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Gauging the Health of Iowa's Lakes: Delhi Back Open, Okoboji Battling Curlyleaf Pondweed

This conversation originally aired on June 29, 2017.

Iowa’s lakes play a huge role in the communities that have grown up around them. During this hour of Talk of Iowa, host Charity Nebbe takes a tour of Lake Delhi, open for the first full summer boating season this year after the dam burst due to heavy rainfall in 2010. We’ll hear from Steve Leonard, President of the Lake Delhi Recreation Association, and the engineer who is spending part of his retirement maintaining the dam.

Sholly, who lives on Clear Lake, and Mary Skopec, who is executive director of the Lakeside Laboratory near Lake Okoboji, also join the show. 

Clear Lake has drastically improved its water quality over the last decade, and Lake Okoboji is seeing record setting blooms of curlyleaf pondweed. Skopec says the pondweed blooms could lead to record setting blue green algae blooms later this summer. 

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Lindsey Moon served as IPR's Senior Digital Producer - Music and the Executive Producer of IPR Studio One's All Access program. Moon started as a talk show producer with Iowa Public Radio in May of 2014. She came to IPR by way of Illinois Public Media, an NPR/PBS dual licensee in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and Wisconsin Public Radio, where she worked as a producer and a general assignment reporter.
Charity Nebbe is the host of IPR's Talk of Iowa