Minnesota officials are working to restore water to one of the state’s lakes after “a mechanical failure of the water control structure” there caused it to drain significantly over the weekend.
In a statement on Monday, the Minnesota department of natural resources (DNR) said that it was responding to the issue at Lake Alice in William O’Brien state park while noting that the malfunction in question had resulted in a “significant drawdown of the lake level”.
The department as of Monday said that “only a stream remains on Lake Alice at this time” and warned visitors that water recreation on the lake will likely be affected for “at least four to six weeks”.
The lake’s swimming beach is not currently usable, and the drawdown has “caused a fish kill in the lake”, officials added.
Lake Alice is typically 9ft (2.7 meters) deep and spans 26 acres (10 hectares), according to the DNR’s website.
In a Monday afternoon update on social media, officials with Minnesota said that Lake Alice is “spring-fed lake with an earthen dike that holds water back”, and it has a 65-year-old water concrete control structure that “can be manually operated to manage lake levels by allowing water to flow out into the St Croix River”.
“Due to heavy precipitation last month, water levels on Lake Alice were steadily increasing,” said the statement from officials. The statement added that when water levels became “high enough that water was flowing over the dike between the lake and the St Croix River, DNR staff opened the water control structure’s valve to release excess water from Lake Alice”.
“Upon attempting to close the valve over the weekend, staff discovered the control structure closure mechanism had failed and was stuck open, which has caused the lake to drain,” the statement continued.
The statement said staff had since been working to resolve the issue, but a “timeline for restoring lake levels is not known yet”.
