Barron Lake, just East of Niles in Van Buren County, had significant water loss during the 2012 drought and conditions have not rebounded. Many homeowners on Barron Lake have extended their piers further from shore or park their boats 15 or 20-feet from the end of their docks. The community has been exploring various options to augment the lake (raise the lake level) and one of them under active consideration involves pumping groundwater from a confined aquifer near the lake and adding the water pumped back to the lake. Some of the community members, however, expressed concern that the proposed scheme to augment the lake may not work because the water pumped might end up coming from the lake itself, causing lake-aquifer recirculation.

Above: Map of Barron Lake, approximately 200 acres. The dots in the map are domestic wells in the area. The lake is partially connected to the shallow, glacial outwash aquifer.

Therefore, the community hired a consultant to assess the feasibility of the lake augmentation project. To address the situation quantitatively, the consultant developed a groundwater model for the lake and aquifer system based on the following conceptual representation.

The final conclusion from the consultant’s groundwater model was: YES, the augmentation project is feasible, and nearly 90% of the water pumped comes from the deep aquifer, and less than 10% of the water is from the lake.

Please provide an independent review/critique of the consultant’s model.