Though about a dozen people attended the meeting Thursday when the Lakes Foundation voted to disband, it was the largest attendance the organization had in about two years. A remnant of about four people pretty much had been left holding up a group that normally numbered about 25 and at one time had about 50 members.

Lakes Foundation Vice President Laura Lunde said the nonprofit organization had too few leaders to keep doing fundraisers. The remaining officers of Lunde, President Nick Kruse and Secretary/Treasurer Katie Liska and member Dave Villarreal were the ones who continued to attend meetings and do tasks. Lunde said they, over the past few months, were needing to decide whether to move forward with the Party for the Lakes in August, the coin sales and the selling of support plaques to businesses — or to disband the group.

“We felt like a donating organization that likes to clean up the lakes,” Lunde said.

There will be no Party for the Lakes on the Albert Lea calendar this summer, nor will there be coin sales or other Lakes Foundations fundraisers. After expenses are paid, the group intends to donate $11,000 to the Fountain Lake Sportsmen’s Club and the Pelican Breeze Foundation to go toward continued efforts to clean local lakes.

Lunde said the officers felt with numbers so low that disbanding was their only choice, so they worked toward getting as many people to a meeting as they could so a vote of members — not merely officers — could be taken.

Lunde and longtime member and supporter Ken Nelson said interest dwindled because members grew frustrated with the community members continuing to pollute the lakes and shores.

“They just got tired of cleaning up after the slobs who didn’t care,” Nelson said.

One example was the April 2010 dumping of a pickup-load of trash and an old mattress at St. Nicholas Park along Albert Lea Lake. The dumper’s address reportedly was on papers in the trash, but the Freeborn County Sheriff’s Office did not pursue the case.

Nelson cited frustration with the controversial decision by the Freeborn County commissioners in October 2008 to shoot down a Shell Rock River Watershed District plan to build a new dam on the outlet of Albert Lea Lake.

After a long and heated public debate before the commissioners at the Freeborn County Courthouse that autumn day, Commissioners Mark Behrends and Christopher Shoff voted for it. Commissioners Dan Belshan, Glen Mathiason and Jim Nelson voted against it.

The plan called for a joint bridge and dam, and it called for a parking lot to the east of the Shell Rock River and a canoe launch so people could access the river. However, Belshan said the commissioners were in separate negotiations with landowner Greg Jensen for an alternative, which was never revealed.

The watershed district had been in negotiations with landowner Lloyd Palmer about buying some land for the parking lot and for land adjacent to both sides of the river near the dam, until Palmer sold the land to Jensen in May 2008. Jensen opposed public land near the dam and that changed the political momentum. Whatever momentum remained by October died with the county vote.

Lunde said people who had put in years of sweat and money for beautification and betterment of the lakes felt the decision was a kick in the teeth.

“It was a big hit for everybody,” she said.

Nelson said he and many people spoke at that meeting in favor of the dam and the public amenities. The vote, he said, put the county “in charge and sent the message they didn’t care about the people anymore.”

Mathiason on Monday said there had been much controversy of whether to have a fixed-crest dam or a variable-crest dam. He said he voted against the plan because he thought it would be less controversial in the long run. Plus, the bridge’s timber pilings were rotting, and he said tentative state funding was there.

“We got to a point we didn’t know about the funding, and we needed to get that bridge in,” Mathiason said. “I felt the bridge was more important to the county at that point in time.”

Nelson noted how one resident had frequently picked up trash along the Blazing Star Trail but stopped after the dam decision. He and others just stopped coming to Lakes Foundation meetings.

This setback happened just as the group had been gaining momentum and changing its purpose. It had gained 501(c)3 nonprofit status and had changed its focus from reclamation efforts to promoting the lakes.

“We really had to look at things and say our useful life had come to a point where we are not as useful as we were,” said longtime supporter Bruce Haugsdal.

A core group of members retired and the organization lost longtime members, he said, plus it was difficult to get young people to join.

“Lakes projects aren’t exciting because they move very, very, very slowly,” Haugsdal said.

The Lakes Foundation can trace its roots to 1934 not long after a fire on Albert Lea Lake. Wilson & Co. dumped animal guts, manure and byproducts into Albert Lea Lake, and the city, after minor treatment, pumped the sewage into the same body of water.

There was lard and fat floating on the lake surface and, the story goes, a thunderstorm produced lightning that struck and ignited the fat. This spurred people who wanted to take better care of Albert Lea Lake to push for changes.

The effort went many years without any official organizational name. Eventually, it became the Lakes Improvement Committee, then the Lakes Reclamation Committee and, finally, the Lakes Foundation.

Wilson & Co., like many meat producers, eventually began to use animal byproducts and stopped disposing of waste in the lake. The city eventually took better care of sewage, and now treats it at a facility southeast of the lake along the Shell Rock River. The old facility is a pumping station and storage.

Haugsdal said the Lakes Reclamation Committee, which is what it was called when he joined when he moved to Albert Lea 23 years ago, can take credit for these community betterments.

He said the organization in the 1990s and early 2000s had produced studies that couldn’t seem to get traction with officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or the state Department of Natural Resources. The group’s top highlight, however, remains raising the money to get the Shell Rock River Watershed District created in 2003, then campaigning for a half-cent sales tax — passed with 80 percent approval in 2005.

Haugsdal said that sent a message to state and federal officials that locals wanted clean waters, and he said the funding stream allows the watershed district to accomplish cleanup efforts the Lakes Reclamation Committee had pushed for over many years. The sales-tax revenue works as matching funds to garner state and federal funds for projects.

“The watershed board has been able to do more than any other watershed because it has financial resources,” Haugsdal said. “It put what Lakes Foundation wanted to do into high gear.”

The Lakes Foundation also had been known for its annual lakeshore cleanup drives. Lunde said the decline of volunteers and the loss of a Crystal-Pierz Marine dealer in Albert Lea, which had supplied pontoons for the cleanup, hurt that event.

She said the Lakes Foundation has to go through legal procedures for dissolving its nonprofit status before it is officially ended.

Nelson deemed the Lakes Foundation was a success.

“We recognized problems with the lakes and were the cheerleaders for many good things to happen,” he said.