algae bloom

[wakina]

lol, that's crazy dude, you are referencing a pimple on an elephants azz.
There's no such thing as global warming or climate change, it's called "weather dude"! Been going on for ages and ages.
Climate scientists can get tomorrows weather right let alone next week, next year, next decade, next millenium.

I don't know if their is global warming or not! But what I do know is that weather and climate are, even though they are related, 2 different things. Climate is studied by Climatologist and is based upon weather conditions over the long term past, and weather is studied by Meteorologist who try to predict short term future weather conditions based upon current weather conditions and trends!

Climate Is an average of the past prevailing weather conditions of a region, such as high and low temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, averaged over a series of several years. It is a long term picture of the past weather conditions for a given region and arrived at by averaging those accumulated facts together. The key words in climate is Average Past Weather Conditions, with a lot of emphasis on Past. What climate does not include is future weather but it does include the forecast for future climate conditions based upon changes in the averages over the long term past. If the average keeps going up and has for several years then there is cause for concern since the long term averages have went up. Based upon that trend in the long term average it is reasonable to assume there is a change in progress and the future climate can be forecast with reasonable accuracy.

Weather is the current conditions of temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds. Weather forecasting is the not so accurate science of predicting what the current conditions are going to do in the future over the next several days as they travel and move from one region to another. It is a prediction based upon current events and what is currently taking place to try and determine what is going to take place tomorrow. With a lot of emphasis on short term future

[wakina]

This site showed up in my email box today form a user name and Email account that I do not know! So if that person is reading this post thank you for the contribution for our discussion! Here is the link to the site.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...hange-science/

Found this site today also!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5647824.html




.

[airshot]

Well thought I would jump in here and add a couple of things which are public knowledge but kept under wraps as well as possible. The city of Toledo is the number one contributor to the problem in lake erie. They are now and have been for the last 50 years. The sewer system in Toledo has not functioned properly for the past thirty years. Toledo pays EPA fines each year because they "can't afford" to update and replace the sewer system. Studies over the past 15 years show that Maumee and Ottawa rivers contribute to more than 80% of the pollution in Lake Erie. In fact the last open EPA research from around 10 years back, claimed if those two rivers could be closed off, the big lake could clean itself within 5 years from the water flow
from the Detroit river. Toledo was one of the first cities to violate EPA regulations and tie their sanitary and storm sewers together to handle excess rain water and the city has been paying yearly fines for that for quite sometime. When heavy rains occur the entire sewer system including sanitary run directly into the river without going thru any treatment.
Now if you have paid any attention to the latest indirect comments the city has now gotten control of the chemical balance to make the water Ok to drink. Why was the balance allowed to get out of control? I know somebody screwed up. Have a friend that used to work in the area of water and sewer for the city and has said many times....todays water standards would not meet those set in 1960 as they have been lowered every few years to allow the water to pass. All I can say is I am certainly glad I got out of there many, many years back, and I have my own well and have for 40 years..No regrets!

[Spoon addiction]

A little information that is public knowledge as well but dr. Jeffery Reutter has he easiest to understand research in my opinion, never added a link before hope it works

http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/people/j...%20031314.pptx

[wakina]

A little information that is public knowledge as well but dr. Jeffery Reutter has he easiest to understand research in my opinion, never added a link before hope it works

http://ohioseagrant.osu.edu/people/j...%20031314.pptx

The link worked just fine and was / is very informative. Thank you for sharing.

[Island Runner]

I live on Grand Lake St Marys. As much as I hate to admit it, it is a cesspool. We call it Slime Lake or the Muck Hole. Despite that, the water quality has improved quite a bit this year. They have dumped who knows how many hundreds of tons of Alum into the lake and have 4 dredges working all the time. It is improving. The thing to remember though is that it is shallow. Yea, yea Lake Erie is shallow but Grand Lake St Marys is super shallow. It is 13,500 acres and have an average depth of 4 feet. Deepest spot is barely 7 feet. They implemented many new laws for manure applications and filter strips around creeks etc. last year. In my eyes, it has helped. But those new regulations are just here tho and not statewide. To get everyone in the Lake Erie watershed all in line with these practices may be easier said than done. Here's a few pics from a year or 2 ago of Grand Lake. Let's hope the same thing does not happen on Erie. By the way, Grand Lake has alot more walleye than most people think!

[West Basin]

After reading most of the posts, and visiting most of the links provided in some posts, I had to make a comment.

There is some misinformation in almost all the posts and most of the links. This does not surprise me, as I've been dealing with it for 40 years, 30 years as both a professional in the ecology field and as a concerned and informed outdoors person. When I was doing environmental education I often spent a third of my time correcting people and kids on what they thought was fact.

First, as to any danger of eating fish during a Lake Erie algae bloom, the EPA states "The consumption of fish flesh (muscle) is usually considered safe but there are fish species and fish organs, especially the liver, and stomach/intestinal contents which may contain considerable amounts of cyanotoxins." - http://www2.epa.gov/nutrient-policy-...ogical-effects .

The Toledo drinking water event was primarily caused by a "perfect storm" of events, which included the time of year, past week weather conditions (rainfall, wind and current direction, amount of sunlight, etc.), and the growing amount of algae blooms. To put it simply a relatively small bloom of toxin producing algae sat right on top on the intake for almost two days. This was always a possiblility and it finally happened.

Please do all of us a favor. When you post information that is science based please include the source of that information (some of you did). If you make a comment, make sure you have the facts correct.

I'm not saying that the posts were entirely incorrect, just that there was enough incorrect information on this thread to leave people either confused or taking away incorrect information. Most of the info in the posts was correct and helpful.

West Basin

[dunn782]

Well thought I would jump in here and add a couple of things which are public knowledge but kept under wraps as well as possible. The city of Toledo is the number one contributor to the problem in lake erie. They are now and have been for the last 50 years. The sewer system in Toledo has not functioned properly for the past thirty years. Toledo pays EPA fines each year because they "can't afford" to update and replace the sewer system. Studies over the past 15 years show that Maumee and Ottawa rivers contribute to more than 80% of the pollution in Lake Erie. In fact the last open EPA research from around 10 years back, claimed if those two rivers could be closed off, the big lake could clean itself within 5 years from the water flow
from the Detroit river. Toledo was one of the first cities to violate EPA regulations and tie their sanitary and storm sewers together to handle excess rain water and the city has been paying yearly fines for that for quite sometime. When heavy rains occur the entire sewer system including sanitary run directly into the river without going through any treatment.
Now if you have paid any attention to the latest indirect comments the city has now gotten control of the chemical balance to make the water Ok to drink. Why was the balance allowed to get out of control? I know somebody screwed up. Have a friend that used to work in the area of water and sewer for the city and has said many times....today's water standards would not meet those set in 1960 as they have been lowered every few years to allow the water to pass. All I can say is I am certainly glad I got out of there many, many years back, and I have my own well and have for 40 years..No regrets!

It seems to me from what I have gathered that there is some incorrect information in this post. I know the city of Toledo has combined sewer overflows (CFO) but they are not even close to the number 1 contributor to the problems in Lake Erie, though they are a contributor. Toledo settled a case with the EPA more than 10 years ago and agreed to system improvements and have been implementing them for years. Detroit which has I believe the biggest sewage treatment system in the country dumps far more sewage in the lake than Toledo and has done far less to fix their problems. In 2011 they dumped more than 4x the CFO into the river and ultimately the lake than Toledo did. I don't have many facts about the Maumee river's contribution but I do know that the Maumee has the greatest drainage area of any river in the Great Lakes system and a good portion of it is farm land. That said I wouldn't be surprised if the Maumme is the greatest contributor to the problem in Erie though not chiefly due to Toledos treatment system. Here is a link to a report that outlines the CFO problem. http://www.greatlakes.org/document.doc?id=1178The Maumee drains over 8000 square miles of land. That's a lot of run off from yards, golf courses, farms, animal operations, etc. The Maumee is said to supply about 5% of Lake Erie's water but about 50% of the phosphorous.

I would like to see a link or source for the claims made about the water standards being lowered since the 60's too. I have lived here all my life and I know the standards for water discharges have been getting more strict for decades. I would be shocked to see evidence the the EPA has lower any standard for drinking water. I can't find where they have in my researching. A link perhaps?

Now I don't work in the city water treatment dept. but the understanding I have based on the chemistry is the problem was twofold. The carbon beds that would typically remove the toxin were not doing the job. Probably an issue with the levels on the raw water I would guess. Also chlorine can oxidize the toxin the way I understand it. We tested the city water at work and we could not detect any free chlorine so I would guess they chlorination system wasn't up to the task or they could not put enough in and meet the test numbers at the plant. The EPA limits the chlorine level in treated water. If you have the level at the max and your water goes out with a substance that the chlorine will oxidize the chlorine will be consumed and your won't detect any in a test. That is our suspicions at work and we have some really smart chemist on staff. We make a liquid based food grade product so we could not produce at that time.

I'd like to see the sources of these claims. I think they are off base a bit though I certainly don't claim to be an expert.