Rest Lake: DNR Voodoo Science

From the Lakeland Times

Pull the DNR zipper, out pops Jack the Ripper

...To get their way, the DNR has forced Xcel Energy, which operates the dam, to violate the current dam order, which mandates that the chain have a minimum water level of seven feet, three inches between July 1 and Sept. 1. The lake levels this past summer were more than a foot below that minimum.

Then, too, the DNR resorted to its old modus operandi of voodoo science to come up with a statutory water flow requirement exactly equal to - you guessed it - the very number the agency had decided they wanted, 50 cubic feet per second. That this new math contradicted the agency's old math (in May 1974 the DNR maintained that 25 cfs met the statutory requirement) mattered not to the DNR chiefs, even though, in practical terms, it meant that the water flow into the chain would have had to have doubled in just 33 years - an incredible contention, to say the least.

To top things off, it was discovered that the DNR knew from its own water flow measurements that Xcel Energy was inadvertently already putting more water through the dam than the DNR was trying to achieve.

They didn't say a word.

...Then there is the question of motive. What is really behind the DNR's action? It's obvious the agency isn't listening to public opinion, and it's equally obvious they aren't listening to their own scientists. In addition to the aforementioned email, Jeff Roth, a DNR fisheries biologist who is an advocate for the sturgeon DNR project, says they only need enough water to go over the dam and into the river during spring spawning - a period of about three weeks in May, not all the time, as the DNR is doing.

What's more, as Fitzpatrick notes, the agency hasn't done a thing to gauge the effect the increased water flow might have on other plant and wildlife species. Just think about the potential damage (which, by the way, the DNR staff won't think about because they could care less about the environmental consequences of their actions so long as the result is either "natural beauty" or the satisfaction of its political power agenda).

...Certainly the one thing the DNR hates more than any human involvement in the natural habitat is any human involvement in their business. It's their way or the highway, and if you take them on they are not apt to forget.

By the looks of it, they haven't. As Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote in a letter to the DNR, the agency's actions have rendered many homeowners' piers and boat lifts useless, isolated large parts of the chain, which are not now reachable by typical boats, and made boating a hazard because some areas cannot even be reached by safety patrols.