October 1st, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

This summer as I flew over Minneapolis, I looked down fondly at the chain of lakes that beautifies this tidy, progressive city. My second hometown.

I noticed the surrounding land was lush and green. And so were many of the lakes. Wait a minute: The lakes themselves were more green than blue, ringed in pea-soup of algae that was closing in fast on the open water at the middle. This algae-green, sickly green mess set off alarm bells.

I suspected that all those lake-dwellers residing on their hard-fought real estate were sullying the waters by collectively dumping tons of fertilizer on their neat green lawns, which created a super-rich, even toxic runoff. This was hugely ironic, because these striving homeowners had moved there so they could boat, swim and engage in the state sport, fishing fer walleye. Yet their pursuit of the picture-perfect lake house retreat was poisoning the natural environment.

This is not hard science.  Think of steroids. They can make muscles grow, but trigger disease in the host organism. Same with fertilizer. Add too much nitrogen or phosphorus to the environment and you may trigger some awesome growth — and throw the ecosystem out of whack. This is why organic gardeners advocate using natural compost, but I digress.

This whole algae issue popped up this week in  a story by the Associated Press, reporting that, indeed, many lakes in the Upper Midwest are suffering from fertilizer overload. Fertilizer runoff (which is worse with synthetic soluble products) is causing a serious overgrowth of algae in some bodies of water. It chokes the life out of the lakes, and doesn’t make them smell so great either.

While lakes sometimes get overly ripe on their own, the AP article quotes a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources expert saying that lakes tend to develop serious problems when humans introduce nutrients like phosphorus. (Nitrogen to a lesser extent.)

Aside from what the algae do within the lake — depleting the oxygen available for higher life forms, like walleye — the toxins released in the water and air can be lethal. Dogs have died. Humans have been sickened.

In some areas people have been advised to not walk their dogs along the lake and to stop the animals from drinking from it.

When will we get a clue?

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