The Daily Campus

Issue date: 8/29/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Ryan Sayers Construction equipment was used to remove pollutants from the lake's surface and silt from the lake's bottom.

Returning students may have noticed some changes on campus, especially those at Mirror Lake including removing pollutants and unwanted plant life.

According to UConn spokesman Richard Veilleux, Mirror Lake had become murky from algae and invasive plant life, so over the summer UConn had the lake's surface vacuumed to remove detritus, like the polluting droppings of the ever-present Canadian geese.

The lake had silt removed from its bottom, according to Dean of Students Lee Williams in her online blog The Dean's Almanac. The silt was pulled from the lake and sat next to it for several days until a truck took it away. "It was the most foul-smelling ooze you could imagine," Williams said in her column.

Workers cut at the base of the invasive plants and killed them, Veilleux said. The island in the middle of the lake was also cleared of some excess vegetation to discourage geese. Trees that were sinking into the water because of erosion were also removed. Rhododendrons and Mountain Laurels, the state flower of Connecticut, were planted on the island instead.

Swan Lake was also fixed up over the summer, and invasive plants were removed as well, according to Veilleux. Some trees, such as Larches, were cut down in the vicinity of Swan Lake to give visitors a better view of the chemistry building.

Veilleux said the lakes are campus landmarks.

"It is important to clean them up and make the campus beautiful," he said.

Veilleux said the work was completed the week before students returned to campus for the fall semester.

Amanda DiTaranto, a 7th-semester animal science major, said she had noticed an improvement. "I think that it looks cleaner and there's less plant growth," she said.

Kris Larsen, a 7th-semester marketing major, agreed. "I think it's an improvement for the lake I hope it brings wildlife other than geese."

Dr. Robert Thorson, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor said," Given the situation before, I thought the work was well done and the situation looks lots better." Thorson wrote a column in the Hartford Courant about the Mirror Lake improvements. Thorson feels that cleaning the lake will not solve the water quality problems in Mirror Lake.

"The root problems are that the pond carries too much runoff-related materials, such as nutrients, organic pollutants, and metals that compromise the water quality and that the geese have been adding too much nutrient of their own. Diverting the polluted runoff or treating it and keeping the geese away are important steps to a long term solution," Thorson said.

Thorson added that he has not seen as many geese on the lake lately.

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