Lake Assessment Program - Deer Lake, Battle Lake, Pickerel Lake, Itasca County

During the summer of 2003 the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) monitored four lakes in Itasca County as a part of our Lake Assessment Program (LAP). Three of the lakes, Deer, Battle and Pickerel, located in northern Itasca County will be addressed in this report. Battle and Pickerel drain toward Deer Lake and are considered part of the Deer Lake watershed. The fourth lake assessed, Bass Lake, located near Cohasset, will be addressed in a separate report. The LAP is designed to assist lake associations or municipalities in the collection and analysis of baseline water quality data in order to assess the trophic status of their lakes. The general work plan for LAP includes Association participation in the Citizen Lake-Monitoring Program (CLMP), cooperative examination of land use and drainage patterns in the watershed of the lake, and an assessment of the data collected by MPCA staff. This report presents an assessment of this data along with water quality data from 2003 and from any previous studies of the lakes. In 2003 samples were collected monthly from May through September. A summary of data from 2003 and available historical data follows. This summary will include data from 2003 as well as any data available in STORET, U.S. EPA's national water quality data bank (Appendix X). Summer-mean epilimnetic (upper well-mixed layer) concentrations for each lake are compared to the typical range for ecoregion-reference lakes in the Northern Lakes and Forests (NLF) ecoregion. This provides a basis for placing data from these lakes in perspective relative to one another as well as other lakes in the same ecoregion. In general the water quality data from the three lakes compares favorably with the typical range for "minimally-impacted" lakes in the NLF ecoregion. The water quality parameters sampled (total phosphorus"