We are Badin Lake, NC ….. and here is our story!

We are the homeowners, campers, day trippers, golfers, anglers, kayakers, wake boarders and just plain friends of Badin Lake, North Carolina. Allow us to share with you the plight that Badin Lake now faces, and how we plan to return this lake to the beautiful and clean lake it once was.

Badin Lake is one of a series of lakes created by the damming of the Yadkin-Pee Dee River in the Uwharrie Lakes Region of North Carolina. The Badin Lake Dam was built in 1917 to support the local aluminum smelting plant, Alcoa, and the associated community of Badin Lake in the Piedmont area of North Carolina. Sitting within a valley, the lake is very deep, with a maximum depth of 190 ft (58 m). The lake occupies 5,350 acres (22 km2) and has 115 mi (185 km) of shoreline. The lake is home to many species of birds like Blue Heron, Egrets, Osprey and Eagles, in addition to Bass and Cat Fish. In 1961, the forested land that borders a great portion of the lake was established as the Uwharrie National Forest.

Since 1917, many people have moved here and built houses, created communities, retained services and now call this lake “Home”. Along with this growth came some negative issues, the most important being contamination of the lake’s water. The 21st Century brought with it a new form of water contamination, floating algae. It came
primarily from upstream Yadkin River, through Tuckertown Reservoir and over the dam into Badin Lake. Some additional contamination occurs due to the webbing of the water fowl that fly in from other contaminated lakes, along with boats that are not cleaned before launching into Badin Lake.

Beginning around 2015, we the homeowners, fishermen and recreational boating people on Badin Lake were seeing a black/green algae appearing around May of each year. It only took one full season for the algae (Lyngbya Wollei) to take hold and grow along the shoreline. Within a couple of years it had killed all the water grass that protected the shoreline and gave fish a place to live. It continues to consume the shoreline until we band together to take on this environmental issue.