Minnesota’s Citizen Lake-Monitoring Program (CLMP) is the largest and oldest volunteer lake monitoring program in the country. Volunteers in the CLMP currently use a Secchi (pronounced sec-ee) disk to measure the clarity on hundreds of Minnesota’s lakes. The expanded program, including the collection of water chemistry samples for analysis along with Secchi transparency collection, was conducted in several counties. A total of sixteen lakes were selected for monitoring in 2005 by volunteer lake monitors. Among the 16 were Alexandria's Latoka, Lobster and Mary. All equipment and analytical costs for the samples were provided for and paid by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

Notes:

• Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, an astrophysicist, was requested to measure transparency in the Mediterranean Sea by Commander Cialdi, head of the Papal Navy.
• Secchi was the scientific advisor to the Pope.
• Secchi used some white disks to measure the clarity of water in the Mediterranean in April of l865. Various sizes of disks have been used since that time, but the most frequently used disk is an 8 inch diameter metal disk painted in alternate black and white quadrants