Our mission is to improve the health of Lake County’s lakes.
Lake County Lake Lovers is an all‑volunteer, growing community united by a shared belief: our lakes are the heart of Lake County, and their health depends on people who care enough to restore and protect them. Government resources are not responsible for improving water health nor do they offer adequate funding.
Lake County Lake Lovers was established in 2022 with 12 members as a working group of non-profit Global Water Works. In 2026, Lake County Lake Lovers became an independent non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with over 200 members and 500 engaged residents taking action to protect and restore local lakes.
Come Make A Difference
Water Quality Monitoring
In 2025, the organization piloted its lake monitoring program with 12 lakes — achieving 100% participation throughout the seven-month monitoring season. This program shares professional water quality monitoring equipment to enable volunteers to measure their lake’s health every other week from April to October. We create charts and dashboards for each lake using their bi-weekly data and also post a public trend line to show changes over time for each lake’s water temperature, water clarity and dissolved oxygen data on Google Earth.
View lake data on Google Earth:
In February 2026, we announced that 21 lakes had been accepted to participate in the expanded 2026 Lake Monitoring Program — a 75% increase over the 2025 successful pilot.
Building on that success, 21 lakes are now participating in the 2026 program, with monitoring beginning in mid-April and ending in mid-October. Each volunteer lake team measures nine water quality parameters every other week.
2026 Lake Monitoring Program Lakes
All 12 pilot lakes (indicated with * or purple pin on map) and 9 new lakes (orange pin)
Butler Lake, Libertyville, Illinois
Cedar Lake, Lake Villa, Illinois*
Channel Lake, Antioch, Illinois*
Countryside Lake, Mundelein, Illinois*
Fox Lake, Fox Lake, Illinois*
Gages Lake, Wildwood, Illinois
Grass Lake, Antioch, Illinois
Island Lake, Island Lake, Illinois*
Lake Aldo Leopold, Grayslake, Illinois*
Lake Catherine, Antioch, Illinois*
Lake Zurich, Lake Zurich, Illinois
Loch Lomond, Mundelein, Illinois*
Long Lake, Ingleside, Illinois*
Pistakee Lake, Johnsburg, Illinois*
Redhead Lake, Ingleside, Illinois*
Round Lake, Round Lake, Illinois
Saint Marys Lake, Mundelein, Illinois*
Sylvan Lake, Mundelein, Illinois
Tower Lake, Tower Lakes, Illinois
Timber Lake, Barrington, Illinois
Valley Lake, Wildwood, Illinois
What We Measure
Xylem, a global water company, gifted two professional ProDSS multi-probes and two YSI 9800 photometers to Lake County Lake Lovers in late 2024. Lake Lovers shares this equipment with volunteer lake teams. Each volunteer lake teams use this equipment, along with other important tools like a Secchi Disk, Van Dorn Horizontal Sampler and a swing arm sampler, to measure nine water quality parameters for their lake every other week from April to October.
2025 Water Quality Monitoring Pilot
In 2025, Lake County Lake Lovers piloted how best to train volunteers, to share professional water quality monitoring equipment between 12 lake teams and how to make the data public. Watch the July 2025 Lake Stories: The Good. The Bad. The Mucky and our November 2025 Overview of the Pilot Program. We had a great time innovating this successful program and were thrilled that all 12 lakes returned to participate in the 2026 Water Monitoring Program!
July 2025 Lake Appreciation Dinner Event Lake Stories: The Good. The Bad. The Mucky.
November 2025 Pilot Program
Join Lake Lovers
Lake County Lake Lovers values collaboration and learning from each other. Together, we grow in our understanding of limnology, the science of freshwater lakes and streams, and how we can help lakes in Lake County. Together we are making a difference!
