This has been a very busy year for the RLIA, and we have accomplished a lot. To that end I want to thank each of our board members, who have truly put in an extraordinary amount of time and effort into this year. Some of the accomplishments from this year will be covered by the Officer reports to follow; they include the work we have done on the Rock Lake Long Range Management Plan Priorities, the Bylaw revisions, the updating of our website, and our increased communication with our members and the public. Our main focus since August has been the Number Two priority of the Rock Lake Long Range Management Plan. When the current board was elected last August our first task was to finish up the 2009 DNR grant that I asked the RLIA to apply for when I discovered a problem with the drainage ditch adjacent to the Miljala Shores navigation Channel. We recently finished the grant with the help of our consultant Neal O’Reilly from Hey and Associates. Working with Neal on this project has been a wonderful experience for the board. We have learned so much and we are extremely fortunate to have someone with so much experience as our consultant on this project. Neal was the DNR manager in charge on the Delavan Lake project which was the largest lake restoration project in the United States and he is now the Vice President of water resource planning for Hey and Associates. For those that are not familiar with the Lake Delavan project, the lake had deteriorated to an algae covered bog. A lake that smelled and where children and pets became ill if they entered the water. The cost to restore the lake was $47 million dollars and took 10 years, but one of the first things they did on the lake was to stop the flow of phosphorus into the lake, because excess phosphorus causes algae blooms, in fact one pound of phosphorus can produce 500 pounds of algae. As you can see our lake is suffering from a large algae bloom and currently it is a large decaying mess covering most of the west side which is a sensitive area in Korth Bay. Homeowners along the west side have been are dealing with this all summer as it impacts their access to the water. The bulrush bed and lily pads are suffering as well. We have been told the bulrushes are dead and dying and are lacking seed pods. Our Vice President Jim Plotz talked to the Town of Lake Mills regarding getting something to skim off the algae bloom from the lake. After a few emails back and forth to the DNR, Sue Graham, who is our lake contact for this area, stated that mechanical removal does not work and because the algae is in a sensitive area, there was nothing chemically that could be done. She said –“ the algae is gross looking and it can smell bad when it starts to die. It’s a natural response to heavy nutrient loading. So most people just live with it and work to prevent nutrient loading to the lake, which you are already trying to do in the Miljala subwatershed”. Lake protection starts by identifying a problem in the watershed and working to correct it. After you correct it you move on to the next problem area and work to correct it. This is what the board has been working on for the past year. We are working to correct a known problem in the watershed that is affecting our lake and in the process we have also identified another problem area, the stream that runs down past Lost Lake and enters the West side of the lake. Both the drainage ditch and the Lost Lake stream are delivering bacteria, sediment and high amounts of phosphorus to the lake. Numerous criticisms have being leveled at the board, stating we are only concerned with the west side of the lake, and that the work we are doing is for the privileged few who live near the area. This couldn’t be further from the truth. After all this project was started in 2009 before this current board took office, and these board members did not have a hand in making the drainage ditch the number two priority on the long range plan. It was listed as the number two priority for a reason, it is a problem and it needs to be fixed. By addressing the bacteria and phosphorus laden sediment now, we can prevent our lakes from the same fate as Lake Delavan or the Madison lakes. We’d like to ask everyone to help us to continue to work on protecting Rock lake from excess nutrients. At a recent meeting our consultant Neal O’Reilly explained that the drainage ditch and the land around it are Houghton Muck soils, or wetland soils, which were farmed years ago. From the farming practice of applying phosphorus fertilizers to the fields, over and over, year after year, all that phosphorus is now stored in the soil. He explained that phosphorus usually attaches itself to sediment and it takes time for algae to break it down to use that phosphorus as food. He then explained that dissolved phosphorus is phosphorus that is leeching from the sediment and that it is dissolved in the water and is readily available for algae as food which creates algae blooms. We have data from water sampling done this year that shows phosphorus levels are 4 to 5 times over the Dnr new proposed laws and 5 to 6 times over the EPA clean water act of 1976. Most importantly is the data we have which shows 79 to 86% of the phosphorus coming from the drainage ditch is in the form of dissolved phosphorus. It has been said that the algae blooms on the lake are the result of the large amount of rain we received this year and years past. And Yes, I agree we have had a lot of rain, but unfortunately we cannot control the amount of rain we receive. So we need to work on the identified problem, which is the phosphorus laden sediment in the drainage ditch. Recently, both the Town and City of Lake Mills, voted unanimously to write letters of support for the two grants we have submitted to the DNR. The grants are for continued research needed to move this project forward to the next level of grants to solve this identified non point source pollution problem. Some concern has also been voiced regarding the RLIA receiving $20,000 of tax payer money in the form of the grants. I would like to state that this money has already been budgeted at the state level to be used for Lake Grants. If our lake does not get the money another lake will, but the money will not be returned back to the taxpayers. Everyone here agrees Rock Lake is a jewel to be treasured. Let’s work together to continue to identify and solve problems affecting our lake. We are very hopeful the two grants we applied for to continue the needed studies on the drainage ditch will be funded by the DNR so that the RLIA along with our consultant, Neal O’Reilly, can move this project on to the next phase which is a protection grant from the DNR, which will give us the funds to design and implement a solution. The RLIA is fortunate to have Neal O’Reilly working on this complicated problem; his extensive lake restoration experience will be invaluable as we move forward.

Jan Jenrich, President ROCK LAKE IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION