EDITORIAL: Clean waters

If you like to swim, try the beaches on Lake Ripley in Litchfield or Belle Lake in McLeod County’s Piepenberg Park. Both feature ample sand and clean water.

But you’ll want to think twice before diving into Cedar Lake or Greenleaf Lake. Those two lakes are polluted and have been deemed “unsuitable for swimming” by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

With similar caution, you might want to limit the number of walleye you eat from McLeod and Meeker County lakes. Their mercury content might endanger your health.

Making sense of all this information is the goal of www.checkmylake.org, a Web site that’s easy to use and chock-full of helpful information. The site is operated by the nonprofit Conservation Minnesota, which gets its information from the Pollution Control folks. Conservation Minnesota translates the information into language all of us can understand.

The site exposes stunning truths about our lakes. Only one of five Minnesota lakes have been tested, and of those that have been tested, nearly half are polluted. Almost half of Minnesota’s impaired lakes and streams are that way because of mercury pollution. Mercury comes from a number of sources, particularly coal-fired electrical generating plants.

What you can eat, and shouldn’t eat
Because of mercury, the Minnesota Department of Health advises pregnant women and children age 15 or younger to limit the number of fish they eat to one meal a week. That doesn’t mean our two counties’ lakes are any worse than any other area lake. Fish in all Minnesota lakes and streams that have been tested contain mercury.

Because of these findings, pregnant women, those who plan to become pregnant and children age 15 or younger are advised to limit their consumption of sunfish, crappie, yellow perch and bullheads to one meal a week.