The Scars of Project 459: The Environmental Story of the Lake of the Ozarks

8. Documented Pollution Past

CHAPTER 8 Documented Pollution Past Arlene Kreutzer once took boat rides across the lake and marveled at the trees, the open land, and water. She and her friends packed a picnic lunch and looked to the rocky bluffs and the inviting shoreline along the way to their destination. “Special places,” she calls them. She and her husband fled Kansas City for a quieter life to live among nature after he became ill from heart trouble. They operated a resort called Ro-Anda Beach in the 1970s. She later worked for the chamber of commerce. Kreutzer misses the “nature of it.” “It’s grown from a resort area to a general city atmosphere, and a lot of the beautiful things we saw around the lake are covered with resorts and lodges and houses. It’s just changed,” she laments.1 Friends of hers have moved away, upset about the overgrowth and nostalgic for how the area used to look. Now, it’s dock after dock along the waterfront. It’s maddening, boats going up and down the shoreline, stopping at the bars and restaurants. “The beauty of the area is gone with all the construction, and it’s [that beauty] that I really miss,” she says. “It’s too commercial and too inhabited.” Warnings of what could happen started decades ago in the forms of studies and conclusions—academic, scientific, and civic. They continued throughout the years. They spotlighted what action could be taken, often in the form of organized utility and sanitary districts. Their summaries also noted what could happen if development came without planning. Yet years later, after the studies’ conclusions were drawn and warnings blared, the lake community rests in the same predicament: community members are still trying to organize sewer districts, and inspectors continue to locate culprits who dump untreated wastewater into the coves. Ward Gifford, who served as the region’s first chamber president, had called for sanitary plans and other restrictions before other members of the organizations booted him out in the early 1930s shortly after the lake was formed.2 The next forty years proved a time of calm where the lake drew visitors , but only seasonally, and only for a short time. Vacation homes popped up, but the local population remained small until the 1980s and 1990s. The US Census Bureau reported that Benton, Camden, Miller, and Morgan had a population of 64,546 in 1980; 77,628 in 1990; 97,101 in 2000; and 107,189 in 2010. The population was expected to continue to climb.3, 4 Jeffrey Mitzelfelt’s thesis, which created a foundation for the modern-day bacteria sampling of coves, was published in the mid-1980s (see chapter 5). His conclusions in the 1985 thesis discussed how the clustering of buildings and the long lines of automobiles during peak times had some correlation on the sewage output and bacteria numbers.5 That same year James Vandike and colleagues published their report on groundwater and surface-water contamination potential because of geology and the risk of failing septic tanks, which is what many homeowners have.6 (See chapter 6.) The efforts were mostly academic, and occasionally at the federal level with the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, until the state Departmentof NaturalResourcespublishedareportthatdealtwithwaterquality in 1992. It showed that generally the lake was healthy but, like today, that certain coves might reach the tipping point of more bacteria than standards allow. It noted the density and potential for fecal coliform bacteria in coves with higher populations and possible contamination from septic tank discharges.7 Water quality reports from 1992, 1994, and 1996 all mention heavy development, both residential and commercial, around the lake as potential causes for water-quality concerns. In the 1994 report, one of the main problems expressed by the state was sewage discharge. 70 DOCUMENTED POLLUTION PAST While much of the highly developed areas along Highway 54 have been sewered and their wastewaters are treated and discharged to the Osage River downstream of the lake, sewage from thousands of lake shore homes is not pumped uphill to Highway 54. Thus, a large amount of treated sewage is discharged to the lake.8 Many coves have excessive algal growth due to the nutrients in sewage, but to date, no other water quality problems have been documented. The 1996 report mentioned small wastewater facilities and improperly working septic systems as part of the algal growth and...