Lee Bergquist: WI DNR to Sell Lake Frontage to Scott Walker Donor→

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“Elizabeth Uihlein, a major donor to Gov. Scott Walker, has reached an agreement with the Department of Natural Resources to buy 1.75 acres of prime lakefront property in Vilas County — a deal that gives her direct lake access to another property she now owns.

The agreement calls for the DNR to sell Uihlein 765 feet of frontage on Rest Lake in the Town of Manitowish Waters for $275,000. She currently owns an adjacent 11-unit condominium complex without lake access.

Uihlein and her husband, Richard, have donated nearly $3 million to Walker in recent years.

The businesswoman is a significant property owner in Manitowish Waters, is active in local affairs and is noted for her philanthropy, including paying for much of the cost of a pavilion in the community’s Rest Lake Park. A town official said that project will cost more than $1 million.

But also she has faced criticism for some of her activities and currently is under orders from Vilas County to replant trees at her condo complex after a worker she hired clear-cut foliage this summer on a portion of the property closest to the DNR land.”

Joan Rose: Sewer Tanks Aren't Keeping Poo Out of Lakes→

MSU:

“The notion that septic tanks prevent fecal bacteria from seeping into rivers and lakes simply doesn’t hold water, says a new Michigan State University study.

Water expert Joan Rose and her team of water detectives have discovered freshwater contamination stemming from septic systems. Appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the largest watershed study of its kind to date, and provides a basis for evaluating water quality and health implications and the impact of septic systems on watersheds.

“All along, we have presumed that on-site wastewater disposal systems, such as septic tanks, were working,” said Rose, Homer Nowlin Endowed Chair in Water Research. “But in this study, sample after sample, bacterial concentrations were highest where there were higher numbers of septic systems in the watershed area.””

Time to rethink the use of individual sewer system around our lakes. These systems are big polluters.

The PNAS paper.

NASA: Less Algae, Not Clear Water, Keeps A Lake Blue→

“Lake Tahoe’s iconic blueness is more strongly related to the lake’s algal concentration than to its clarity, according to research in “Tahoe: State of the Lake Report 2015,” released today by the Tahoe Environmental Research Center (TERC) of the University of California, Davis. The lower the algal concentration, the bluer the lake.

Data from a research buoy in the lake, owned and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, enabled Shohei Watanabe, a postdoctoral researcher at TERC, to create a Blueness Index that quantified Lake Tahoe’s color for the first time.

The assumption that lake clarity is tied to blueness has driven advocacy and management efforts in the Lake Tahoe Basin for decades. But Watanabe’s research showed that at times of the year when the lake’s clarity increases, its blueness decreases, and vice versa.

Watanabe combined the blueness measurements with data on clarity. Clarity is measured by observing the depth at which a dinner-plate-sized white disk remains visible when lowered into the water. He was surprised to find that blueness and clarity did not correspond. In fact, they varied in opposite directions.

This is due to seasonal interplay among sediment, algae and nutrients in the lake. Clarity is controlled by sediment. Blueness is controlled by algal concentration, which in turn is controlled by the level of nutrients available to the algae.”

AnnaKay Kruger: A Lake's Woody Habitat→

UW: Center for Limnology:

“Michaela Kromrey clips herself into her bulky waders, fitting the straps over her shoulders and sealing herself into their protective rubber lining. We’ve dropped anchor near the shore of Jute Lake, and waves whip the side of the boat vigorously in the high wind. It’s a beautiful day, utterly devoid of cloud cover, but the wind is sharp and swift over the water, forcing us to don our sweatshirts and windbreakers to stave off the chill. Michaela and I, both UW-Madison undergraduates, wait in the boat while Ellen Albright, a student at Minnesota’s Macalester College, wades along the shoreline, dragging a tape-measure behind her.”

Greg Seitz: Unlocking Lake of the Woods→

St. Croix Watershed Research Station Blog:

“Lake of the Woods is the vast body of water that makes up most of the spur on Minnesota’s northern border. Sprawled across the U.S.-Canada border, it is 70 miles north-south and 60 miles east-west, contains more than 14,552 islands, and boasts 65,000 miles of shoreline. It is the size of Rhode Island and a good candidate as the “sixth Great Lake.”

Like Lake Erie and other Great Lakes, Lake of the Woods is also plagued by harmful algal blooms. Even after nutrient pollution was reduced, Lake of the Woods seems to keep getting greener.

Enormous amounts of waste discharged from paper mills on the Rainy River poured into the lake for decades, carrying phosphorus, which fed the algae. City wastewater also went straight into the river. After the Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, the waste discharges were significantly lowered and the overall cleanliness of the water entering the lake was improved.”

Steven Elbow: Lake Conservation Can't Keep Up with Pollution Increases→

Cap Times:

“A new report says that a 14-year effort to clean up Lake Mendota couldn’t keep up with increasing amounts of phosphorous streaming from the watershed.

The study from the Water Sustainability and Climate Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says a 14-year effort to clean up Lake Mendota failed because of changes in farming, land development and climate change.

“There’s been a lot of tremendous work and effort to at least stay on the treadmill,” said co-author Eric Booth, a Climate Project researcher. “The problem is the treadmill keeps getting faster and faster with these other unaccounted for drivers of change.”

The result is that increasing efforts have slowed but not improved the decline of the lakes.

The report is specific to Lake Mendota, but could have implications worldwide as communities elsewhere try to tackle similar problems.”

1. More information here and here!

2. In a world with increasing human population and exploitation demands, conservation will at best be a Red Queen Race. We know this to be true, but we don't dare say it because it is too unpleasant for most.

NASA: US Government Develops Tool to Detect Toxic Algal Blooms

Accuweather:

“Four government organizations are combining resources to tackle a threat to U.S. freshwater: toxic algal blooms. These harmful algal blooms cost the U.S. $64 million annually to combat.

NASA is working alongside the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to transform satellite data used to monitor ocean biology into valuable information to monitor detrimental freshwater algal blooms.

The new project, using ocean color satellite data, will formulate an “early warning indicator” for toxic algal blooms in freshwater systems and aid public health advisories, NASA reported.
”Observations from space-based instruments are an ideal way to tackle this type of public health hazard because of their global coverage and ability to provide detailed information on material in the water, including algal blooms” said Paula Bontempi of the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C..”

Elizabeth Dunbar: Polluted Minnesota Lakes and Rivers→

Minnesota Public Radio:

“Six and a half years after Minnesotans voted to raise taxes to clean up lakes and streams, it’s clear the state has a long way to go. A report released Wednesday representing data from half of the state’s watersheds shows half or more of lakes and streams monitored in the southern half of the state are plagued by bacteria, sediment, nutrients and other pollutants.

Those bodies of water are often too nasty to swim in and can’t fully support fish and other aquatic life, according to the report. With help from the Legacy Amendment, which voters approved in 2008 to raise sales tax revenue for the environment and the arts, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is monitoring and assessing lakes and rivers in all of the state’s 81 watersheds — geographic areas defined by all of the waters emptying into the same body of water.”

Links to Minnesota PCA information and full report.

Ron Meador: Can Minnesota Achieve Sustainable Water Use?→

MinnPost:

“Swackhamer has a serious gift for synthesizing complex scientific material in ways that non-specialist listeners can grasp, and it’s paired with matchless expertise on this subject: She directed the University of Minnesota’s Water Resources Center from 2002 to 2014, and led the effort to produce the massive Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework, commissioned with funds from the Legacy Amendment to provide policy guidance for decision-making over the next 25 years.

She has served in leadership roles on scientific panels advising the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Joint Commission, and has just begun a three-year term on a National Academy of Sciences panel focused on environmental science and toxicology, recognition of her focus on toxic-chemical pollution. And she does not shrink from controversy. For example, she had much to say about the fraught connections between large-scale agriculture and Minnesota’s water problems, some of it quite provocative.

If we shift from issues of water quantity to issues of water quality, she observed, we see that more than 4,100 lakes and stream sections across the state – or more than 40 percent of the total – are classed as “impaired” because they fail to meet federal quality standards. The major driver of these impairments is excessive inputs of nutrients, primarily phosphorus and nitrates from fertilizers, and the major source of those nutrients is row-crop agriculture.”

Anson Mackay: Lake Baikal Threatened by Proposed Dam→

The Conversation:

“Mongolia is hoping a massive dam on its largest river could provide much needed power and water for the country’s booming mining industry. However environmental groups are concerned that the hydroelectric power plant and a related pipeline project will do immeasurable environmental damage to oldest and deepest freshwater body in the world: Lake Baikal...

he Shuren Hydropower Plant, planned on the Selenga River in northern Mongolia, was first proposed in 2013 and is currently the subject of a World Bank-funded environmental and social impact assessment. In tandem, Mongolia is also considering building one of the world’s largest pipelines to transport water from the Orkhon River, one of the Selenga’s tributaries, to supply the miners in the Gobi desert 1,000km away.

By far the largest and most important of the 350-plus rivers that flow into Lake Baikal is the Selenga River, which contributes almost 50% of the lake’s water. The Selenga and its tributaries cover a vast area, much of it in northern Mongolia, and the catchment of Lake Baikal is bigger than Spain. The river enters Lake Baikal through the Selenga Delta, a wetland of internationally recognised importance.

The delta is crucial to the health of Lake Baikal. Its shallow waters are a key spawning ground for Baikal’s many endemic fish and is on the migratory route for millions of birds every year. It also filters out impurities flowing through the river before they reach the lake.”

Scott K. Johnson: Lake Science Using Remote Sensors→

Ars Technica:

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

“The largest streams that flow into Lake George are now being monitored year-round by sampling stations. Water is pulled into a heated enclosure (ice isn’t helpful) where it is analyzed by a data-logging device with probes for things like temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, dissolved organic matter, and algae content. Other instruments measure the water level and flow velocity of the stream. The data is periodically uploaded over a cellular Internet connection and entered into the project database. And at the same time, a carousel of sample bottles is automatically filled and periodically retrieved for additional tests in the analytical chemistry labs back at the field station.

That same kind of data-logger is also going to be active out in the lake itself, operating from a set of anchored, floating platforms. The floats raise and lower the data-loggers, allowing them to sample a vertical profile of the lake. That’s enormously useful, because the lake stratifies into a warmer surface layer and a cooler deep portion (as most lakes do). The first two floats hit the lake last summer, but five will go out this spring after the ice melts.

A number of current profilers will be placed at the bottom of the lake as well. These devices bounce acoustic waves off particles drifting by, using the slight Doppler shift of the returning waves to calculate velocities at various heights above the device. For now, they will simply store data to be downloaded when they are retrieved, but they may run cables in the future to allow near real-time access.”

Very cool. Data and models will provide useful information for lake management. 

Angelina Davydova: Lake Baikal Water Levels at 30 Year Low→

Angelina Davydova, reporting for Reuters:

Délirante bestiole, Flickr

“In Russia’s Siberian south, near the border of Mongolia, the world’s largest freshwater lake is shrinking. The surrounding communities depend on Lake Baikal, which contains about one-fifth of the earth’s unfrozen freshwater reserves, for their power, water and livelihoods.

But in the past four months the lake’s water level has dropped so low that experts are calling it a crisis – one they warn could lead to conflicts in Russia over water. The lake is now at its lowest level in over 30 years and experts predict it will keep dropping until melting mountain snow and spring rains begin to recharge the lake around late April or mid-May...

For now, the government is allowing the Irkutsk hydroelectric power station to continue drawing river water that might otherwise have supplied the lake in order to keep the region supplied with heat, power and clean water.”

NASA; Irkutsk Dam on the lake's southeast outlet, the Angara River

An Invasive Plant Plays a Conservation Role→

Garry Hamilton, writing for Conservation Magazine:

“The scene at Florida’s Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Kings Bay last October would have been familiar to anyone who has ever engaged in the battle to control the spread of invasive plants. Eager volunteers scurried about the shoreline of this manatee wintering ground, carting large plastic bins stuffed with water hyacinth, a notorious aquatic weed that’s caused headaches on five continents. Closer inspection, however, would have revealed the activity to be anything but business as usual: instead of hauling water hyacinth out of the bay, the conservationists were putting it back in—almost 4,300 gallons’ worth by day’s end...

Ultimately, project supporters hope that yesterday’s enemy could be tomorrow’s friend. They believe the hyacinths can play an important role in a conservation strategy that also includes reducing nutrient runoff and restoring spring flows. “Since these invasive plants are here and we can’t get rid of them,” says the University of Georgia’s Evans, “I think it’s counterproductive to be killing them and not taking advantage of their functions. These are important tools. We should be using them.””

Let Fallen Trees Lie→

Tom Spears, reporting for the Ottawa Citizen:

Macomb Paynes; Flickr

“Jereme Gaeta and his research group at the University of Wisconsin were studying what biologists call coarse woody habitat — trees that die and fall into the water near shore, where they become waterlogged and sink. Property owners often get rid of these slimy old logs. They get in the way of swimmers and boats. They look messy.

But Gaeta’s team says it’s better to let fallen logs lie. This is going to do bad things to fish. In their little lake just south of Lake Superior, the Wisconsin group watched as species either became more rare or disappeared completely. “When lake levels go down,” Jereme Gaeta says in a news release, “they lose all that refuge, so they’re pretty much forced to live in the foraging arena, where they’re directly interacting with their predators — in our case largemouth bass.” He said the vulnerability of the small fish goes “through the roof.””

Drought-driven lake level decline: effects on coarse woody habitat and fishes by Jereme W. Gaeta, Greg G. Sass, Stephen R. Carpenter

People Post Pictures of Clear-Water Lakes More Than Turbid Lakes→

Roberta Kwok, writing for Conservation Magazine:

Shutterstock

“People were more likely to visit bigger lakes with clearer water, the researchers report in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. For every additional meter of water clarity, visitors drove nearly an hour longer to get to and from the lake, spending about $22 more in travel costs. Lakes with boat ramps also were more popular.

The study authors estimate that improving a lake’s clarity by one meter would bump up the average number of visits by 1,389 per year. The overall number of lake visits in a region might not increase, since the number of people travelling to the murkier lakes could drop. But if people opted to visit a lake rather than, say, a pool, the total number of visits could rise.”

Recreational demand for clean water: evidence from geotagged photographs by visitors to lakes By Bonnie L Keeler, Spencer A Wood, Stephen Polasky, Catherine Kling, Christopher T Filstrup, and John A Downing

Lake Champlain: Phosphorus Diet→

John Herrick, reporting for VTDigger:

Malcolm K.

“Vermont’s plan to improve Lake Champlain’s water quality does not go far enough to comply with federal regulations, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA released phosphorus pollution reduction targets for Lake Champlain at a meeting in Middlebury on Monday. It also ran a model of the phosphorus reduction plan Vermont submitted in May to determine whether it would meet federal standards.

Stephen Perkins, director of ecosystem protection for the EPA’s Boston office, pointed to an up-sloping trend line showing the amount of phosphorus in several segments of Lake Champlain.

“The phosphorus levels are too high in many portions of the lake,” he told the crowd of farmers, water quality advocates and state officials. “It’s going to take an awful lot of work to take those red trend lines and get them to bend down in a different direction.””

The phosphorus clouds everything. Quantified must your diet be before reaching it you can.

Prevent, Not Simply Treat, Lake Michigan Pollution→

Rahm Emanuel and Mark Tercek, writing in the Chicago Sun Times:

James Marvin Phelps

“The world’s cities spend roughly $90 billion per year on infrastructure to move and treat water. This price tag is increasing as urban populations grow, infrastructure ages, and our changing climate continues to turn once-reliable rainfall into periods of more severe drought and floods.

We spend billions to clean water, but do comparatively little to prevent it from getting polluted in the first place.

Delivering clean and reliable water may be the single largest challenge that our growing cities face. The good news: we have a significant opportunity right now to turn this trend around. Investing in nature can reduce the amount of nutrient and sediment pollution in our natural water sources, before costly chemical treatment is required.”

This will be a very important test for politicians.

Unalaska Lake Needs Help→

Annie Ropeik, reporting for KUCB:

Wanetta Ayers

“Residents ask the City to fix lake pollution. The Unalaska Lake watershed is prime spawning ground for salmon in the heart of the city’s historic downtown. It’s also some of the least healthy habitat in the Aleutian Islands.

But residents’ concerns went beyond the scope of the grant. They say it’s the city’s push for development that’s harmed the lake. And city manager Chris Hladick said after the meeting that’s not a problem he can solve with just a million dollars.

”We realize that the money isn’t going to be a huge amount ... so the planning effort is really important for the long-term,” he says. “We’re heightening this issue to another level to let contractors or whatever know, hey, we’ve gotta get our act together.”

Hladick’s hoping the grant will spur some planning for stormwater management that the city should have done years ago. ”

Already know you that which you need. Blaming each other does not get the work done. Each must do their part. Stormwater management and restoring shoreline vegetation and wetlands. Save you it can.

Phosphorus Pollution Cap and Trade→

Peter Hirschfeld, reporting for Vermont's NPR News Source:

TAYLOR DOBBS VPR

“The clean-up of Lake Champlain looms as perhaps the largest, and most expensive environmental challenge facing Vermont. And state officials are exploring whether a cap-and-trade program for phosphorus runoff might help solve the problem.

“And the theory is that it becomes more economically efficient overall, if you look across the whole sector, that you’re making the best possible investments, the most cost-effective investments, to reduce pollution,” says David Mears, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.

The approach has its critics, but the EPA credits the Acid Raid Program with nearly halving the amount of sulfur dioxide pumped annually into the atmosphere. And Mears wonders whether the same kind of framework might help curb the flow of phosphorus into the most polluted areas of Lake Champlain.

“The idea of using the markets as a way of driving and incentivizing further pollution reduction is an enticing one,” Mears says. “It has worked in other scenarios. It’s still relatively unproven in the context of nutrient pollution into waters.””

Control, control, you must learn control! Use the market force Luke.

Lake Polluted, Politicians Talk, Now What?→

Dan Egan, reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Dan Egan, Journal Sentinel

“When Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel first ran for Congress in 2002, he vowed that protecting the Great Lakes would be high on his agenda. The primary concerns at the time were environmental damage wrought by invasive species such as zebra mussels, as well as urban and industrial pollutions.

Twelve years and three jobs later — Emanuel went from Congress to chief of staff for President Barack Obama before becoming mayor of Chicago in 2011 — the Great Lakes have received some $1.6 billion in federal restoration funds.

Yet despite all of that money earmarked for things like combating the spread of invasive species, cleaning up toxic hot spots and restoring wetlands, Emanuel said Wednesday that the world’s largest freshwater system has just entered an era of unprecedented peril.”

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Provide solutions, or avoid challenges, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.