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.

Sauk River Chain of Lakes Face Pollution →

Kirsti Marohn, reporting for the St. Cloud Times:

Kimm Anderson, St. Cloud Times

“An active watershed district and lake association have taken ambitious steps to curb pollution entering the lakes. By most accounts, the lakes’ clarity has vastly improved and fish are more abundant. “The condition of the chain was dramatically worse water quality than it currently is,” said Greg Van Eeckhout, environmental specialist with the MPCA.

But the chain still faces many challenges. It’s fed by the Sauk River, which drains a huge area of largely agricultural land. Most of the chain’s lakes are considered impaired because of high nutrient levels. Algae blooms still make the water murky at times. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is proposing new standards for the lake that would aim to reduce those nutrient levels and improve the clarity of the water. But one environmental group says the standards are too lenient.

As the debate over the Sauk Chain’s future heats up, nearly everyone seems to agree that much progress has been made in the past few decades.”

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play. Change standards without changing system, skeptical we are.

Aral Sea - A Large Lake No More→

Enjoli Liston, writing for the Guardian:

NASA

Aral Sea

“Images from the US space agency’s Terra satellite released last week show that the eastern basin of the Central Asian inland sea – which stretched across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and was once the fourth largest in the world – was totally parched in August. Images taken in 2000 show an extensive body of water covering the same area.

“This is the first time the eastern basin has completely dried in modern times,” Philip Micklin, a geographer emeritus from Western Michigan University told Nasa. “And it is likely the first time it has completely dried in 600 years, since Medieval desiccation associated with diversion of Amu Darya to the Caspian Sea.”

In the 1950s, two of the region’s major rivers – the Amu Darya and and the Syr Darya – were diverted by the Soviet government to provide irrigation for cotton production in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, starving the Aral. It has been diminishing ever since, with the sea level dropping 16 metres between 1960 and 1996, according to the World Bank. Water levels are believed to be down to less than 10 per cent of what they were five decades ago.”

If into the image recordings you go, only pain will you find.

History of Lake Itasca, Source of the Mississippi River→

Steven Penick, writing for MinnPost:

Randen Pederson, Flickr

“The Itasca forest during the late nineteenth century contained towering pines and numerous lakes. Individuals like surveyor Jacob Brower became captivated by the region and the wildlife that inhabited it. They recognized that the economic potential of northern Minnesota would change its landscape. Their effort to preserve Lake Itasca led them to contend with the lumber industry, public interests, and the politics that weaved between them.

People have long appreciated Lake Itasca’s beauty and resources. Some eight thousand years ago indigenous hunters left spears at a bison kill site in the area. Around 1200 CE the Blackduck people created a village there, eventually leaving remnants of their unique pottery behind. Ojibwe groups have lived in the lake’s vicinity since the 1700s.

The U.S. government slowly began turning their attention to the region after buying Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. In 1832 the Ojibwe leader Ozaawindib brought Henry Schoolcraft to Omushkos Lake and the Mississippi headwaters. Schoolcraft renamed the lake Itasca by combining the Latin words veritas (truth) and caput (head).”

On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain. Be brave, Lake Itasca go you must.

Polluters Don't Pay→

Chad Selweski, reporting for The Macomb Daily:

“Two days after Oakland County officials admitted that they dumped an unprecedented 2.1 billion gallons of partially treated sewage into the Macomb County waterways during the massive Aug. 11 storm, environmental activists on Thursday called for a return to the policing of polluters that was in place several years ago.

These activists warned that drenching rainstorms are becoming more common, and sewage system overflows packed with fertilizers and other “nutrient-rich” discharges will increasingly lead to a Lake St. Clair shoreline plagued by algae, tainted water and seaweed-style aquatic plants dominating the water surface.”

The polluted Red Run Drain in Warren

Once you start down the dark path of mixing sewage with storm runoff, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

Agricultural Runoff is Polluting the Lake→

Tom Henry, reporting for The Blade:

“Jeff Reutter, the Ohio Sea Grant and Ohio State University Stone Laboratory director, frequently makes this point to groups hearing any one of the dozens of presentations he makes each year: More than two-thirds of today’s phosphorus in western Lake Erie comes from agricultural runoff. In the 1960s, more than two-thirds of it came from poor sewage treatment...

While people in Toledo may think of Lake Erie water quality as a sewage or factory issue, it is increasingly an agricultural land-use issue. The Maumee River watershed — the largest and the most important for western Lake Erie — is 73 percent agricultural land, Ms. Johnson said.

Mr. Reutter and other officials have been part of a state task force studying the phosphorus problem, which — to no one’s surprise — generally has been trending upward since 1995, when the first major bloom of toxic microcystis algae was detected in western Lake Erie since the 1970s.

One exception was during the drought of 2012. That, according to Mr. Reutter, only amplifies the strong correlation between agricultural runoff and western Lake Erie algae. In its latest report, the task force called for a 40 percent reduction in farm runoff.”

Powerful the agricultural interests have become, the dark side I sense in them.

Great Lakes at a Crossroads→

Dan Egan, reporting for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

“Despite their vastness, for thousands of years the inland seas above Niagara Falls were as isolated from the outside world as a Northwoods Wisconsin pond. That all changed in 1959. The U.S. and Canadian governments obliterated the lake’s natural barrier to invasive fish, plants, viruses and mollusks with the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of channels, locks and dams that opened the door for ocean freighters to sail up the once-wild St. Lawrence River, around Niagara Falls and into the heart of the continent.

Small boats had access to the lakes since the 1800s thanks to relatively tiny man-made navigation channels stretching in from the East Coast and a canal at Chicago that artificially linked Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River basin.

But the consequences of opening a nautical freeway into the Great Lakes for globe-roaming freighters proved disastrous — at least 56 non-native organisms have since been discovered in the lakes, and the majority arrived as stowaways in freighter ballast tanks.”

New species additions are a natural part of ecosystem life. Rejoice for those around you and admire the beauty of all organisms. Mourn a changed ecosystem do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously.

Lake Erie is Polluted→

Behind Toledo’s Water Crisis, a Long-Troubled Lake Erie
By Michael Wines, The New York Times:

Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP

“It took a serendipitous slug of toxins and the loss of drinking water for a half-million residents to bring home what scientists and government officials in this part of the county have been saying for years: Lake Erie is in trouble, and getting worse by the year.

Flooded by tides of phosphorus washed from fertilized farms, cattle feedlots and leaky septic systems, the most intensely developed of the Great Lakes is increasingly being choked each summer by thick mats of algae, much of it poisonous. What plagues Toledo and, experts say, potentially all 11 million lakeside residents, is increasingly a serious problem across the United States.

But while there is talk of action — and particularly in Ohio, real action — there also is widespread agreement that efforts to address the problem have fallen woefully short. And the troubles are not restricted to the Great Lakes. Poisonous algae are found in polluted inland lakes from Minnesota to Nebraska to California, and even in the glacial-era kettle ponds of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.”

If you don't advance new pollution control efforts now — if you choose the quick and easy path — you will become an agent of darkness.

Straits of Mackinac Oil Pipeline Failure Would be Disastrous→

Keith Matheny, reporting for Detroit Free Press: 

ThiloG: Flickr.com

“A rupture of 61-year-old, underwater oil pipelines running through the Straits of Mackinac would be “the worst possible place” for a spill on the Great Lakes, with catastrophic results, according to a University of Michigan researcher studying potential impacts of a spill.

David Schwab, a research scientist at the U-M Water Center, retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where he studied Great Lakes water flows and dynamics for more than 30 years. He’s the author of a new study done in collaboration with the National Wildlife Federation looking at different scenarios for potential oil spills in the Straits from Canadian oil transport giant Enbridge’s Line 5.

“I can’t think — in my experience — of another place on the Great Lakes where an oil spill would have as wide an area of impact, in as short of time, as at the Straits of Mackinac,” Schwab said.

Line 5 is a set of two oil pipelines that runs from Superior, Wis., through the Upper Peninsula, underwater through the Straits and then down through the Lower Peninsula before connecting to a hub in Sarnia, Ontario. The lines transport about 23 million gallons of oil and other petroleum products, such as natural gas liquids, through the Straits daily.”

Pain, suffering, death I feel would happen. Something terrible may happen. Terrible pain for this Black Swan.

Lake Erie Pollution→

Layla Klamt, writing for Liberty Voice:

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its forecast on Lake Erie’s summer algae bloom for 2014 this week, and at first glance, the numbers are alarming. NOAA and the International Joint Commission say that even though pollutants causing the algae bloom in Lake Erie are high, they are still on the decline from 2011.

Lake Erie is the smallest and shallowest of all five Great Lakes and also has the most river tributaries. Ohio, New York and Ontario, Canada share its borders, and Lake Erie is seen as a vital economic waterway, a source for drinking water and a valuable sewer treatment. The lake has been plagued by many ecological problems since the late 60s, including the toxic algae blooms, a number of invasive species and high levels of Mercury in its edible fish supply. Unfortunately because of all these problems, Lake Erie has come to be known as an environmental sore spot for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the NOAA. Efforts to clean up the lake’s shores and protect species have thus seemed like an uphill battle at times.”

Powerful the pollution consequences become, the dark side I sense in them.

Zebra & Quagga Mussels are Change Agents in Lake Erie→

“Creatures living on, near, or below the bottom of the lake—is “fundamentally changed from its past,” according to a paper published online in the current journal of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. Lyubov Burlakova, who works with the Great Lakes Center at SUNY Buffalo State, is the first author. The coauthors are Alexander Y. Karatayev, director of the center; Christopher Pennuto, a research associate with the center and biology professor at Buffalo State; and Christine Mayer, associate professor of ecology at the University of Toledo.

“The story of Lake Erie shows how profoundly human activity can affect an ecosystem,” said Burlakova. She traces that activity as far back as the early 1800s, when people cut down forests and built sawmills and dams.”

SUNY Buffalo State

This one a long time have I watched. All it's history many have looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never our mind on what is best for the lake. Hmm? What are we doing?

Lake of the Woods Algal Blooms are Worsening→

Ron Meador, reporting for MinnPost:

Lee Grim

“Key points from the International Joint Commission’s second “State of the Basin” report, released on Tuesday:

- Massive blooms of blue-green algae are on the rise in Lake of the Woods, despite reductions in flows of phosphorus into upstream lakes and streams from industrial polluters; some of this seems to be driven by phosphorus releases from lake sediments, and some by climate change.
- Rivers in the basin are showing improved water quality, primarily because of controls on paper mills and other industrial sources.
- Walleye, lake trout and sturgeon populations have been recovering as a result of special management efforts, and certain bird populations have returned to healthy levels thanks to reduced pesticide use.
- Mercury levels in fish remain high in many lakes, such that anglers are advised to check the status of public-health advisories before eating any fish caught anywhere in the basin.”

IJC State of the Basin Report

We always find what we dumped in.

Lakes Legacy→

Tony Randgaard, writing for MinnPost:

Joe Bielawa

“Last week, Mound Mayor Mark Hanus and state Sen. David Osmek, R-Mound, went on the offensive to blame the Met Council for the disastrous recent overflow of raw sewage into Lake Minnetonka and three other lakes. The Met Council fired back, stating that its sanitary sewage systems worked normally during the record weekend rainfall and were not the cause of the overflow. While this is sorted out, it might be instructive to look back at how we once worked together to clean up our landmark city lakes.”

Control, control, you must learn control! To be Honorable is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness. Be a candle, or the night.”

Mercury Pollution Decreasing in Minnesota→

USGS news room:

“Methylmercury contamination is decreasing in some lakes in northern Minnesota as a result of reduced mercury pollution, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study. Mercury from man-made pollution is converted in lakes and wetlands to methylmercury, a toxic form of mercury that accumulates in fish.

The study also found that levels of mercury, sulfate and hydrogen ion in precipitation decreased from 1998 to 2012 in northern Minnesota. These decreases likely resulted from reduced atmospheric pollution in the U.S. and Canada, and may have contributed to the reduced methylmercury contamination in the [Voyageurs National] park’s lakes.”

J Stephen Conn

Additional information

Do or do not. There is no try.

Acid Rain's Dirty Legacy→

Brooks Miner, reporting for FiveThirtyEight:

“Acid rain was rare among environmental problems in that it had a viable solution, and these days it’s often hailed as an environmental success story. The market worked as intended, sulfur and nitrogen emissions declined and rain became less acidic. And just two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision upholding the federal government’s authority to regulate power plants in this manner.

But what about the lakes and streams that were already so acidic? Nearly 25 years since those changes to the Clean Air Act, water bodies in the Northeast have recovered, while those further south have not.”

Flickr - Rainforest Action Network

Decrease the burden on lakes affected by past emissions, lower pollution in the present would. 

Project: Murky Waters (WisconsinWatch)→

The Capital Times and Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism collaborated on a four-part series to examine threats to the quality of the Madison area’s spectacular lakes, and ambitious new efforts that seek to improve them. 

Part 1:

WisconsinWatch

“The Yahara lakes — Mendota, Monona, Wingra, Waubesa and Kegonsa — are no clearer than they were 30 years ago, despite intensive efforts to improve them. During that time, lake scientists said, the increased heavy rainfalls that are part of climate change most likely offset gains from better land use practices, by washing giant volumes of pollution into the lakes.
“They are flatlining,” said Steve Carpenter, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has studied the Yahara lakes since the 1970s. “There are no trends in the lakes. The lake water quality is not getting better. It’s not getting notably worse. It’s as if the interventions we’re doing are just holding the line, running in place like the red queen in Alice in Wonderland.””

— http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2014/04/23/yahara-beach-closures-highlight-algae-bacteria-threats/

Part 2:

Mike DeVries -- The Capital Times

“According to experts, agriculture accounts for roughly 70 percent of the phosphorus runoff in watersheds across the state, with urban runoff accounting for the remaining 30 percent.
It is closer to an 80-20 split in the Yahara Watershed in Dane County, said Carpenter, who hopes to find a way for the dairy industry to thrive while protecting water quality.
The agricultural runoff that often turns Madison’s lakes unpleasant by creating algal blooms that look and smell bad, clog boat motors and close beaches is expected to only get worse.”

— http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2014/04/30/manure-digesters-seen-as-best-hope-for-curbing-lake-pollution-but-drawbacks-remain/

Part 3:

 City of Madison Engineering Department

“A Milwaukee scientist who has found sewage migrating from old pipes through soil and into the stormwater lines that drain to lakes or streams says the problem is likely to occur in Madison and cities nationwide.

“In any urban area, this is going to be an issue,” said Sandra McLellan, professor and senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences.
From 2008 to 2012, McLellan and colleagues from her laboratory analyzed more than 1,300 water samples from stormwater outfalls in six Milwaukee-area watersheds, looking for a bacterium called Bacterioides that indicates the presence of human sewage...

They found the marker in every watershed. In the Menomonee River watershed alone, more than half of the outfalls were chronically contaminated with sewage.”

— http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/2014/05/07/leaky-sewer-pipes-could-export-viruses-to-lakes/

Provided here to explain consequences on lake water quality, a lot of information is.  Hmmmmmm.

Trends in Water Transparency for Midwest Lakes

Grace Hong

From National Science Foundation Discoveries:

“Scientists engaged in a study of long-term water quality trends in Midwestern lakes found some good news: little change in water clarity in more than 3,000 lakes. Look deeper, and the research becomes something more: a chronicle of a new source of data for scientists, data from residents of towns and villages surrounding the lakes.

The results are published this week in a paper in the journal PLOS ONE. The paper co-authors analyzed almost a quarter of a million observations taken over seven decades on 3,251 lakes in eight Midwestern states.”

— http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=131238&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click

Adam Hinterthuer, writing for University of Wisconsin - Madison:

“What the authors found was that, on an individual scale, some lakes were getting clearer while others were not. However, says Lottig, combining all that data together indicates that there is a slightly increasing trend in water clarity at a regional scale. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the data don’t exist to explain those patterns.” Lottig hopes efforts like the “Cross-Scale Interaction” or “CSI Limnology” project, an international team of scientists that he’s a part of, can collect global data on things like water chemistry and aquatic biology that will add context to the data generated by citizens.

Though the citizen scientist dataset limited his team’s ability to explain the patterns they observed, Lottig says it suggests that such information can play a role in shaping future research — a possibility that has some scientific organizations taking notice.”

— http://www.news.wisc.edu/22805

Remember, science's strength flows from the sample size. But beware. Controls, randomization, replication, and statistical inference. The light side are they. Once you start down this path, forever will it dominate your destiny. 

Canada's Research Lakes

NewsBlog at Nature:

“Fans of environmental science can now have a direct role in helping Canada’s unique Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) continue to do the research it has done for decades.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), based in Winnipeg, took over running the ELA on 1 April, after the federal government eliminated funding for the decades-old environmental research facility (see ‘Test lakes face closure’ and ‘Last minute reprieve for Canada’s research lakes’). The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba have stepped in to provide money to run the facility and conduct research for the next several years, but more cash is needed to restore research at the ELA to its former levels.

So the IISD has turned to the public. It launched an appeal on the crowdfunding site Indiegogo seeking contributions to expand research and make the ELA less dependent on government largesse.”

Click on image to learn more

Lake Whatcom's Pollution Puzzle→

Ralph Schwartz, reporting for the Bellingham Herald (WA):

“City officials have been working for years to reduce the amount of phosphorus draining into Lake Whatcom. This year, officials plan to clean up their own backyard by improving stormwater treatment at Bloedel Donovan Park, which has especially high levels of phosphorus in its soil.”

Lake Champlain Cleanup Plan→

Beth Garbitelli, writing for the Associated Press:

Lynn Gardner

“Vermont officials posted online a hefty plan Tuesday to reduce pollution in Lake Champlain from stormwater runoff, and now await word on whether it goes far enough in addressing federal concerns.

Decades of runoff have contributed to dirtying Vermont’s signature lake and causing excessive algae growth. The pollution has turned the water murky, hurt tourism, depressed property values and increased water treatment costs.

Cleaning up the lake has been a longstanding state goal, but lawmakers and officials say the state is under more pressure now to meet federal targets. If the latest plan doesn’t measure up, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could impose expensive regulations on sewage plants in the state.”

Bring plan here. Question it we will.