Lake Assessment Program - Siseebakwet Lake, Itasca County, Minnesota

This report and the work upon which it is based goes beyond the traditional scope of a Lake Assessment Project led by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. One of the primary reasons for expanding beyond a typical Lake Assessment Project was the need expressed by the Itasca Soil and Water Conservation District to better understand the processes at work in many of the atypical lakes in the Itasca County region. Many of these atypical lakes exhibit characteristics that are similar to those of Siseebakwet Lake. A characteristic shared among these lakes may be that portions of their source waters travel through calcium-rich sediments. These calcium-rich source waters or calciumrich lake bed materials could have significant impacts on lake water transparency and user perceptions of lake water quality. In the mid to late 1990s, concerns began to grow that the clarity of water in Siseebakwet Lake might be getting progressively worse. The concerns intensified when, in 1997, the summer mean of Secchi disk transparency measurements was only 6.9 ft. compared to a (recent) historical average summer mean of about 12 ft. In contrast to 1997 conditions, summer mean Secchi disk transparencies as high as 16.1 ft. had been reported as recently as 1989 and 1990. Field work and study to better understand Siseebakwet Lake and the surrounding area were stepped up in 1998 and 1999 to address the concerns.