Construction and unusually shallow waters have left many students wondering what is going on with the campus lakes, a popular spot for students and the Baton Rouge community alike.
What people are seeing is the beginning of the multi-stage University Lakes Project, which aims to refashion the area into an “unmatched recreational amenity,” according to the project’s website.
“It’s not a healthy lake ecosystem as it is,” said Dr. William Kelso, assistant director for the School of Renewable Natural Resources at LSU. “There’s very little habitat. There’s very little depth. I haven’t seen hardly any aquatic plants out there at all.”
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The vision for the project was laid out in the Baton Rouge Lakes Master Plan in 2016. Since then, public partners including LSU, the LSU Foundation, BREC, the state of Louisiana and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation have come together to move the project forward, putting up millions in funding to do so.
The combined effort led to the creation of University Lakes LLC, which has been tasked with implementing the project.
The lakes were constructed in the 1920s and ’30s, when the area was formerly a cypress-tupelo swamp that was donated to the city, according to Mark Goodson, the principal and resilience practice lead at the consulting firm CSRS. Since then, the lakes have been silting in, trying to return to the cypress-tupelo swamp that they were before.
“Even though it’s one of the most popular recreational assets that we have in Baton Rouge, from a water recreation standpoint it’s become unusable,” Goodson said. “There aren’t a whole lot of fish to catch, it’s almost too shallow to do anything.”
The project has two priorities:
- First, to make the lakes a healthy system again, through improving water quality by deepening the lake and implementing different measures to capture, filter and treat runoff and contaminants before they enter the lake.
- Second, to connect the lakes as one system so that they provide benefits to the surrounding area by managing and storing water, which can help reduce flood risk.
An effort to enhance and improve recreational and cultural opportunities at the lakes is also a goal of the project, though it depends, in part, on funding, according to Goodson.
Phase one, which is currently in progress, includes dredging the lakes, improvements to water flood control structures and to May Street, which splits University and City Park lakes.
Forebays, or portions of the lake that are deeper than the rest, will be used at major drainage outfalls into the lake to allow sediment to sink as water enters the lake, enabling the dispersion of freshwater throughout the lake system.
Despite the lakes appearing to be connected, they are not, which has resulted in considerable levels of silting and shallow depths in addition to already poor water quality, low oxygen levels, algal blooms and harmfully warm waters.
“If you connect them and you connect the outlet very well, then they’ll all fill up as a unit and the water will move through and you’ll get flushing through the system, and that’s really healthy,” Kelso said. “All shallow pond type systems typically benefit from a good flush now and then. By improving the connectivity and getting that water to move through, it can take a lot of stuff with it and help restore those systems. I think that’s a great idea.”
A significant part of the effort to capture, filter and treat runoff comes from building living shorelines with native vegetation and material from the bottom of the lakes.
“In addition to treating runoff before it enters the lakes, those native plantings along the shoreline would help create what’s called a littoral zone,” Goodson said. “That’s where the most interaction with wildlife happens, in terms of creating a habitat for reptiles, amphibians and insects that the fish, birds and different wildlife like to eat. That’s going to be a ground zero for that type of habitat.”
Living shorelines are set to play a significant role in establishing a healthy environment.
“Littoral zones are great, fish enjoy them, there’s lots of invertebrate’s production there,” Kelso said. “The plants are going to help with producing oxygen. One of the nice things plants will do also is absorb excess nutrients in the lake that can help buffer against algal blooms.”
Aside from developing a busy living shoreline, an effort to dredge from the bottom of the lake to double the size of the LSU bird sanctuary is also in the works.
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Recreational amenities included in the master plan include bike and pedestrian paths, boardwalks, piers, safer intersections, expanded park space, new benches, new trash receptacles, new landscaping and even a permanent facility for access to kayaks, paddle boards and other watercraft.
“They’re building a new bridge to span that channel that will have enough clearance so boaters and kayakers, even paddleboarders, can pass underneath between the two lakes. So, it opens up a new route that hasn’t been available until now in terms of paddling,” Goodson said.
Goodson believes it’s safe to surmise that fishing conditions will improve.
Some community members look forward to the changes.
“Sounds really cool, seems like it’ll only bring benefits to the community,” said Audrey Dickman, a junior in biological engineering and a member of Bengals in the Wild, an LSU outdoors club.
Phase one is scheduled to take about a year to complete, while partially-funded Phase two is estimated to begin in a year. Further development is dependent on funding.
“Be patient, it’s going to look worse before it looks better, but stick with it it’s going to be a great finished product,” Goodson said.
Construction equipment sits on the LSU Lakes Monday Oct. 16, 2023, on East Lakeshore Drive.
