Archived Story
Editorial: Documentation will pay off later
Published 9:07am Tuesday, July 10, 2012Fountain Lake turning green and the death of northern pike are two reasons why dredging our city’s cherished jewel is more important than ever.
Deeper water would result in less of a need to treat the lake with copper sulfate to keep it from being green, and deeper water would provide fish with colder locations when surface areas become really warm. Ninety-degree water sure is surprising.
It’s too bad the House, Senate and governor opted to kick dredging Fountain Lake out of the 2012 bonding bill. The request asked the state to pay half of the $15 million cost.
Documentation of the excessive algae bloom and the dead fish should be done now so they can be shown to legislators in the 2013 session. And then do even more documentation, just as a backup measure.
Leaders in the city, county and watershed need to make a clear presentation next year of just how urgent the need to dredge Fountain Lake really is. It won’t be easy to see once winter returns and the Legislature convenes.
Just curious as to how a deeper lake would reduce the algae….
You know how the deeper water is, the darker it is… Sunlight penetrates the water at the surface, is refracted in the water column until eventually there is no more sunlight. The photosynthesis process of plants/algae converts sunlight into food and the more food you have, the more plants you have.
For example, if sunlight is penetrating to half the depth of the lake, rather than a quarter of the depth of the lake, than you would have about twice as much algae.