Algae bloom knocks off swimming at Boggs

Mike Grant, Washington Times-Herald, Ind.
·3 min read

Aug. 1—LOOGOOTEE — The beach is closed and officials are saying people should not swim in West Boggs Lake. The big blast of heat last week that made the water so appealing turned into a catalyst that set off a dangerous blue-green algae bloom.

"We do weekly water tests to make certain the water is safe," said West Boggs Park Superintdent Nathan Rihm. "Knowing we have blue-green algae here, I sent a sample off to get checked for toxin and algae levels. When those get too high, we have to close the swimming."

Officials had been watching the lake closely and when the temperatures soared into the upper 90s last week the lake underwent a change.

"The algae has a lot of food to feed off of in our lake," said Rihm. "There is 13 times more phosphorous in the water than there should be. The algae feed off of that phosphorous then causes the toxic blooms."

Officials say that once the bloom hits the toxins stay in the water and they do not anticipate opening the beech any time soon.

"I just put more chemicals in to treat it," said Rihm. "It is hard to say how long the problem will last of how long the toxins will remain in the lake after the algae dies."

The algae blooms produce cyanotoxins. Those are shown to be irritants to your skin, eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and lungs through contact or inhalation, and your liver, stomach, kidneys, and nervous system through ingestion.

"We are trying to ride a line here," said Rihm. "We want people to know there is a problem. We also want them to know we are trying to clean it up."

The park has helped in the formation of a conservancy district in the watershed. There are plans to dredge out a pair of filled in retention ponds upstream. Those upstream problems that have built up over decades has resulted in this algae bloom.

"That is caused by fertilizer and chemicals leching into the lake from the watershed," said Rihm. "The toxic algae blooms are something we are going to have to deal with every summer unless we can fix this."

While drinking and swimming in West Boggs is off limits for now, boating and fishing is considered safe.

"Boating and fishing is totally safe," said Nihm. "If you wind up getting wet, wash off with hot soapy water. Also we want people to keep their pets out of the water because these toxins can affect them too."

This past weekend the park put on a music festival to raise money to clean up the lake. The closing of the beach showed why the Park is looking to get money to get the water issues fixed.

"West Boggs is such a nice park," said Nihm. "We generate $10 million in tourism revenue in the area. The health of this lake is a big deal. We want people to know we are working on it. We have a Go Fund Me page. The weekend concert went to our lake enhancement fund."

Rihm says that despite the heat and the closing of the beach officials considered the benefit concert a success.

"It was pretty hot," he said. "We would have liked to raise more money. We did have some people show up. We received some donations, but the heat turned a lot of people away."

Park officials say at this point say they can do some treatments but those are expensive and estimates to treat the entire lake run into the millions.

That leaves them to continue to do testing, keeping the public informed and encouraging people in the lake's watershed to limit their use of fertilizers and try to control the sediment running downstream.