FAIRMONT — Taking care of Fairmont’s chain of lakes is no easy task, but the Fairmont Lakes Foundation is committed to the job.

The foundation’s purpose is to “lead and educate our community and its visitors to take responsibility for the quality and care of our city’s lakes while increasing awareness of the need to preserve and enhance the value of these natural resources.”

Those who enjoy Amber Lake may have noticed heavy equipment in the vicinity of the dam in recent days. The work being done is the result of a project that will include some stabilization of the channel shore and a much-needed fish ladder.

Mike Katzenmeyer of the Lakes Foundation shared information about the project, which was proposed in a partnership with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

“We’ve been looking at this project for about six or seven years,” he said. “The DNR was very much interested in getting rid of that fish trap that used to be there and cleaning up that channel between Amber and Hall lakes.

“So they designed a project to create a fish ladder which will run from Amber Lake Dam approximately 150 feet to the north. It will not go all the way to Hall lake but it will create that fish ladder in such a way that, from the dam site itself, there will be a 4-foot pool of water stretching out 30 feet. At that point, they’ll do a riffle of rock all the way across the channel.

“Then they’ll lower the next 30 feet by 6 inches, and create another riffle there, and lower the following 30 feet, and they’ll keep repeating that process until they get out that 150 feet.”

According to information from the Lakes Foundation, Amber Lake is the only lake not connected with the rest of the chain. Since it is on the upstream end of the Fairmont chain of lakes, and sits at a higher elevation than the others, a dam is needed to separate Amber Lake from Hall Lake. If the dam wasn’t in place, most of the water would drain into the other lakes, making Amber more of a slough or swamp.

In 2014, the DNR stocked the lake with walleye fingerlings and the foundation stocked it with 400 bluegills. The fish ladder project will not change the water level in any way, but will allow fish to travel more between lakes.

“That will allow, at times of high water, it will allow the fish to transport from lake to lake,” Katzenmeyer said. “The idea behind it is that the fish in the four lakes north of Amber, it’s their nature to go back upstream to spawn.

“So they can’t get into Mud Lake south of Amber Lake because of the dam. This will give them the access they need to get up into Mud Lake.”

Katzenmeyer said he is happy to see the project fall into place after multiple delays.

“In the past, we’ve had this project booked, and almost at the last minute another site in Minnesota will have an emergency and the funding will be pulled from this project to help with that emergency situation,” he noted. “So we’ve lost funding for this and it was delayed, so I was pretty happy to see them coming in and working on this.”