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5.1 Introduction to Karth Lake Improvement District Board (KLIDB). Gary provided the following overview of Karth Lake and the KLIDB for the K. L. Residents who attended the board meeting for the first time: The KLIDB mission is to monitor Karth Lake water quality, recommend and help implement improvements of Karth Lake Water Quality and the Karth Lake water shed. We meet and work with representatives from the City, the Rice Creek Watershed District, the DNR and others. All these groups have been very helpful. The KLID was founded in 2004 to enable a vote on the assessment of K. L. residents for 50% of the cost of installing a pump and water pipeline through Cummings Park to a storm drain that flows into Valentine Lake. Pumping was required because the watershed’s development added so much impervious surface that the lake was rising over 3 feet above historic levels. The result was trees dying along the shore and falling into lake triggering erosion and threatening some homes and retaining walls. The DNR set a historic average level and recommended pumping water out of the lake whenever it got above that level. (Unlike White Bear Lake we do not have a sandy porous lake bottom so it does not drop with the water table. Instead the clay bottom holds the water.) We continue to monitor lake levels with the city. Pumping is required most years. Karth Lake is classified as a shallow lake because 80% of it is 10 feet deep or less. It does have a 25 ft deep trench. Shallow lakes are great for wildlife: loons, mallards, egrets, herons, eagles, trumpeter swans and (too many) geese. But without improvements the lake will slowly turn eutrophic and become a wetland. We have reversed that trend with several improvement projects. Karth Lake is one of very few lakes in the Twin Cities that has reduced nutrients and increased water transparency to such a degree that we went from a grade D, partially impaired, to a grade B, exceeds standards. Some of the projects: Participated in the SW Urban Lakes Study completed in 2009 by the RCWD (Rice Creek Watershed District) that identified several BMPs (Best Management Practices) for Karth Lake. We then implemented several of those BMPs including: Reducing watershed nutrient inflow by: Installing rain gardens on Nursery Hill Lane, funded by the City and RCWD; Removing buckthorn from the watershed – volunteers working with city employees; Advising residents of best practices to reduce nutrient inflow from storm drains, e.g., keep nutrients such as grass clippings, leaves, fertilizer and car wash soap out of gutters.