It has always been muddy, murky and warm, due to its shallow depth, making it suitable only for tolerant fish such as crappie, catfish and bullheads.
The natural evolution of such impoundments is to “silt in” and become wetlands or swamps (which is what is happening).
Historically, cows spent summers wallowing, drinking, cooling and defecating in the ditches and streams that comprise the reservoir’s watershed. Although this problem has been corrected, the explosion of human population has increased the contribution (through sewage and septic systems) to the lake’s excessive nutrient content.
The sewage problem is compounded by our use of household garbage disposals that grind garbage into a liquid form that ends up at the sewage plants and eventually into rivers, streams, lakes and impoundments such as Grand Lake St. Mary.
The article by Jim DeBrosse (“‘The clock is ticking. The lake is dying’,” July 2) is remiss in ignoring the City of Celina as a prime culprit in the excessive algae–creating phosphate levels.
The EPA has ordered Celina to cut its phosphate effluent by two-thirds by 2011. A 66-percent excess phosphate level from the sewage of more than 25,000 people should be considered at least an equally contributing factor in the algae bloom as the agricultural runoff — especially when the city sewage runoff is 24/7.
President Obama says, “One in eight Americans are hungry and food banks are low.” Therefore, we should support the more than 450 farm families and free them to do their most important job: providing us and food banks with nutritious, low-cost food.
Charles and
Rebecca Reier
Greenville