Treatments scheduled for West Beach
Grand Lake beach to receive new round of treatments to help water quality
CELINA — Plans for treating West Beach are underway as officials continue to fight the algal bloom in Grand Lake St. Marys.
During Saturday morning’s meeting of the Lake Improvement Association, Agriculture and Natural Resources Director for Mercer County Theresa Dirksen said there are plans to dredge the entire beach and try a different combination of treatments to the water.
“We tried an alum treatment last year without much success. It only had about a six to eight hour impact on the water quality,” said Dirksen. “This year, our plans start with dredging the entire beach area again. ODNR (Ohio Department of Natural Resources) is going to get whatever they can with their suction dredges. We are then going to hire a diver firm to come in and get everything close to the beach area.”
Dirksen said the goal is to get as much muck out as they can and once the dredging is done, they will put additional sand into the beach area as well.
“Once that’s completed, we intend to start with some different water quality treatments at West Beach. Our intent it to use a couple of products,” said Dirksen.
She explained that they will use algaecide and phoslock to treat.
“It’s like alum but they say it’s better and it is more expensive. It doesn’t use aluminum. It uses lanthanum clay to bind phosphorus and settle it to the bottom,” Dirksen said about the phoslock. “We’re going to be doing two treatments of just the algaecide and then we’ll be doing three treatments with both of them throughout the course of the summer. Around the first of May, is what our target will be to start these treatments and continue that through probably MidJuly.”
For the treatment trains, Dirksen said ODNR is going to expand the pond at the Prairie Creek Treatment Train which will improve the downstream wetland cells.
Dirksen said she’s hopeful that Sean Finke with ODNR will begin applying a pesticide next week to the wetlands to get rid of the carp, which have destroyed a lot of the plant life in the area.
“It will kill the other fish as well, but the carp have destroyed a lot of the plant life which is essential for up-taking nutrients. We need to get the carp out of the wetlands and try to keep them at bay,” said Dirksen. “This will be the first time we treat Prairie Creek. We did it at Coldwater Creek last spring. We didn’t hear a whole lot of complaints. Yes you’re going to see dead fish; yes they’re going to decay. We’re going to see scavengers come in; we’re going to see the eagles come down and get rid of a lot of those. But we want to get that done before we turn these systems on. I’m hoping we can turn these on sooner rather than later.”
Grand Lake St. Marys Park Manager Dave Faler provided an update on the lake and reminded the public about safety concerns of being out on the ice.
“Ice in the channels is not safe right now. I made a gentleman yesterday get off the ice who was ice fishing,” he said. “This time of year, when the ice is letting up, it’s definitely not safe. Please do not go out there.”
Faler had a rule to keep in mind when deciding to go out on the lake during this time as the ice is beginning to melt.
“Take the air temperature and the water temperature, and if they do not add up to 100 degrees, you’re in imminent danger of hypothermia,” said Faler. “The lower that temperature is, the quicker it will set and the more difficulties you’ll have trying to get out of it.”
LIA President Keith Westrick shared an update about a recent call he, Dirksen and LIA member Nick Rentz had with the Environmental Protection Agency.
“It’s amazing every way they’re attacking this problem here at Grand Lake. If you look back just a few short years, we had no treatment trains, we had no wetlands; we were just basically flushing it straight into the lake. Everything they’re doing is tremendous,” said Westrick. “Theresa, Nick and I all had a phone call this past month with the EPA, just wanting to know what the response was to the algal bloom.
“Nick and I talked to them for over an hour. It’s not necessarily good to be on somebody’s radar because you have a problem, but we are on their radar. They do know there is a problem and with a lot of this stuff, they’re looking at us as kind of the experimental side of how it’s going to work. It’s good people at the state and federal level know that there’s things that need to be corrected here.”
In other business, the Lake Improvement Association:
• Presented a check to the Mercer Soil and Water Conservation District. On hand to receive the check was Watershed Technician Sean Drew who also gave a presentation about the district’s soil sampling program.