Algae Season
The recipe for serious algae blooms: Hot temperatures; Prolonged dryness or drought; and Excess nutrients All three are currently affecting the coast as reported in the media and help illustrate that the state needs to continue its pursuit of measures to control nutrient pollution…
Diets
Efforts to reduce nutrient pollution to waterways have often been compared to a diet. That is, nutrients in our waterways such as nitrogen and phosphorus are like calories for humans, they become a problem when their intake is excessive. Signs and symptoms of excess…
Attaining the Unattainable
A large figure in the world water quality policy weighed in on North Carolina’s current management paradigm. In a blog post, Ken Reckhow rejects some of the fanciful directions recently taken recently by the NC legislature to address impairments in Jordan and Falls lake…
Great Green Gobs
From the “in case you missed it” file, algae has been flourishing this year in Lake Okeechobee, Florida at levels 40 times higher than standards acceptable to the State, smelly decaying globs, and lots of finger pointing. One source for the algae causing pollution…
Pigs and More Pigs
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) released results of a study and a searchable map they completed on the expansion of pig and chicken farms in North Carolina. As they detail: “Over two decades alone, North Carolina’s swine population has nearly doubled, from 5.1 million…
Just because they say it…
As an amendment to House Bill 1030, the Senate passed its budget bill last week and with it, used a machete to demonstrate their view of the state’s efforts to reduce nutrient pollution to the Neuse and Pamlico estuaries as well as Jordan and…
What Does It Take?
What’s it take to restore large watersheds? That’s a question posed by NC’s Environmental Review Commission to the State’s Department of Environmental Quality and one they’ll have to report on at the end of 2016. It’s a hard question to answer, too, as there…
Bees Post Mortem
According to news reports, the funding for the much discussed Solar Bees in Jordan Lake has been pulled by the Department of Environmental Quality seemingly ending experimentation with this technology in the Lake. Medora, the manufacturers of the devices had won the ear of…
EPA on Nutrient Pollution
Here’s a primer on nutrient pollution posted by the EPA. It doesn’t highlight problems here in North Carolina, but nutrient pollution has plagued waterbodies such as the Chowan, Jordan and Falls lakes for years. Source: EPA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WIU7H1x3_8
Benefits on Nutrient Strategies
People often cite the cost of nutrient management strategies as a reason that they should not be undertaken. Indeed, the NC Division of Water Resource’s fiscal assessments of the cost of the Jordan and Falls Lake Nutrient Strategies estimate the implementation of each of…