While lake restoration has many goals and can restore the beauty and function of an existing waterway, it’s not a simple process. Even small-scale restoration efforts can take months and even years of coordinated work; especially if multiple stages or techniques must be combined to achieve the desired results. Understanding the challenges common to lake restoration projects is essential to tackling them head on. Not every project will encounter all of these obstacles, but most will face at least one issue during the design and installation phases.
Large Scale of Most Projects
The sheer size of most lakes makes it challenging to restore them, even when a project only calls for one or two treatments. Lakes are differentiated from ponds by depth rather than surface area, but almost all lakes hold hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons of water. Some lakes even contain billions and trillions of gallons each. Trying to cover the entire base of a lake of that size can seem impossible, but it is possible with the right liner material. Experienced companies, like BTL Liners, have the space to create liners for the largest lake restoration tasks without issue. Rather than trying to piece together a sheet from smaller and narrower materials, which will only result in slow installation and leak issues, have your liners fabricated to fit your specific size needs.
Extensive Damage from Multiple Causes
Few lakes have a single problem that can be solved with just a few adjustments to water quality or watershed management. Most lakes, in need of restoration, require extensive changes and improvements for a permanent impact. Putting together an entire lake restoration project can feel like a jigsaw puzzle full of pieces that don’t fit together due to the contrasting needs of various issues. With conflicts between the needs of many parts of a damaged lake, it can feel like a balancing act to try and bring multiple systems back into alignment with each other. That’s why so many restoration projects end up involving extensive ground disturbance and other work. These restoration projects are generally reserved for badly impacted lakes with multiple issues, not just lakes in need of a little adjustment.
Upstream and Watershed Problems
Lakes are usually too large in scale to simply refresh with rainfall and runoff alone. Most lakes are connected to streams, rivers, or springs that feed them a steady supply of water. If there are pollution or erosion issues in any of the upstream tributaries feeding into the lake, they can be difficult to solve on a large scale before the lake will improve. The same is true when pollution or nutrient-rich runoff issues are being caused by the surface of many acres of watershed. A watershed is the entire surface area contributing water to a lake, and it can stretch for many miles beyond the banks of the water depending on the slope of the nearby ground. Coordinating changes between both public and private landholders is usually required for these kinds of widespread improvements.
High Costs
Due to the scale of the project and the need for durable and safe materials, the costs of lake restoration can get quite high. Many municipal lake projects run into the $10 to $50 million price range, while large scale federal improvement projects can have budgets of $1 billion or more over a long, timeframe. Private lake restoration usually is much less expensive due to the smaller size of the water feature, but it still tends to cost a little more than a homeowner might want to pay. Exploring the long-term savings produced by improving the health of a lake will help justify the costs of restoration techniques.
Sediment Dispersal
Any work, to clean out the sediment and sludge at the bottom of a lake, also inevitably disperses some of it. Unless the lake is fully drained before work begins, the creeks and rivers downstream of the lake can become contaminated by any heavy metals or chemicals found in the sediment. Wetlands downstream are particularly sensitive to silt accumulation and sediment content. If the dispersal of sediment could cause more problems than the restoration would solve, the project will likely be limited to a less disruptive approach like chemical treatments.
Disturbance of Sensitive Species
As with sediment, extensive physical restoration work can damage or disturb sensitive plant and animal species already living in the lake. This is why the most extensive restoration is generally reserved for lakes that are so badly damaged that they’re no longer home to the species they once hosted. Draining, dredging, and lining a lake that’s lost 50% or more of its biodiversity is likely worth the disturbance to what’s remaining. Resetting a lake, with extensive restoration measures, must be worth the disturbance to justify its new value as a habitat once it settles into a natural cycle again.
Availability of Materials
Since lake restoration aims to build a natural environment, rather than a sterile one like a retention pond or treatment basin, the materials used for the work must be fish-safe and plant-safe. This can be harder than you might expect, limiting your options for restoration techniques based on what materials are available. Even when availability is widespread, certain materials may not be a good fit for specific climates or types of lakes. Sourcing materials, like flexible liners, before committing to specific techniques is recommended to avoid endless revision cycles to adjust the plans based on changing availability.
BTL Liners has the flexible polymer liners you need to complete the largest lake restoration projects in the world. We’re happy to help with expert advice based on our 40 years of industry leading experience.
