Fairfield’s Pleasant Lake watershed to receive conservation improvements

FAIRFIELD – Pleasant Lake in Fairfield and some surrounding landowners are the beneficiaries of a newly awarded grant.

Ron Blair and Stan Simmons addressed the Fairfield City Council on June 23 to inform its members that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources had awarded a “Protect Our Lake Water” grant to the Jefferson County Soil & Water Conservation District. The grant will pay 75 percent of the cost of conservation measures in the Pleasant Lake watershed north of Fairfield. Blair said the project involves three landowners who own property north of the lake, who will also benefit by preventing nutrients from flowing off their land and into the lake.

Blair, a member of the Nady Conservation Committee, said he and other members of the committee had noticed Pleasant Lake’s fingers fill with silt over the years. The landowners to the north had done some conservation practices, but Blair felt there was room for further improvement, if a grant could be secured to pay for it. He and Simmons heard about a grant from the DNR to address this exact issue, and found that the DNR was willing to cover three-quarters of the $65,000 project cost to reduce nutrient run-off into the lake.

“This is going to save their topsoil from running into the lake, which is their gold, their livelihood,” Blair said.

Simmons, who worked in soil conservation for years in Fairfield and later Washington and who was instrumental in cleaning up Lake Darling in the 1990s, said the grant will pay to create tile outlet terraces that trap 90 percent of the sediment that flows into them. He said pollutants are attached to sediment, so these terraces should also trap a great deal of pollutants, too, and keep the lake cleaner.

“Those three farms have already done a lot of conservation work, and this is putting the finishing touches on,” he said.

Simmons said the exact nature of the conservation practices will be determined by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) office in Fairfield, which will work with the landowners.

“They’ll lay it out and design it,” he said.

Blair said Pleasant Lake doesn’t have the same “microscope” on it that Bonnifield Lake does since Bonnifield allows swimming and Pleasant Lake does not. However, Pleasant Lake is still frequently used by kayakers, paddleboarders and fishermen, all of whom appreciate a well-cared for lake.

“These are the last little areas that need to be tightened up in terms of run-off, but otherwise it’s pretty well protected,” Blair said of Pleasant Lake.

In 2024, the Nady Conservation Committee replaced the dock on Pleasant Lake to make it larger and add a kayak/canoe launch. It also improved the boat ramp by adding gravel and widening the ramp so that DNR officials can get their boat in to do water testing. The committee has improved wildlife habitat around the lake by removing invasive plant species that crowd out more desirable trees.

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Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com

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