Summer forecast for Lake Erie another big algae outbreak

“We are looking at more severe than 2014, not as bad as 2011”, he said.

Dr. Charles Ramcharan, associate professor at the school of environment and department of biology, along with student Mathiew Dykstra, have discovered that housing developments are directly linked to algae blooms. The severity index runs from a high of 10, which corresponds to the 2011 bloom, the worst ever observed, to zero. “There’s a big impact on these ecosystems”, Anderson said.

Toledo has stockpiled four times the amount of potassium permanganate, chlorine, and powdered carbon as the city used a year ago to help remove the chief toxin, microcystin. Toledo’s drinking water was off-limits for just over two days last August.

The South China Morning Post said the bloom is now dispersed over more than 13,000 square miles of water along the eastern coast of Shandong province. “They are prepared with the chemicals that they need (to treat toxins)”. The charcoal typically costs more. “They can develop rapidly and may float around the lake, requiring visitors to exercise their best judgment”.

Though effects will vary with winds and won’t peak until September, NOAA expects the 2015 Lake Erie bloom to measure 8.7 on the severity index, with a range from 8.1 to potentially as high as 9.5. But the worst year of growth was in 2009, according to Don Anderson, a WHOI senior scientist.

Exercise caution with respect to eating fish caught in water where blue-green algal blooms occur. It got sucked into Toledo’s water-intake crib and into the city’s Collins Park Water Treatment Plant.

Tinka Hyde, Water Division Director at the U.S. EPA, also introduced target phosphorus loads and load reduction goals required to address the problem, as recommended in a newly released report from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement’s Annex 4, which includes the United States and Canada.

The research programs supporting this work are authorized under the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, known as HABHRCA, which was amended and reauthorized by Congress through 2018. Anderson added that the ulva floats and moves away, aggregating into rafts – floating patches of algae – that continues to grow.

Representatives from NOAA, Heidelberg University, the University of Toledo, the Ohio Lake Erie Commission and LimnoTech were also on hand to answer questions related to the forecast and HABs in general. But that all changed as the rains fell, and continued to fall.