Toxic algae may have shut water park forever

MANAGERS at a water park closed down over an outbreak of toxic algae have warned that it may never reopen.

Aqua Park Suffolk, an inflatable water park billed as the largest of its kind in the UK, opened on July 7 but closed two weeks later.

Anglian Water, which runs the Alton Water reservoir where the park is based, ordered the closure after a bloom of blue-green algae caused by the heatwave.

The water company has now closed the park for the rest of the summer, and Richard Drinkwater, a director of the park, said it would only reopen next year if Anglian Water could give assurances that the algae could be controlled.

He added: “We would very much like to return next year. But as customer safety remains our highest priority, we will be reviewing Anglian Water’s proposals to provide a safe environment for our future customers.”

Awater park in Suffolk has closed because of an outburst of blue-green algae. It happens all the time in hot summers. The fear is that the little organisms may give off toxins. Perhaps we are giving these aqueous blooms too fearsome a reputation. They are not algae at all by modern ways of classifying things, but a kind of bacterium, cyanobacteria, and if the theorists of the origins of life are right, we owe a debt of gratitude to cyanobacteria. A couple of billion years ago these creatures found out how to photosynthesise. One day, millions of years later, we’d be in need of the oxygen this produced, even if in the meantime it set off a long ice age and a widespread extinction of life. Compared with that, Suffolk holidaymakers have little to complain of. For nature is not always meant to be a walk in the park, even in a park.