Photos of Mitchell Lake courtesy of SAWS
UTSA water researchers work to restore Mitchell Lake
(Feb. 18, 2004)--UTSA Center for Water Research (CWR) graduate students John Branom and Neal Simpson are collecting water samples to assist San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS) to help restore Mitchell Lake.
The lake on San Antonio's South Side served as the city's wastewater treatment site for many years but was closed to the public in 1987, with the exception of birdwatching tours that can view the more than 300 species of birds that visit the lake annually.
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RSS Feeds"Students are studying the baseline nutrient and heavy metal compositions in the water and sludge-affected sediment samples, both spatially and temporally, to assist SAWS in their water quality improvement project," said Dibyendu "Dibs" Sarkar, UTSA assistant professor of earth and environmental science and director of the CWR environmental geochemistry laboratory.
In addition to its present condition, the only water replenishing the lake
comes from the nearby Leon Creek recycling facility. According to Sarkar,
Mitchell Lake exceeds federal water quality safety standards, primarily due
to flourishing algal blooms leading to oxygen depletion in the water.
In December 2002, the SAWS Board of Trustees committed $1.5 million to improve roads and bridges at Mitchell Lake and to build a new visitors' center. The center, to be dedicated in April, features a meeting room, testing laboratory and office. The SAWS Mitchell Lake master implementation plan includes a mission trail with hiking and biking paths.
The year-long study by Sarkar and his group is an independent project partially funded by a UTSA faculty research award made to Sarkar.