Virginia Lake has seen algae growing, a massive die-off of birds and fish, and toxins that are dangerous to people and their pets. The city says the drought is to blame for the poor water quality in the lake. That's why they held a meeting Tuesday night for the public to weigh in on how to improve it.
Those who live around Virginia Lake were happy to hear about the possible plans. Things like adding water inflows to the lake, and constructing wetlands and even artificial waterfalls. But others still have concerns.
"I myself have fished out three couch cushions about a week ago,” said Duke Reedy, a resident that lives near Virginia Lake.
He walks the park every day and has seen it deteriorate. He says the problem isn't just trash left in the lake, but all of the issues that comes along without the water flowing.
"It affects not only wildlife around the area, it's detrimental to our health too,” said Reedy.
The city has had a series of meetings with residents like Reedy, to discuss these problems. They say the drought has caused little to no flow of water from the Cochran ditch into the lake.
"How do we circulate when there's no water coming in?" said Naomi Duerr, Reno City Councilwoman.
They're hoping to get their plans in action by fall, like creating a water circulation project for the lake.
"We would pull out the outfall from the lake. Right now it's at the north end of the lake, we would move it to the south end of the lake. That means the water would circulate around the lake instead of doing what we call short-circuiting,” said Duerr.
Most of the people in the meeting today were on board with this proposed project, however, Reedy has his concerns.
"It only works when there's water in the lake, so my thought process would be, why can't we wait until water is in the lake and do these other projects,” said Reedy.
The city will also be conducting scientific studies to find out exactly what is wrong with the water quality in the lake. But one of the ideas that everyone seemed to favor: the addition of floating wetlands.
"Plants are going to uptake the nutrients and that's going to help the water quality,” said John Flansberg, Reno's director of public works.
"It's going to provide more wildlife cover, wildlife food, it's going to help to clean up some of the nutrients that are in the lake that have been causing algae bloom,” said Julia Hammett from Reno.
Everything discussed in the meeting is still just a possibility. The city plans to do further studies on the lake and to ask for more input from the community.
