3 Laguna Lakes Being Restored to Natural Condition

They are named unimaginatively--Lake No. 1, Lake No. 2 and Lake No. 3--and their size is so puny some may wonder why they are called lakes at all.

But as the only three natural lakes in Orange County, they do hold a certain distinction. And those who have studied them say the Laguna Lakes are the crown jewels of the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, a sprawling blanket of open space that encircles them.

“They afford a great habitat for the native wildlife,” said Joanne Quirk, project manager of the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks design department. “The whole park is a treasure, and I think the lakes are a real gem.”

Workers are now midway through a project to return the lakes to their natural condition. Armed with bulldozers, backhoes and cranes, they’ve been yanking out unwelcome eucalyptus trees, clearing away soil deposits and building an earthen sediment basin to help clean the water.

Recently, someone vandalized the equipment at the site.

But local biologist Elisabeth Brown said people shouldn’t worry about the heavy equipment that has been roaming around the lakes, which are tucked alongside winding Laguna Canyon Road, north of El Toro Road.

“It’s kind of a touchy thing,” Brown said. “In Laguna, you don’t like to see your bulldozers crawling around in the park, in land that we’ve fought [to preserve] for so many years.

“But in this case, the bulldozers are doing what we want them to do.”

With this phase of the project expected to be complete by the end of the year, workers will then begin installing native plants--including willow trees and coastal sage scrub--to entice native wildlife. The entire project, funded largely by a $400,000 State Coastal Conservancy grant, could be complete by spring.

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“The main thrust of the project is to improve the water quality and bring back some of the native habitat and plant species,” Quirk said. “You change everything when you change the plants in the area.”

Michael Josselyn, who helped develop the Laguna Lakes Enhancement and Management Plan, said the lakes are unique, each boasting its own ecological system.

Lake No. 1, which is about 7 acres, dries out in the summer, but in the winter and springtime attracts aquatic insects and water fowl, such as mallards and dabbling ducks.

Lake No. 2, a 1.2-acre pond, provides a nesting habitat for a variety of reptiles and amphibians, such as frogs, small snakes and lizards. It is known by some as Bubbles Pond because Bubbles the hippopotamus died there in 1978 after escaping from what was then nearby Lion Country Safari.

Lake No. 3, the largest at 12 acres, contains water year-round and supports a nesting habitat for water birds, such as mallards and night herons. Goldfish, blue gill and large mouth bass swim in this lake, while deer and smaller animals sip from its shores.

The lakes, however, have suffered from years of neglect. A variety of factors, including grazing cattle and urban pollution, brought them to the brink of ecological disaster several years ago. Polluted runoff has in the past sapped the oxygen from the water in Lake No. 3 to the point that hundreds of fish died.

Biologists say the lack of oxygen in the water can be traced to phosphate fertilizer in the runoff, which causes an excessive growth of algae. As the algae dies, algae-eating bacteria proliferate and consume the oxygen in the water.

To address this problem, workers will treat the lake with aluminum sulfate, a chemical that grabs the phosphate and drags it to the lake bed, where it is held in place.

Not everyone considers this a sound approach.

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Shelly Solomon, a biologist whose Modjeska Canyon company Ecoquatics uses natural sources to clean and maintain aquatic systems, called it “ludicrous” to use chemicals to clean a natural lake.

“Why would you use chemicals to clean something?” Solomon said. “It’s absolutely horrible. They’re going to spend all this money to clean it up and contaminate it again.”

Solomon said it would be wiser to use plants, invertebrates and other animal life to create an ecosystem that would clean the water naturally, without chemicals.

However, Christine Hanson, environmental resources specialist for the county’s environmental resources division, said the chemical treatment is faster and cheaper than the natural method.

“What we need to do right now is as quickly as possible remove [phosphates] as much as possible and get it all tied up down there in the bottom,” she said. “There are times you do need to use some chemical methods as one part of the whole plan. One type of treatment will not cure all the problems.”

While environmental factors have battered the lakes, “exotic and invasive” plants have managed to take hold, nudging out the natural habitat and discouraging native wildlife. Left unattended during the drought, Lake No. 1 dried out, allowing nonnative eucalyptus trees to take root in the lake bed. When the rains returned, a eucalyptus grove sprouted.

Workers have begun uprooting the trees and plan to install the types of trees and shrubbery that once surrounded the lakes to entice the native wildlife.

They have also cleared away sediments that clogged two pipes that run beneath Laguna Canyon Road, linking Lakes No. 2 and 3, so that water can now flow more freely between the two.

In a separate move that will also affect the health of the lakes, the county recently resurrected a long-standing plan to realign Laguna Canyon Road, shifting it westward, away from the lakes.

Meanwhile, as workers labor around the lakes in coming months, the scenery may look scarred, but park officials say it will soon look better.

“Somebody going by it right now might see a lot of grading or dry areas,” said Josselyn, who is president of Wetlands Research Associates Inc. in San Rafael. “It may look like a mess, but, within a few months, people will see some changes taking place for the better.”