I HATE ALGAE.

 

 

Over the past four our water quality monitoring program has compiled an impressive database.  We began this program with some longstanding assumptions about water flow and mixing patterns among the islands.  Each year as we collected additional data we found that those ideas had to be modified. What we know today about the dynamics of water sources and mixing at times barely resemble those initial presumptions and that is especially true regarding the South Channel.  Both the outflow of water from inland sources and the inflow and mixing of water from the bay are very much less than had been previously thought.  The water in our closed end bays may be exchanged as little as a couple of times a year.  This means that the outflow from our cottages stays with us, just off our docks, for quite a while.

 

It must be understood that anything we put in or on the ground will eventually find its way to and into the lake.   A well functioning septic system deals well with bacteria, but minerals such as phosphates and nitrates are eventually passed on to the lake water, and even though they may be absorbed and used by growing  plants they are eventually dissolved into the water.

 

Although there are a number of spots in our general local that are already very seriously degraded by ground and septic system runoffs, Sturgeon Bay is a disaster, this problem is much easier to prevent than cure

 

                                                                                                Stan Topping