The future of Atascadero Lake was the topic of a public meeting on Monday evening.
It’s mid-July and Atascadero Lake is still almost completely full, but water levels are slowly starting to drop as temperatures rise.
Just like other lakes across the Central Coast, Atascadero Lake is much fuller now than it was this time last year.
“There’s no place in San Luis Obispo County where you can walk all the way around a lake,” said Nancy Hair, Acting Secretary for Friends of Atascadero Lake.
The 30-acre lake offers plenty of space for kayaking, fishing, and even boating--as long as it’s an electric motor.
“It’s a massive asset to the city. Not a lot of cities are blessed with a lake, we are,” said Mark Hontz, Board President of Friends of Atascadero Lake. “We love it, and we’d like to keep as much water in it as possible.”
The lake used to be a seasonal pond, but the basin was enlarged starting in 1913.
Since then, the lake has seen some ups and downs.
“I live actually on Atascadero Lake and when I moved here, the lake was in really poor condition,” recalled Nancy. “The lake turned atrophic. All the fish died. They were taking dead fish out of this lake with dump trucks.”
The lake fills up during wet years and slowly recedes during the Summer.
For drier years, there are supplemental pipelines that bring extra water into the basin.
“The primary thing we’ve done over the years is fund a pump that comes over that side of the hill—costs about $900 a month to bring some water over year,” explained Hontz.
the non-profit group ‘Friends of Atascadero Lake’ is in charge of turning the pump on and off as needed with one of the pipelines, but that’s about to change.
“Those rights are being given over to the city and it’s up to the city to turn that pump on when needed or not turn it on,” explained Hontz. “We’re hoping that they follow through and do what we’ve done all these years which has helped this lake out a lot.”
The pump hasn’t been used since November, but it’s only a matter of time until conditions dry out.
“During dry years, I am concerned that this lake will be a lot, lot drier,” said Hontz.
there’s no exact timeline on when the switch will take place since talks are still underway.
“We want to make sure that there’s water in the lake,” said Hair. “We want to make sure that the lake is maintained.”
The pipeline we’ve been talking about filled the lake with an extra foot of water last year.
The city already maintains a second pipeline that diverts extra water from nearby Atascadero Creek.
