Massive fish die-off in Fremont’s Lake Elizabeth points to decades of neglect

The death of 1,000 fish in Fremont’s Lake Elizabeth shocked residents and drew widespread news coverage this month.

But in reality, the problems at the city’s 83-acre lake go much deeper — and stretch back decades.

The city maintains the die-off was simply a result of the heat, but Joyce Blueford, president of the Math-Science Nucleus — a nonprofit organization that works to restore local watersheds — said Fremont and the Alameda County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, which mostly owns Lake Elizabeth, have failed to maintain it.

“You have a lot of problems. It shouldn’t be this bad,” Blueford said. “This is negligence.”

She said the shuffling of responsibilities in city departments has left the lake in limbo, and that Fremont continues to hire consultants who don’t do any significant work to care for it.

“They ruined it for the kids,” Blueford said. While she used to take local students to Lake Elizabeth to study its environment, over the last 20 years she’s switched her attention to nearby Tule Ponds at Tyson Lagoon — a much smaller but healthier body of water from which her students can learn, she said. Her organization’s staff of scientists also care for the ponds.

Blueford led a task force in the 1990s that dealt with issues around the lake, which has since been dissolved, but she said city officials have repeatedly ignored her concerns over the years.

“They deserve this. They need some scrutiny because it is a story here,” Blueford said of the media attention the fish die-off has attracted. “And they just don’t know what they’re doing here.”

The last time Lake Elizabeth was dredged was in 2001. Dredging removes sediment and deepens the lake, allowing for a healthier ecosystem.

The lake is now about four feet deep at its deepest — roughly a foot below its previous level — and two feet deep or less at its shallowest. Its water comes from the city’s irrigation system and flows in from nearby hillsides and Mission Creek during the rainy seasons.

Currently, there is no singular point person or organization in charge of caring for the lake, and no staff scientist to monitor the lake’s health, according to city spokeswoman Geneva Bosques. Instead, responsibility for the lake’s care is spread widely over several city departments and divisions, including Community Development, Community Services and Maintenance Services.

The flood control district, which answers to the county’s Public Works Department, is responsible for the flow and quality of water into the lake. The city owns a tiny portion of the lake but leases the majority of the 83 acres from the county. An agreement between the two entities dating back to 1968 locks the two into co-stewardship over the lake.

“We do rely on consultants, and that’s not unusual for a city to have consultants to look upon for their expertise,” Bosques said. “We use a lot of consultants across the city to help us in areas that have expertise.”

Kim Beranek, Fremont’s Director of Community Services, maintains the city has taken steps over the years to care for the lake.

“The city has continued to operate and maintain that lake. We have not dredged it, but we have done other efforts,” Beranek said in an interview.

This includes pumping in fresh water when it evaporates from the lake, testing and sampling the lake following the die-off, and relying on the city’s park rangers to report any issues.

“It’s a great asset to the community that we all love,” Beranek said.

The city used to allow small sailboats and paddle boats on the lake, but cut that off during the pandemic a few years ago, with Beranek noting at the time the lake got too shallow for the city’s rescue boat to maneuver around. The city also stocks the lake annually with a couple hundred pounds each of catfish and trout. After the die-off, the city acknowledged significant populations of carp, crappie and Sacramento sucker fish also were found in the water — fish which were invasively and illegally introduced into the ecosystem.

About 90 percent of the dead fish found in the pond due to the heat were carp, Beranek noted. Beranek added the city is aware that dredging “can happen between 15 to 25 years” at the lake, as needed due to silting.

“The good part is the oxygen levels are recovering and back to a normal level,” Beranek said.

Councilman Raj Salwan, who represents the city’s South Fremont district, said that when the heat started killing off fish at the lake, he notified the city manager’s office immediately and asked for the city to take action to remediate the issue.

“The lake has to be a central part of Fremont. I think we need to preserve it and enhance it. And it needs to be a central destination for Fremont,” Salwan said. “I think we’ll have to put some more money up and get this fixed. I don’t want to go through this again.”

Mayor Lily Mei and Vice Mayor Yang Shao could not be reached for comment for this story. Daniel Woldesenbet, director of the county flood district, also did not return a request for comment.

A 2022 report from the Coastal Conservancy, a state agency that monitors the ecology and health of waterways across the state, details a grant award of $2,160,000 for the repair of the lake’s adjacent dried-out wetland, Stivers Lagoon. Restoration of this lagoon would bring native wildlife back to the area, re-establish more water flow from the nearby Mission Creek and uplift the overall ecosystem of the lake.

City officials say the lagoon work is awaiting the county’s go-ahead, and that future lake repairs must be brought to the City Council for public discussion.

It must happen soon, said Blueford.

“Lake Elizabeth needs to be restored,” she said. “If you don’t do it, you’ve got what you’ve got: a lake that kills fish.”

Paul Rogers contributed to this report.