Officials discuss lake health
Zebra mussels likely living in Grand Lake SM
CELINA — Zebra mussels that have increased in numbers in Indian Lake are most likely in Grand Lake St. Marys as well, but Wright State University – Lake Campus Professor Dr. Stephen Jacquemin told Lake Improvement Association members the mussels haven’t “taken off” in Grand Lake.
“Every time a boat is taken out from an Ohio lake, there's very clear laws. You have to wash your boat, you have to rinse it, you have to flush your live wells.
That's all in an effort to stop the spread of aquatic, invasive species. All of that is a law. As we know, everybody follows all law, all the time,” Jacquemin joked. “The truth is, there's enough boat traffic between the two lakes, that if there was going to be a massive transfer event, it's already happened. Zebra mussels haven't taken off here. The reason they haven't been taken off, I promise you, is not because they haven't been introduced.”
Jacquemin said they’ve been introduced accidentally and it wouldn’t surprise him if they’ve gotten in through a number of other ways.
“There's something fundamentally different about this system than other systems,” he said of Grand Lake. “That could change, but some of the scientific literature really does point to low level toxins interfering with certain developmental stages of the mussels. In terms of the exact reason, I wish I could tell you with 100% certainty what's going on, but I don't know. Undoubtedly they've been transferred here.”
Jacquemin said that mussels attach to hard structures like big rocks using byssal threads.
“It’s a tiny thread that secretes an enzyme that cements itself to a hard structure,” he said. “That hard structure could be other zebra mussels as well, but you've got to have some hard, original structure and we don't have a ton of those. We've got docks and things like that, but you have to be able to get to those places to attach to begin with.
As for the lake quality itself, Grand Lake St. Marys State Park Manager Dave Faler was hopeful that he would be able to take down the red lake advisory signs this week.
“We did install the nasty red signs at the beaches. Good news though — I test on Sunday and I get the results back on Wednesday — this Wednesday, if I get results like I did this past Wednesday, I will be out until 9 p.m. removing signs,” said Faler. “Hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll be at that point on Wednesday.”
Faler explained the testing process that’s used to test for algae blooms in the state of Ohio.
“The way the state of Ohio is set up, we test at ankle height, knee height and hip height at three different sections on the beach. You take all nine of those samples, put it in one bottle, mix it up and then send it off for results,” said Faler. “As Dr. Jacquemin’s said before, we have algae blooms in some areas of the lake and then some areas will have a big algae bloom or none at all. They kind of move around. It's possible that I just got lucky last week and the algae blooms were away from the shore.”
Jacquemin said last year’s conditions were a result of a dry spring.
“Last year, we had extraordinary low runoff. There were months when we had 90% reductions in external loading as a result of 90% reductions in runoff,” he said. “That fueled some really interesting things we saw last year including but not limited to: really low algal biomass and really low toxin levels. That was a function of no rain.”
As for this year, he said it’s a result of conservation, with algal toxins continuing to decrease after its spike in 2015.
“Last year was exciting and wonderful to see those non-detect toxins — that was something to certainly celebrate, but that was the result of no rain,” said Jacquemin. “This is the result of real effort on everybody's part. All of the agriculture best management practices in the watershed that have done nothing but increase over the past couple decades. Algal toxins spiked in 2015 and they've been trending downward ever since.”
Jacquemin said all the wetlands are running and operational and the ones that are in the construction phase continue to make good strides.
“Our wetlands are pumping at the rates they should be,” he said. “This time of year, Coldwater Creek Wetland should be about 3 or so million gallons a day and it's doing that.”
He added that the Prairie Creek wetland should be at about 1 million gallons a day and it’s meeting that as well.
Jacquemin was asked how Grand Lake stacks up against other lakes in terms of water quality and he said it’s in the middle of the pack now.
“There was a time when no other lake or public water sources in the country that had higher toxins than Grand Lake, that is not happening right now,’” he said. “Grand Lake is not in the bottom third either. It's more in the middle of the pack at this point.”