Water Quality

Tuttle Creek Lake was impounded in 1962 and reached full pool on 29 April 1963. Tuttle Creek Lake is a major recreational facility in northeast Kansas, and serves boaters, swimmers, and anglers. Overall, the water quality is acceptable for most project uses, including secondary contact recreation and use by fish and wildlife. The primary water quality threats to Tuttle Creek Lake and its watershed are sedimentation, nutrients, herbicides, and bacterial contamination. The lake is listed on Kansas’s 303(d) list for water quality impairment due to eutrophication, atrazine, alachlor, pH, copper, silt, and E. coli (watershed).

Although dissolved oxygen, pH, and temperature are adequate for good biotic productivity, factors such as turbidity and nutrients have negative impacts on aquatic organisms. Sedimentation (turbidity) reduces the lifespan of coves for recreation, creates mudflats, which are exposed during low water periods, and limits the production of desirable benthic organisms. Excess nutrients (eutrophication) result in harmful algal blooms, hypoxia (low to no oxygen), drinking water issues, and are linked to increased pathogens, which all result in impacts to recreational use, fishing, and drinking water supply. Recorded fecal coliform levels in the lake also generally meet standards for body contact recreation; however, bacteriological conditions during high inflows in the upper portion of the lake worsen, sometimes exceeding the water quality criteria for Kansas. Herbicides (ie, atrazine, simazine, alachlor, and metalachlor) are associated with agricultural runoff from the watershed.

A watershed restoration and protection strategy (WRAPS) group was formed in 2006. The goal of the WRAPS group is to protect Tuttle Creek Lake and ultimately remove it from the 303(d) list of impaired waters. For more information, visit http://www.kswraps.org/.

The Corps collects and analyzes water quality samples monthly from April through September. There are three lake monitoring sites and four watershed (inflow) sites. The lake is sampled for nutrients, herbicides, metals, potentially toxic bluegreen algae, and geosmin (associated with taste and odor issues in drinking water). An annual report is available at http://www.nwk.usace.army.mil/lakes/WaterReport.cfm. In addition, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment samples the lake and its watershed every three years.