Alachua County, Gainesville work to reduce Newnans Lake impairment

With seven speckled perch in a blue, five-gallon bucket, Bennie Patterson still hunts for another catch. 

“You gotta search,” he says Wednesday morning as he tosses the line to a new section of Newnans Lake. 

He’s standing on the shore of the lake’s southwest side, working a small area ringed by cypress trees and grass with moss hanging down and threatening to snag his throw.  

Patterson keeps his car door open and regularly ignores the buzz from his cellphone inside.

He comes to Newnans Lake to relax. It’s his place to draw energy, and he said he needs it to deal with life. To him, Gainesville seems to have lost the love it had when he was a kid. Now, it seems everybody wants to kill somebody, he said. 

Patterson sniffs the fishing line as he hooks another minnow. There’s fish down there. He can smell it. 

He lands another throw just a couple feet from a yellow bobber that he lost this morning. He doesn’t want to lose another one. The bobbers cost a dollar, he said.

Patterson is not the only one throwing money into Newnans Lake. The city, county and state are, too. In fact, the county’s Department of Environmental Protection is planning a project that could cost up to $19 million to improve the water quality.  

From Florida’s perspective, the lake has too many nutrients. The state has tasked Alachua County, the city of Gainesville and other agencies to reduce 799 pounds of phosphorus and 8,347 pounds of nitrogen from entering the lake each year.  

Because of the number of nutrients, Newnans Lake has sat on Florida’s list of impaired waterways for over a decade. Other local lakes and rivers are also on the list: Lochloosa Lake, Orange Lake, Lake Wauburg and the Santa Fe River.  

The lakes and rivers still serve the needs of swimmers, fishers and boaters. Still, the state wants to boost water quality, reducing algae blooms and improving the aquifer and water system.  

Following the Clean Water Act, the state directed Alachua County, Gainesville, Waldo and the Department of Transportation to work on Newnans Lake. Other government entities across the state were also given local waterways to improve. 

Each entity must reduce nutrient inputs by a set amount—totaling the 799 pounds of phosphorus and 8,347 pounds of nitrogen. Combined, Alachua County and the city of Gainesville are responsible for nearly 90% of the reduction. 

Alachua County estimates the project could cost up to $19 million. Shane Williams, stormwater engineer for the county, said completing it will require state assistance.  

“When you have an allocation that’s that large, we recognized that it was going to require a large-scale project to meet those allocations,” Williams said. “So that’s what we started working on with this project. In order to do a project that large we need funding from the state.” 

Alachua County has asked for $1.5 million from the Florida Legislature to start the planning phase. Future requests would help finance the actual implementation. 

Williams said part of the problem is nutrients never leave the lake.  

“Those nutrients are in the bottom sediments and as those bottom sediments are disturbed for any reason there’s a flux of nutrients that reenters the water column. Internal recycling is actually the biggest component on Newnans Lake,” Williams said.  

The state document that oversees the nutrient reductions—the Orange Creek Basin Management Action Plan—estimates that 71% of the nitrogen load and 52% of the phosphorous load come from internal recycling. 

Newnans Lake only reaches a depth of 12 feet, and Williams said that makes internal recycling a bigger factor. 

However, Alachua County and Gainesville are currently focused on reducing the amount of nutrients that enter the lake each year. The nutrients come from a multitude of sources (fertilizer, grass clippings, sink faucets, etc.) before being carried away in stormwater runoff on developed land or wastewater from spray fields and septic tanks.  

The water enters Little Hatchet Creek or Hogtown Creek before finding its way to a lake, carrying nutrients all the way. 

For the Alachua County project, Williams said the county will investigate wetland restoration in the area, stream restoration on Hatchet Creek, and floodplain restoration. 

“[The projects] will essentially restore the natural function of the watershed, and that’s where the pollutant removal will come from,” Williams said. 

He said the county will also look into the feasibility of using a chemical process to bind phosphorous to the wetlands roots, preventing it from reactivating.  

Williams said the county remains in the early stages for this project as it lines up funding. 

The Florida Department of Transportation has already reduced its allocated share of phosphorous and nitrogen for Newnans Lake—93 pounds and 878 pounds, respectively.  

Daryl Goss, community outreach specialist for FDOT District 2, said the agency stopped fertilizing its rights-of-ways more than 10 years ago. He said FDOT biologists have observed a significant reduction in nutrients entering nearby waterways as a result.  

He said the department also constructs stormwater treatment ponds that remove chemicals from roadways (gas, oil) before the pond empties into another waterway. The department also sends funds to support the Gainesville Clean Water Partnership.  

Gainesville heads the partnership with Alachua County and FDOT.  

Sally Adkins, coordinator for Gainesville’s public works, said the partnership focuses on educating the public and internal staff about reducing pollutants, especially those identified by the state.  

The partnership started in 2003 after the new parameters from the Clean Water Act. She said UF decided to run its own programs, but Adkins said collaboration still happens on some projects. 

“Instead of everybody doing their own individual programs, we decided to work together to make a more effective program,” Adkins said.  

The partnership includes a detection program for illegal discharges in the stormwater system. Staff monitor creeks and stormwater basins throughout the city for nutrient levels. 

The partnership also includes prevention campaigns, school presentations and adult presentations. The city has campaigns for pet waste, yard waste, fertilizer and proper disposal of fats, oils and greases used in kitchens. 

Adkins said the city actively reduces nutrients in waterways, such as Alachua County is planning to do. She said Gainesville just finished a stabilization project for Little Hatchet Creek, a direct tributary of Newnans Lake.  

The project finished in 2022 and prevents erosions within the creeks. When the creek beds or banks erode, Adkins said, it exposes a layer of clay that is rich in phosphorus.  

“So, what we’re trying to do is to stabilize the creek bed and the creek bank so that the phosphorus isn’t mobilized and going into Newnans Lake because phosphorus is a nutrient of concern,” she said. 

The state’s action plan notes the difficulty of the region where this clay, called the Hawthorne Group, makes contact with lake bottoms.  

The plan also gives a target date of 2028 to hit the reduction numbers.  

For the last 50 years at least, local anglers have called Newnans Lake the “mudhole,” according to Gary Simpson, who has fished in Gainesville since the 1960s. He also owned Gary’s Tackle Box for decades, which is where collected stories for his popular fishing reports for the Gainesville Sun, and later, Mainstreet Daily News.   

Simpson said the shallow nature of Newnans contributes to the “mudhole” nickname, and if you run your motor close to shore, it’ll kick up the muddy bottom. But he doesn’t consider Newnans Lake impaired or polluted from a fishing or recreation perspective. 

A large part of the “mudhole” nickname is undeserved, he said. The lake may be less clear than other area lakes, but anecdotally, Simpson said the lake has turned a corner since he’s been casting lines there, with the fish tasting less muddy than in decades past.   

“I’m very happy with the state of Newnans Lake currently,” he said.   

Simpson said he can’t speak to nitrogen levels and state standards, but he recalled a big campaign from 15 years ago to reduce the levels, which seems to have worked well. In a 2021 column for Mainstreet, he recounted a steady improvement of Newnans Lake, giving kudos to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for its work. 

Since 1961, Simpson has watched bobbers bob in the mudhole, and he’s never feared to eat a fish caught on the line. That’s more than he can say for other places.