Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

Clear Lake

For other places of this name, see Clear Lake (disambiguation).

Clear Lake is the largest (by area) freshwater lake in California. It is in Lake County, California.

The south side of the lake has a resort famous for its bass fishing. The eastern and northern parts of the lake have old, inexpensive housing filled with impoverished residents and retirees.

Lake County sold the lake's water rights to Mono County, California in the 1920s, and then local settlements polluted the lake with sewage, causing eutrophication.

There have been attempts to clean the lake, but local poverty has kept the tax base too low to support a tertiary sewage treatment plant, simiar to the one at Lake Tahoe. As an interim measure, sewage that would normally flow into the lake has been diverted to a nearby geothermal power site, The Geysers, to induce steam.

See also: Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake.