Thousands of people and hundreds of boats head to Lake Havasu as a recreational spot every year.

More than a dozen municipal, state and federal agencies have jurisdiction on various pieces of the Lake, monitoring safety, water quality, wildlife and dozens of other variables and concerns. But when it comes to humanity’s impact on the Lake itself, officials say there are still far more questions than answers. Doyle Wilson, Lake Havasu City’s water resources coordinator, said the primary obstacles in attempting a study focusing on either boating or human-caused waste on the Lake boils down to two factors — lack of funding and an overwhelming amount of variables.

“Because the Lake is essentially just a dammed up area of the Colorado River, really just a big, artificial plumbing system,” Wilson said, adding that agencies need to consider the water that flows into the Lake and how quickly it flows out, leaving little time for conclusive studies. “You have upstream conditions from everyone that uses the water above us and then you have it being recycled quickly to the people below us. And somewhere in there is our local impact, and who really knows what’s going on out on the Lake?”

The News-Herald conducted interviews with more than eight agencies with jurisdiction and regulation on Lake Havasu, including the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, Southern Nevada Water Authority, Central Arizona Project, Colorado River Indian Tribes and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Each agency conducts various tests for water quality to ensure a high standard for drinking and safety, but few studies have focused on people.

JC Davis, SNWA public information coordinator, said while no studies have focused on humanity’s direct impact on Lake Havasu, various studies have been performed on Lake Mead. Monitoring the impact can be performed in three ways, Davis said, monitoring volatile organic compounds (oils and fuels), turbidity (water clarity) and human-caused waste.

“What we found in Mead, where we put our focus, is those VOCs tend not to be an issue from a water quality perspective,” Davis said. “It disperses too quickly for it to become a factor. Turbidity has never been a factor either because of depth, but I could see it being an issue on Havasu.”

Davis said he could also see human-caused waste to be a concern.

“Mead is a gigantic body of water even with the drought,” he said. “As a result, contributions from people have shown to have almost no effect. On Havasu, it can get pretty hot in the water in the shallow areas and it’s not as big of a body of water and there are a lot of areas that could be stagnant.”

Each year, volunteer divers pick up thousands of pounds of trash from the bottom of the Bridgewater Channel during an annual Under the Bridge Cleanup. Several divers have said they picked up only a fraction of the amount of waste at the bottom of the Lake. The Lake Havasu Marine Association removed more than 325 tons of trash from about 135,000 trash bags around Lake Havasu in 2010 as a part of the Pack It In, Pack It Out program. The trash and personal waste might be piling up faster than it’s being removed Davis said, but it’s not likely to have a significant impact where the current is strong.

“From a water quality perspective, from everything we’ve studied, trash doesn’t have much of an impact,” Davis said. “But again, conditions could be very different in Lake Havasu because of those shallow areas.”

Officials with the Colorado River Indian Tribes detected high fecal coliform (E. coli) on the Colorado River in August 2006, in shallow areas of Lake Havasu in June 1994 and in minor random sampling over the last decade leading to temporary beach closures, according to News-Herald archives. The June 1994 discovery led to a study from ADEQ, which discovered nitrate-N concentrations most likely coming from septic tanks from nearby residents.

E. coli outbreaks are a continued cause for concern, said Charles Wood, chairman of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe.

“We’ve done water studies for E. coli almost on a weekly basis for more than a decade,” Wood said. “Lake Havasu is still largely an unregulated lake. Waste from people has got to have an impact. One thing we want to look at is what people are doing with their waste and we’re making efforts to look into those things.”

Kirk Koch, BLM Lake Havasu’s fisheries improvement manager, said an initial test was conducted during the 2006 International Jet Sports Boating Association World Finals on Lake Havasu to determine VOCs introduced from personal watercraft. Koch said the study, while not conclusive, seemed to indicate that VOCs could be a problem in concentration, but dispersed too quickly because of strong river currents.

“A couple of days after the race, we detected a few things and one sample (performed under) drinking water standards,” Koch said. “When we went back a little later, we found nothing. What it showed us was that there are some hydrocarbon issues there for that race. We don’t have any idea how that translates into a big boating weekend. But we know it’s not a concern during the races.”

Wilson said E. coli could potentially be a concern in shallow water where there is limited chance for dispersal.

“The water quality is good enough to recreate in, whether that’s swimming or boating, and we really haven’t had that many problems on the Lake,” Wilson said. “With that being said, if you have shallow areas that get really warm in the summer and bacteria is introduced in some way, it can act like a culture. Where that comes from is a completely different question because it could come from humans or it could come from a number of other sources like birds.”

Wilson said Colorado River currents are likely to disperse “the majority of potentially harmful things in the Lake,” but added the exact flow pattern of the current remains largely unknown.

“That’s one of the big mysteries is we really don’t know where the circulation is strong enough and where it’s not that great,” he said. “Evidently it’s nothing terrible because we have a lot of strong wildlife growth and there have been no warning signs, but right now it’s really an unknown.”

Becky Blasius, biologist with the Bureau of Reclamation, agreed that there are unknown variables on the Lake, including understanding of the current.

“There are groups that sample the (drinking) water quality periodically, and in looking at some of the information have found very little that could be harmful,” Blasius said. “It could be lacking in some respects, but overall the quality of the water is awesome.”

Wilson said he believes the introduction of the new local Arizona State University campus in Lake Havasu City could be the key to opening up the possibilities for study.

“Funding is always a concern but ASU is going to be offering several majors for biology and environmental science and I think we could do a lot more to learn about the Lake with that coming here,” Wilson said. “The Lake is going to be studied a lot more in the future and this is one thing I’d love to look into.”

Koch said he has spoken with several agencies with jurisdiction on the Lake and seen strong interest in conducting a larger study.

“Right now, there isn’t a lot known about it but there are a lot of people that are interested in finding out,” he said. “My take is I don’t think we really know what the effect is right now. But as we grow as a community that is so dependent on boating tourism, we need to understand so we don’t go past that tipping balance. It’s there somewhere and it needs to be found.”

You may contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com