1/22/2021 1:21:00 PM
Lindstrom facing invasive fish problem with residential holding pond gold fish
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The Lindstrom City Council finds itself in a sitation similar to what the Carver County Water Management Organization started dealing with a year ago...having to spend precious resources eradicating goldfish before this destructive cousin-of-the-carp starts taking over local bodies of water.
Lindstrom was notified in a letter sent from the Chisago Lakes Lake Improvement District; that two holding ponds in a neighborhood south of the Chisago Lakes Golf Course are harboring non-native, invasive goldfish.
The fear is the “...hundreds, if not thousands” of goldfish will find their way to nearby Kroon Lake and then enter the Chisago Chain, according to the alert sent by Jerry Spetzman, LID Coordinator.
In his letter to the city council, he asks Lindstrom to accomplish the removal of the fish noticed recently in two holding ponds in Lakeside woodlands. (See graphic) The non-native fish need to be gone by the end of 2021. “Goldfish can cause substantial ecological damage,” Spetzman explains in his notifictaion letter. “If they become established in the Chisago Chain they will be impossible to eradicate,” the letter states.
The city can eradicate the regulated invasive species using any number of methods.
Spetzman says the neighborhood ponds could be drained or chemicals added, or predatory fish species like northern or bass, can be introduced into the ponds theoretically proving fatal to the goldfish.
Carver County in 2020 used a variety of goldfish reduction efforts. The eradication is on-going and still being evaluated; but archived news coverage of the fish removal reported approximately 50,000 goldfish were taken out of the Big Woods chain of lakes, outside of Chaska starting late fall 2019.
Dumping of non-native fish species is illegal in Minnesota and goldfish can live for 25 years while they reproduce prolifically.
Lindstrom City Council will review its options tonight (Thursday Jan. 21) and draft a plan of action in response to the LID notice.
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