Ancillary 10
80 degree weather and partly cloudy, it is the perfect day to play in the water. This is the typical weather that residents of Southern Washington experience on the daily over the summer. People flock to the nearest lakes and rivers to escape from the heat to have a relaxing day. Unfortunately, in one rural town called Camas, what used to be a long tradition of kayaking and jumping off rope swings into Lacamas Lake is no longer possible. Recently, specifically in 2019, toxic algae blooms have invaded the lake rendering it too dangerous to use. These toxic algae blooms are extremely harmful, they can cause liver damage and poison people. Many animals that have drank from the lake during the toxic algae blooms have died, such as my friend’s dog (https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/lacamas-and-round-lake-toxic-algae-warning-issued/). For this reason there are numerous warning signs surrounding the lake advising people to stay away. But, these algae blooms do not only affect humans, they also affect the wildlife around as plants and aquatic life can’t survive as the algae creates a eutrophic condition because the algae consumes all the dissolved oxygen. As you can see this is a big problem for the community as it can’t enjoy its number one recreational activity and it negatively affects the surrounding ecosystem.
The community has put in efforts to solve the problem, but their solutions and problems do not look at the bigger picture nor the root cause. The first thing that they noted was that one of the surrounding biofilters, which is a six square mile area that contains plants and natural grasses that are meant to clean the water, actually pollutes the water more. According to John Ley, Phosphorus enters at 145 micrograms per liter and leaves at a spike of 976 micrograms per liter. And at other places it entered at 225 micrograms with an outflow of 555 micrograms, and 319 at another. Which clearly shows that the biofilter is doing the opposite of its intended purpose (https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/lacamas-shores-biofilter-polluting-lacamas-lake/
). With this as a problem, the community has begun with improving the biofilter so that it can serve its intended purpose. But there is a Caveat, phosphorus in 2007 was only measured at 30 to 50 grams prior to entering the bio filter. This means that initial phosphorus levels entering the system are upwards to 3–7x what they used to be. Although fixing the biofilter may help with the problem, the increase in phosphorus levels shows that there’s an even deeper problem at hand. The bigger problem is that all the water in the lacamas lake watershed (67 square miles) runs off into the lake, and this is a problem because feces and fertilizers from farms and residential areas accumulate there. What needs to be done is the Camas City Council needs to establish standards on fertilizer use and hold the farms to a higher standard in regard to their pollution.
