Lake Erie is expected to have an algae bloom this year, but it should be less severe than the lake's recent troubles in 2011 and 2015.
Researchers
told the Sandusky Register that the Lake Erie bloom is expected to have a severity of 5.5. The lake's big bloom in 2011 was a 10 in severity, said Richard Stumpf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Forecasters were using bioavailable phosphorus to judge the possible bloom, Laura Johnson, director of the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio, told the Register.
The Toledo Blade reported that dry weather seen since May 1 could suppress Lake Erie algae, but a strong rain could spike it.
"We do expect there to be a bloom, but substantially smaller than past years," Stumpf told the Toledo Blade.
The area's algae problem has been long associated with agriculture runoff there.
Dave Spangler, a charter boat captain and member of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association, said that efforts must continue to decrease the amount of agricultural runoff that gets into the lake.
"Nature's telling us where the problem's coming from," Spangler told The Blade. "When you give [Lake Erie] a chance to flush itself out, the lake gets back to the way it's supposed to be."
The Wall Street Journal pointed out that two years ago, some 500,000 in the metropolitan Toledo area could not get drinking water because of a large Lake Erie algae bloom in the city's water supply.
Similarly, the southern Florida coastline and waterways have been slammed by "guacamole-thick" algae blooms that have been traced back to Lake Okeechobee, the country's second largest freshwater lake and the state's biggest lake,
according to ABC News.
John Campbell, a spokesman for the Jacksonville district of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, told ABC News that Lake Okeechobee is loaded with high amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus from numerous sources, including fertilization runoff from farms and urbanization.
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