Bubblers in Oak Lake expected to grow tourism and help fish

A new aeration system at Oak Lake has been installed and the technology will start pumping oxygen into the lake this winter.

A technical team early this month spent three days at the lake laying the system, fisheries biologist Mark Lowdon told the Sun in an interview. There are now 108 oxygen bubblers on the floor of the lake, serviced by pump lines that are drilled underneath the lakebed.

“We have lines that are going from our shack 500 feet out into the lake, underneath the lake bed, and then they pop up right around five feet of water depth,” Lowdon said.

The infrastructure stretches from a shoreline shack out into the lake, where it releases oxygen bubbles as a way to improve the health of the lake.

Roughly a dozen volunteers helped install the equipment when AAE Tech Services visited for three 12-hour days this month, Lowdon said.

As of Nov. 10, the only step remaining was waiting on an electrician to activate the equipment.

“Any day, any hour now, he basically just has to go and hook up the system,” Lowdon said.

The project is expected to increase tourism in the area, generate economic benefits, and support the health of fish in Oak Lake.

The technology is lined far into the lake, where it will bubble oxygen into the water for dispersal. The oxygen will change the conditions of the lake, helping fish to survive.

For the winter, this bubbling will also prevent ice from forming on a large part of the surface of the lake.

“I’m not going to say the entire lake, because we don’t know that yet, but we’re going to be basically opening up an area that is bigger than three football fields,” Lowdon said.

This will add to the benefits, the biologist said. Because the surface won’t freeze above the bubblers, extra oxygen will enter the water through contact with the air, he said, and wave movement will cycle nutrients better.

The improvement will translate into better fishing — which has been shown to economically benefit communities in Westman, he said, citing a report from Rossburn.

“It’s huge, because everyone that comes, they’re buying fishing licenses, they’re staying in hotels, they’re paying for gas, they’re paying for food, they’re paying for liquor and everything like that.”

RM of Sifton Coun. Scott Phillips has said the project is expected to have massive impacts for the region.

“If we can have a cleaner lake, people will come back to the lake to swim, they’ll golf, they’ll camp,” Phillips said. “It’s a benefit to everyone, from recreation to water species.”

Phillips said the project, funded by the Province of Manitoba, was a result of persistent advocating. He said that it would not have happened without local voices pushing for it.

“That’s the only reason we got it,” he said.

Phillips told the Sun that he pushed for the program after it as previously turned down, and said he was successful in getting the right people at the province to change their minds.

However, the effort was delivered by the community, he said, noting that materials for the shack were donated by Rivers Home Hardware Building Centre, and labour was donated by Horizon Builders and community members.

“This is a big thing,” Phillips said. “It’ll be huge for the whole Westman region, because everyone uses Oak Lake.”

While volunteering around the lake in recent weeks, Phillips said several community members have stopped and commented that they are happy to see the aeration technology coming.

To outline how the impacts may play out in Oak Lake, fisheries biologist Lowdon cited an economics report that he was contracted to prepare in 2014 for the Rossburn Community Development Corporation.

The report showed that fisheries were a big driver of tourism to the area — roughly 70 per cent of respondents said they travelled to the aerated lakes in the region for fishing.

The respondents in this survey also reported that their travel groups spent money in the area while visiting. The total for all respondents was somewhere between $474,000 and $732,000 annually while visiting the four aerated lakes in the region, the report stated.

While that information came years ago in Rossburn, Lowdon said he expects tourism and economic benefits to follow wherever aeration systems improve the health of lakes and fisheries.

When asked about the popularity of aeration systems in Westman, Lowdon said Westman lakes are particularly desperate for oxygenation.

“There’s so much nutrients out in the west part of the province that they all go anoxic if you don’t have oxygen (support),” Lowdown said.

When the lakes have those low levels of oxygen, it harms wildlife, he said. To keep fisheries alive and thriving, it almost becomes necessary to take some action to help in many lakes, he said.

“For all of those trout lakes, it is a requirement to be pumping oxygen in those lakes, because trout need a hell of a lot of oxygen to survive … So, all the trout lakes, it’s mandatory. And then other lakes where even walleye, you know, it’s imperative,” he said. “If people want healthy fisheries, you need to have oxygen in those lakes.”

Lowdon said that he installed 10 aeration systems in lakes since 2020. This year represented four of those, and next year he expects to add one or two more.

The majority of his work today is spent replacing old systems that had been installed in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he said. The technology has become much more efficient since that time, he said, and old systems are dying.

The RM of Prairie Lakes installed the aeration technology roughly 10 years ago to great effect, said the current reeve, and the equipment was installed in Killarney Lake in 2018, also with praise from the local lake committee. Shoal Lake had the equipment installed in the past year. The group Friends of Minnedosa Lake has researched and considered the technology for their lake as well.

For Prairie Lakes and for Killarney, the result has been a prolonged season for beaches, community members told the Sun. Fish die-offs also reduced in size and algae blooms, which can make lakes unattractive and unhealthy, are fewer and less often.

In July, Premier Wab Kinew announced $95,000 in provincial funding for the Oak Lake aeration system. Kinew visited the park to make the announcement in front of roughly 100 people, and emphasized that the province wanted to keep the lake attractive.

“This is going to help make sure that the water stays beautiful — to ensure that Oak Lake stays pristine and wonderful for generations to come,” he said at the time.

Dean Brooker, general manager of the local watershed, told the Sun at that time that oxygen issues impacted walleye fish the most. He said the project was a big deal for the lake as it would help prevent fish die-offs.

“Anybody that lives here or comes here in the summer, we know sometimes the water quality is poor,” he said at the time.

» cmcdowell@brandonsun.com