Minnesota Stories:

Is Your Minnesota Lake Safe?

Try Checkmylake.org

This summer, Minnesota families who want to know if their favorite Minnesota lake is clean enough for swimming and eating fish caught in the lake have an easy way to find out — www.CheckMyLake.org.

“Checkmylake.org provides dependable information that is easy to understand and use for anyone concerned about pollution in our state’s waters,” said Kristin Eggerling, mother of two and Conservation Minnesota board member. “It is especially important for parents like me who make decisions about which lakes our children will swim in and the fish our families will eat. My family, like most Minnesotans, loves to get out and enjoy the lakes each summer. With two young children I am very concerned about pollution and what they are being exposed to. Checkmylake.org is really the only place I know of to find all the information I need to make decisions on which lakes we go to and how we enjoy them.”

Powered by Conservation Minnesota for the second year, the site assembles monitoring data on thousands of lakes collected by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) into a user-friendly database. It helps Minnesotans find out whether their favorite lakes are clean or polluted — or haven’t been tested yet, which is true of a large majority.

By going to www.checkmylake.org, the website’s users can either type in the name of a favorite Minnesota lake or type in a county name and choose from among a list to find out whether lakes have been tested and what the results show.

Last year, over 25,000 Minnesotans consulted www.checkmylake.org. This year, visitors will find new features:

• Links to lake-specific information on fish contaminant advisories.
• Whether a specific lake has been identified by the state as having aquatic invasive species.
• The most recent data base on statewide lake safety compiled from state records.

According to the MPCA, only 14% of Minnesota streams and 18% of Minnesota lakes larger than 10 acres have been tested. Of those tested, approximately 40% of waters are found to be “impaired.” One-third of the money from the voter-approved Clean Water, Land and Legacy constitutional amendment will be appropriated by the Legislature to test and clean up waters.

“Our 10,000 lakes help define Minnesota for all of us who live here,” said Paul Austin, Conservation Minnesota’s executive director. “Having information at hand on the health and safety of our lakes empowers all of us to make decisions affecting our health.”

Many of the impaired lakes are polluted with excess mercury. Check My Lake refers users to the Minnesota Department of Health’s fish eating guidelines for these lakes, which advise limited consumption of fish from those lakes, especially for children and women of child-bearing age.

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