Feeling the heat? Jump in the lake!

Local lakes are now open for swimming – paving the way for new summertime adventures

By Joanna Nellans

Many of us remember spending our childhood summers swimming at the local lake, and now kids in the Prescott area get to have those memories too.

For decades, all the lakes on the Prescott National Forest (PNF) were closed to swimming. Then the PNF suddenly announced on Aug. 28, 2020, that it was opening all four lakes on the forest to swimming: Lynx and Granite Basin near Prescott; Mingus on Mingus Mountain between Prescott Valley and Jerome; and Horsethief Basin near Crown King. The news release said the PNF found no current health and safety concerns but provided no further explanation.

Immediate public reactions were generally positive but mixed.

“Wow! This news is wonderful, something good about 2020,” wrote one person on the PNF Facebook announcement.

“Wow, I love these lakes, but swimming in them, there are so many bacteria and other icky things, I would be afraid,” another reader commented.

The lakes have been closed to swimming since at least 1991, but PNF officials aren’t sure if that’s the original date. They provided a 2001 order that included the lake swimming closures, but it didn’t list any reasons. The order said it was a revision of a 1991 order.

In my newspaper article back in 2007, PNF officials cited possible closure reasons as E. coli contamination and high levels of heavy metals from historical mining in the region. While they couldn’t produce any documents to back up those statements, extensive mining activity on Lynx Creek, in particular, dates back to 1863 when white settlers first discovered gold in the creek.

The lakes might have remained closed but for a recent U.S. Forest Service directive from the national office. It required forest managers to review all orders that didn’t have any ending dates, explained PNF Recreation Program Manager Julie Rowe. She said Forest Service attorneys wouldn’t let her provide a copy of the directive without a successful Freedom of Information Act request.

Rowe was tasked with reviewing the PNF order that included the lake closure and other forest restrictions. She obtained a copy of the latest Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) water quality reports on three of the lakes (ADEQ had not been testing Mingus) that all concluded the lakes were OK for swimming. No PNF staff had been around long enough to know for sure why the lakes were closed in the first place. So Rowe recommended opening them up, and superiors agreed.

“It was a good thing,” Rowe concluded. “We had some orders in place for decades. You want to review them to make sure they’re in the public interest.”

It’s possible that the Lynx Lake water quality had improved since it was first closed to swimming since about a two-mile stretch of Lynx Creek above the lake was closed to mining with mechanical equipment in 1971. And clean-up projects were completed earlier this century on at least two large mine sites above the lake.

Prescott Recreation Director Joe Baynes said he also will monitor the PNF changes to see if they might work on any lakes that Prescott manages, especially Goldwater where there are no water quality issues from city runoff like Willow and Watson lakes.

PNF officials will review future ADEQ reports and if the water quality is no longer OK for swimming, the lakes could close again to swimming until they’re safe again, Rowe said. In the meantime, plenty of people are enjoying the cool waters.

For more information, visit https://www.fs.usda.gov/activity/prescott/recreation/wateractivities/?recid=67155&actid=82.