Leaving a shining legacy

When New Richland resident and 1977 Waseca High School graduate George Klug saw the sticker, he was determined to transfer it to his boat: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi.

To Klug, the famous words are more than a suggestion. 

For the past 7 years, he has known the precise nature of the difference he wants to make, of the legacy he would like to leave. The challenge has been to lead others to see it, too.

As a diesel mechanic with more than 30 years experience, as a machinist and fabricator, and as someone who makes a habit of “looking under technological rocks,” Klug’s talents and curiosity led to what seemed like a near miracle in 2015.

When he took the elements of a water improvement system he had been hired to manufacture and altered them slightly “to find out what would happen” when he submerged one of the units in a small private pond,  he watched in gradually growing amazement over the next few weeks as the murky, green pond became clear. All this with two electrically-powered side-by-side oxygen aeration units each about the size of a small college refrigerator.

The system had been developed to improve water as it was circulated through irrigation systems on crop production land in Idaho. It used simple principles of physics to “free” naturally occurring oxygen to aerate water and make oxygen available to living organisms–all without chemicals or other unnatural agents. It was only Klug’s curiosity which led to modifying and submerging the system in a pond, and thus revealing the difference it could make to a body of water.

Informal experiments in other small private ponds led to further discoveries. Perhaps most amazing, that the system allowed oxygen levels in one formerly-green pond to remain strong even when the surface froze over and two feet of snow collected on top.

“That’s when we realized we had to get some serious technicians involved,” Klug recalls. He began reaching out to his contacts, and to their contacts, to politicians and scientists, to see what could be done both to discover the system’s potential and to make it available as universally as possible.

“This was just too good to let lie,” he observes.

The level of response, however, was not in line with the level of possibility. Some of the test results Klug was able to present intrigued and drew in some members of the scientific community who started to study the system’s benefits. This group reached a conclusion that it would take hard evidence and persistence if the system was going to get the widespread use its benefits deserved.

Somewhere along the way, Klug’s eyes turned to an unlikely source of promise: Loon Lake.

An intensive study of the lake–including nearly a decade of persistently monitored oxygen levels–had been carried out by Minnesota State University-Mankato from about 2007 to 2016. A document over 100 pages long chronicled the history, fish population, and chemical levels in the water.

This bonanza of data offered a foundation for comparison that had not been available for the previously conducted trials. Any changes which might occur in the water’s “vital statistics” after Klug’s system was installed could be processed and analyzed with a level of perspective not possible before. In addition, Klug himself had been testing oxygen levels in the water regularly over the past four winters.  Klug approached officials on both the city and county levels to explain his intentions and get permission to proceed, as well as a summer aeration permit.

As anyone who knows Waseca is aware, Loon Lake has always been something of a “poor cousin” to other bodies of water in the region.  In living memory, much of its surface has been covered in thick, impassable masses of green growth for nearly the entire summer.

Thus, when Klug and his companions had gotten the necessary approvals and were ready to begin this summer’s work, there was hardly anyone around to take notice of their efforts. In April and May, they watched and monitored various aspects of the lake’s transition from wintry weather into early summer.  Though they were watching for invasive species, what they discovered as the source of the impassable floating masses turned out to be indigenous “filamentous algae,” a type of growth classified as “nuisance” by the state department of natural resources. Because algae takes in nutrients directly from the water, extra nitrogen from lawn runoff or biological waste quickly contributes to increased growth. Though naturally occurring, the growth can be especially harmful as winter sets in and it dies. Klug explains that, as the algae decomposes, bacteria proliferate to consume it. The bacteria use up oxygen at a rapid pace, leading to a reduced supply for other breathing organisms. If the lake is frozen over, this can be especially harmful because oxygen cannot be drawn in from the atmosphere.

According to Klug, the DNR has recorded the levels of oxygen deprivation which various life forms can survive.  Among fish, perch are some of the first to be killed as levels of “free” oxygen fall.

After their measurements and observations in late spring, Klug and his companions installed the aeration system early in July. Even though tiny in relation to the size of the lake, the units began to change the oxygen levels in the water; huge sections of the lake had been matted in algae in June. By September, the water was clear. Kayakers and fishermen were able to navigate what had previously been impassable.

Measurements continue to be taken, and will be recorded regularly through the winter. Next spring, the aeration units will be activated as soon as the ice is out. Between what was recorded in the past and the information future testing will provide, Klug hopes to amass a body of evidence that will lead to public funding to support  this improved aeration system, and to the benefits he has seen it provide. As the aeration units continue to be activated during the warm months of the year, the lake’s ecosystem is likely to recover to stronger and stronger levels, with three or more years of summer aeration needed to overcome oxygen deficits.

Klug anticipates that, without the decomposing algae which has been part of the lake’s ecosystem for so many years, oxygen levels through the winter will be much stronger than in the past. Perhaps equally important: “A year from now, I hope we will be in a good place to provide data that shows the improvements our system can initiate.”

Editorial Note: Watch for on-going updates about oxygen levels in Loon Lake as the winter proceeds.