Lake Parker, Lakeland: The Runoff That Stopped Going Straight In

Stormwater coming off Lakeland's streets used to run more or less straight into Lake Parker. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, that was the arrangement: a little over 2,100 acres of shallow water at the north edge of town, the largest lake in Lakeland and the sixth-largest in Polk County, taking in whatever a growing city's pavement sent downhill. Nutrients accumulated. Algae followed.

The Charles Larsen Power Plant sits on the western shore. Construction began in 1947 and generation began in 1950, and for decades the plant defined the view across the water from the east side of the lake.

The City of Lakeland and the Southwest Florida Water Management District changed the plumbing in pieces, over years. Engineered treatment systems were built to intercept stormwater before it reaches open lake and remove nutrients from it on the way. There is no single date on which that work was finished. There is instead a drainage network that no longer delivers untreated runoff to the lake.

The District also set how much water the lake is supposed to hold. Water leaves Parker through the Lake Parker Outlet, moving toward the Peace River system, and the District adopted minimum and guidance levels for Lake Parker built on lake-stage records reaching back to 1949 — nearly three-quarters of a century of measured water elevations, used to define how low the lake can be drawn and where it should sit.

A shallow Florida lake carrying that much nutrient load does not clear on its own; left alone it produces more algae and fewer game fish. Lake Parker's watershed got larger and more paved the entire time the treatment work was going in.

Lake Parker Park, on the eastern shore off Granada Street, covers more than 100 acres and has three vehicle entrances. Herons, anhingas, ibis and ospreys work the shallows and the shoreline trees there, and bald eagles turn up along the same edge. Bonnet Springs Park opened in 2022 on reclaimed industrial land at the lake's southwest corner.