To the editor:

The Department of Natural Resources was scheduled to convene one more public hearing, Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the Pocahontas Fairgrounds Expo Center on its ill-advised plan to drain Lizard Lake, turning it into a weed-infested, mosquito-hatching, duck pond.

At a previous meeting, after listening to the latest craftily-presented edition of the DNR’s plan to avoid Environmental Protection Agency sanction for having neglected this beautiful little glacial lake until it declined into one of the most “impaired waters” in Iowa, one official told me, “Something has to be done out there. They have the money to do this, and anything is better than nothing.”

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ducks Unlimited, a waterfowl hunter’s single-issue political lobby, which does not care about fishermen, sailors, swimmers or picnickers, along with the Iowa DNR are colluding to force their self-serving scheme upon the people of northwest and north central Iowa that will, for years to come, ruin several of our very few glacial lakes for the majority of their most dedicated users and, from which, these precious resources are likely to never recover their natural state.

To realize how wrong the DNR “Shallow Lake Management Plan” is, it is necessary to point out their false assumptions that these lakes were “always” shallow, and understand how our “prairie pothole” lakes were excavated, by seasonal waterfalls off the top of glaciers from one-fourth to over one mile high.

All of the light organic humates and clay colloids were washed down stream, which left gravel bottoms in these lakes were our great native game fish, like walleye, pike, and musky, would spawn, and beaver would keep the water levels deep, so all aquatic wildlife could survive our harsh winters.

That is, until white men came to trap the furbearers and plow the prairie, which started a rapid siltation process, exacerbated by the rooting of non-native carp, suffocating our game fish eggs, filling in these lakes, and making the natural ecology of these lakes impossible to sustain.

Our lakes must be dredged to restore their natural usefulness for all users, equally.

It was the government, who brought carp to these lakes, after it failed to protect the people from the irresponsible acts of others, which crossed their property line, and, now they want to cover up one stupid man-made disaster with another one.

Thursday’s hearing might have been our last chance to stop the DNR and DU from conspiring to make a dangerous environmental experiment out of Lizard, Pickerel and South Twin Lakes.

Please contact your candidates and elected officials to join the people of Iowa making our public servants do the right thing for the most neglected of our precious few natural glacial lakes.