LOWA Reflects On Water Quality For 2025 Season

With 2025 rapidly coming to an end, the Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance is taking a look back at the overall quality of water at Lake of the Ozarks.

Despite some reports of the Environmental Protection Agency considering the lake as impaired due to past levels of chlorophyll-a, Donna Swall with Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance says recent testing shows the big pond remains pretty healthy.

“Every now and then we can stress the lake depending on how much rain we get, and that’s anybody of water in the world, not just our lake. The more sediment we can keep out of the lake, the more RIP rap we can keep on the shoreline to keep our shoreline from eroding, the healthier the lake.”

Swall also says several factors contribute to Lake of the Ozarks and its health status including e-coli which happens when heavy rains wash animal waste into localized areas of the water, nature in general and the amount of leaves that end up in the water.

The watershed alliance is a 501-C-3 nonprofit depending largely on volunteers and  uses grants and other available resources for testing of the water quality throughout the year at Lake of the Ozarks.