After two weeks, the lake has been lowered for winter. During this time, to our best estimate, we cycle out a couple million gallons of water. This water flows into Ramsey creek which flows into Bishop creek. Bishop creeks goes to the Little Wabash which flows into the Wabash. The Wabash finds its way into the Ohio, the Ohio into the Mississippi, and then finally into the Gulf. For us, this helps with the health of our lake. While lake nutrification is a natural cycle that happens to all freshwater bodies, this process can be accelerated due to the additional input of nutrients like areas that are watersheds for croplands.
While the ideal solution is to have less nutrient runoff coming in, the systems that add these nutrients are not able to be tackled on an individual basis. They must be addressed communally. As the over nutrification of our water adds to the dead zone at the mouth of Gulf (where water has such low oxygen content, it kills marine life), farmers need to add fertilizer to fields in prescribed amounts to qualify for insurance and be able to pay their bills. Ecological issues require us being in conversation with one another so we can find paths forward which cause flourishing for all and elevate those hurting the most.
You are invited today to look for conversations you can have about the issues you can’t tackle alone – looking out not just for your interests, but for paths forward that allow all impacted flourish more equitably.
