The six lakes surrounding campus have been a staple at the University since 1938. Students and local residents often run, bike or walk their dogs around the perimeters. Children growing up in the city share fond memories of feeding the ducks on the University’s beaches. The LSU rowing team practices almost every single morning in that water; sorority members brag to the rest of campus for getting to live on its coasts.
“When you talk to the [former] president of LSU, F. King Alexander, he says it’s the number one tool he has for recruiting people,” Baton Rouge Area Foundation Executive Vice President John Spain said in 2018.
Alexander once said that if the Baton Rouge lakes are not dredged and cleaned, the idyllic bodies of water could morph into a murky swamp. Alexander made that statement five years ago to student media, and little progress has been made toward cleaning the lakes since, leaving the lakes’ condition to worsen.
However, plans are underway to begin a $20 million project to clean and revitalize the lakes, with hopes that construction can start by January 2021.
The lakes are currently an average of 3.5 feet deep with a visibility depth of 6 inches. According to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the healthy average for lake depth is a minimum of 5 feet. The lakes have depleted in depth over the years due to gradual sediment buildup, particularly consisting of nitrogen and phosphorus runoff from storm drains.
This shallow water, along with hot, humid Louisiana temperatures, have created the perfect site for algae growth — which infest the lake with large, stringy blobs of green. According to Matt Thomas, president of the University Lakes Improvement and Preservation Association, this will dissolve oxygen in the water and suffocate fish to death.
Hydrology professor Jun Xu attributes heavy pollution as a cause for the drastic decline in water quality. Xu and his graduate students researched the quality of the water in 2015, and found a slew of items and pollutants in the lake.
“My graduate students go there frequently, and we have found everything possible,” Xu said. “We even found a refrigerator, a couch, a sofa. People throw everything in, even big pieces of plastic.”
All these problems combined have caused the once eye-catching, natural University landmark to return to the murky swamp it was before. These issues have been mostly ignored since 2008, when the Army Corps of Engineers recommended in a report that the lakes be dredged, which is an intense excavation project that scoops mud and sediment out of the lake floor.
The lake was last dredged over 20 years ago, which was performed with a hydraulic hose. According to Spain, the method produces fewer smells and looks less unattractive but is less effective at eliminating sediments, accelerating the deterioration of the man-made lake as a result.
Some Baton Rouge residents have taken it upon themselves to clean the lakes. Randy Peterson, 84, has cleaned litter surrounding the lakes using a litter stick and trash bag two to three times a week for the last 48 years.
Peterson said he frequently sees passers-by throwing garbage from their car windows into or around the lakes, and he can fill two trash bags every time he cleans the lakes.
“Just living here and seeing how bad it is, and it’s getting worse,” Peterson said. “It’s amazing how I can go two days in a row and still fill up my bags. It’s awful.”
Because of the worsening conditions of the lake, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation created and presented a two-phase master plan with a price tag of $20 million in order to revitalize the lake’s health and use.
The first phase of the plan, which would improve the quality of the water by 70 to 80%, involves dredging and sculpting the floor of the lake and cleaning the algae out of the water.
The second phase to improve the lakes’ use would add new structures and landscapes to encourage lake use, such as boat lodges, a promenade on Sorority Row and a bird observatory.
The plan was postponed for about four years while they collected funding. Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the start of the University Lakes Project on Nov. 13, 2019.
Three-quarters of the funding came from the Recreation of Parks Commission, while the remaining $5 million will come from commitments by state officials, according to Edwards.
The momentum has been gaining since, with the LSU Real Estate and Facilities Foundation — an affiliate of the LSU Foundation — selecting Brailsford & Dunlavey and CSRS for a joint venture of project advisor on Jan. 21 after presenting their proposals with five other management companies.
“Collectively, our team understands the critical need to restore the University Lakes system to health,” CSRS CEO Michael Songy said. “We have the experience, capacity and expertise to help [LSU’s] REFF deliver the desired outcomes of the Project, including health, beauty and a win-win [for funders and users.]”
The three entities will work together to oversee the project. Their next job being to select a designer and contractor. Beyond that, Brailsford & Dunlavey and CSRS will advise over the rehabilitation and improvement of the six lakes, financial analyses over budgeting and spending and the entirety of the dredging excavation.
The University hopes for construction and dredging to begin by January 2021. However, Xu’s research suggests that the project may not be an effective long-term solution.
“People want to dredge, which would be certainly helpful, but it is not a long-term solution. After they dredge, the material will accumulate again,” Xu said. “The lakes were dredged many times before in the past 70 to 80 years.”
Xu’s research in 2015 concluded that replacing the existing gate between the University Lake and Corporate Canal with a sluice gate, which controls the flow of water, would likely be the most effective solution for the LSU Lakes by eliminating the damming effect caused by the current gate and equalizing the depth of the two bodies of water.
“In the lake at the bottom, you have all kinds of material — like dirt, organic debris, tree branches, grasses, all kinds of stuff,” Xu said. “This material will be flushed out when you open the gate, so that is basically like a dredge, but you’re using a gate to dredge the lake.”

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Bella Biondini

Six lakes surround LSU's Campus in Baton Rouge on Friday, Jan. 24, 2020.