Nothing But Toxic Blue-Green Summers Ahead For Great Lakes, Ohio Waterways - Scientists

[hatrack]

The simmering summer of 2010 is coughing up a sickly and unprecedented batch of toxic blue-green algae in western Lake Erie and nearly a dozen of Ohio's shallow, inland lakes. Many lake scientists are speculating that it's only going to get worse.

"We're going to see a greener and greener lake until changes are made," said John Hageman of Stone Laboratory, Ohio State University's water research station on Gibraltar Island in western Lake Erie. "Everything points to this just getting worse." That might be hard to imagine. But it could help to survey the squalid situation at Grand Lake St. Mary's -- a large, inland lake in western Ohio. The 13,000-acre lake near Celina grabbed the attention of both the public and health officials all summer long because of its toxic, pea-soup waters and foamy surface.

"Grand Lake St. Mary's has gone green every summer for decades, that's not new," said EPA spokeswoman Dina Pierce. "But this year, it just exploded -- at times it looked like a science fiction landscape, almost turquoise or swimming pool blue with white foam on top. "People who have lived there their whole lives had never seen anything like it." But while the Great Lake and the big lake near Celina have grabbed the headlines, in recent weeks it seems as if almost any shallow body of warmer water in Ohio might be at risk from being tainted by a floating, green bloom of algae.

Simply put, the 2010 algae outbreak is breaking the mold. "This is first year we've seen blooms like this -- all across the state," said Jen House of the Ohio Department of Health, which is working with the EPA and state Department of Natural Resources to coordinate warnings at the various lakes and Lake Erie beaches. "The problem is that this bacteria loves warm, sunny weather and we've had plenty of that."

EDIT

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/08/scientists_say_the_toxic_blue-.html

[AndyA]

1. Nice. Swimming, anyone?

I read somewhere that a big corporation is pumping tons of waste into the waters up there. I can't remember the details, but I'll bet this algae is related to it.

Sad.