A popular lake at William O'Brien State Park is empty. And it happened by accident.
Minnesota DNR spokesperson Sara Berhow says it was due to a failure in the water control system in the man made lake.
"There is an earthen dyke that holds water in the lake," says Berhow, who says they are working to fix a valve in the water control system that's stuck open.
"And then there is a concrete water control structure that is about 65-years old and that can be manually operated to manage the levels of the lake," Berhow adds.
Berhow says the lake became too full after recent rains, so they were trying to manually drain some of the excess water when that valve in the control system got stuck open.
"Impacting water recreation, obviously, and has caused a fish kill," she says.
The beach is also closed.
She says it could take weeks to refill the manmade lake, one of the few in Minnesota's 10,000-plus lakes.
"The lake is stream-fed so the stream will continue to fill the lake, but it could take some time to do that," Berhow adds.
The park is just to the east of the Twin Cities in Marine on St. Croix. Lake Alice is a popular canoe and fishing lake.