In hot water Blue-green algae problem persists at Lake Torment
For Shirley Deveau, life at the lake is a tad lackluster these days.
Deveau, along with her husband, decided to start permanently residing at their Lake Torment cottage in 2013.
They bought the property in 2006, and could hardly wait to spend more time on the lake. Instead, they’re being advised to do the exact opposite.
In recent years, Deveau said environment officials have issued advisories asking people to stay out of the water due to the presence of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria blooms).
“We live here and we like to swim and kayak and… you’re not supposed to be doing those things in the summer when you have blue-green algae,” she said, noting that some people will still use the lake no matter what.
“Once the order is issued it’s there and if you choose to use the lake, then you’re using it at your own risk.”
Deveau fears the algae will prove to be a triple threat with environmental, recreational and economical impacts.
“You tend to have a bloom in the spring and then one again in the fall. We had a few more than that, it seemed, this year,” she said.
“It is going to do something with our property values, for one thing. There’s no doubt about it.”
Members of the West Lake Torment Homeowners’ Association voiced their concerns at a Municipality of the County of Kings council meeting in July.
“Over time if we don’t do any- thing about it, we’re going to have more and more and more of it,” said Deveau.
“If we do nothing then it’s just going to continually get worse.”
Deveau hopes the council elected in October will help residents of Lake Torment tap into federal money through Infrastructure Canada’s Clean Water and Wastewater Fund program.
“We’d like them to at least begin with our area as a pilot to see if they can get homeowners to clean up old septic systems and use this fund that is available,” said Deveau.
Dr. Tri Nguyen- Quang, an associate professor at Dalhousie University’s Agricultural Campus, started studying the blooms at Lake Torment in the summer of 2015.
“In August 2015, during a visit to East Dalhousie area, I detected blooms generated by a species from the Anabaena family in the south part of Lake Torment, equivalent to 285,000 cells/ml (33 per cent) in the sampled water containing a bloom. This is actually a very worrisome percentage as it is higher than Alert level 2 according to (the World Health Organization) WHO,” the professor wrote in an e- mail to Kings County News Sept. 23.
Nguyen-Quang also detected algal blooms in Chain Lake, Armstrong Lake and Lake Sherbrooke. Through his research, he’s noted that Chain, Armstrong and Torment are interconnected lakes.
He said property owners can take steps to help prevent the blooms from spreading or intensifying.
“Try not to reject directly the wastewater to the lake, including water from fertilizing, herbicide and pesticide processes,” he said, adding that septic systems should be checked often.
“When you do boating, please try to clean your boat (kayak , etc.) before moving them from one lake to other(s) to avoid the contamination in series.”
Nguyen- Quang explained that algae only presents potential risks when blooms form, and some blooms are not considered toxic.
“Blue-green algae are, in general, toxic algal species… the real concern is that from the last several years, when observing many lakes in Nova Scotia, I found out that cyanobacterial blooms occurred with a worrisome speed and with intensification,” he said.
El Nino is partly to blame. “This summer… it was effected by El Nino phenomenon so blooms were appearing soon in some lakes and not in July to August as usual. However, we have to wait until November when the weather becomes really cold to conclude about blooms for this year,” said Nguyen- Quang, adding that it is concerning that the problem cannot be adequately monitored throughout the province with the resources available at this time.
“Nova Scotia has a huge number of lakes (nearly 3,000 lakes), so I cannot have labours and funding to deal with the monitoring issue for all.”