls and St Paul went in on a joint treatment plant).
Worked ok except when there was a big storm. Then the treatment plant
overflowed raw sewage into the Mississippi which was ok for us because our
intakes are in Fridley but was very bad for the hundreds of cities
downstream who sued us for this practice. So we ripped up the sewers and
split them out, with the storm ones running to the lakes and river and the
sanitary ones running to the treatment plant.
Well, all the runoff from the streets started gunking up the lakes so the
lakes needed to have their water treated again. There has been several
approaches to this. One has been better street sweeping around the lakes.
Another has been to build essentially holding ponds in the storm sewers so
gunk can settle out before it reaches the lakes. Many are being built under
streets around the lakes. There is also work to restore some of the
wetlands around the lakes to put back the natural filtering that use to
happen as water reached the lakes. These activities are resulting in
substantially cleaner water in the lakes. This work has been led by a group
known as the Clean Water Partnership, a consortium of the City of
Minneapolis, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, the State of Minnesota,
and some other folks who are slipping my mind at this moment.
Carol Becker
Longfellow
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Wilde <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 10:11 AM
Subject: [Mpls] lake sandy and dog parks
> i've heard stories that the city filled lake sandy in
> with dirt from lake of the isles.
>
> now they are trying to get lake of the isles back to
> more of a wetland area. what a big waste of time,
> effort and money back then. for what? a golf course?
>
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