Water Quality Update from Dr. Danielle Wain, Lake Science Director, 7 Lakes Alliance- October 11, 2

Typically by this time of the year, the lake has cleared up, even when there has been a bloom earlier in the summer. As I noted during the discussion of opening the dam, the phosphorus levels are roughly the same now as they have been before opening the dam in previous years. Without really digging into weather data (Is it wetter? Is it windier?) to see what is different about this year, I don’t have a good answer for why it still hasn’t cleared up this year yet. If understanding all the dynamics of algal blooms were easy, then we would be able to reliably predict them and how bad they will be - the science isn’t there yet. That doesn’t mean that we don’t know some things though, namely that phosphorus is required for blooms to form and grow so we need to keep working on keeping phosphorus out of the lake. While the phosphorus levels are typical of previous years, they are still twice as high as the other lakes (excepting Salmon, which usually has a fall bloom because of fall turnover in the lake - North Pond is not deep enough to have fall turnover, so this isn’t why North Pond is still green).