MAYVILLE — It appears progress is being made in Chautauqua Lake in the fight against Harmful Algal Blooms.

Kevin Rose with the Jefferson Project gave a 40-minute virtual presentation during the recent county legislature meeting. Last year the legislature approved to spend $1 million on the Jefferson Project in its study on HABs. The money came from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act, which was given to municipalities and schools to help the economy recover from COVID-19.

Also contributing to the Jefferson Project is Chautauqua Institution, which has discussed creating a research center on its grounds.

The Jefferson Project at Lake George has been going on for 10 years. Its purpose is to “do a sophisticated technological approach to studying fresh water, with a goal of understanding the impact of human activity on fresh water, and how to mitigate those effects.”

In Chautauqua Lake, the Jefferson Project’s focus has been water quality and HAB research, particularly trying to identify what causes HABs and how to predict when and where they will occur. This research began in 2020.

“In 2023, we applied a lot of technologies, a lot of different approaches to doing this (research),” Rose explained.

Some of those include using vertical profilers, studying mass water movements between the north and south basins, manually measuring water quality nutrients, studying satellite imagery, and sampling the genes of specific species, including cyanobacteria. “The overall goal is to try to understand why blooms occur – these Harmful Algal Blooms – and why do they occur when they occur. What are the triggers for the blooms and what are the triggers for toxin production,” Rose explained.

Rose described times of the year when and where there’s little to no oxygen in parts of Chautauqua Lake, which makes it so that complex life can’t live there.

At the same time, these ‘dead zones,” explained Rose, tend to release phosphorus. “When we lose that oxygen and we lose it for months at a time, we get that internal loading of phosphorus. We balance that with external loading. External loading is phosphorus or nitrogen that comes in from the watershed around the lake,” he said.

Rose said their research shows that the combination of external and internal loading is when you get a lot of algal blooms.

He continued on, discussing times of the year when phosphorus increases, calling phosphorus “junk food for algae,” as well as discussing the exchange of water between the north and south basins.

The data, Rose said, is being processed by IBM, so they can make computer models.

NEXT STEPS

While the Jefferson Project’s focus has been on HABs and overall water quality, Rose said improving dissolved oxygen should be a key goal. He also discussed the importance of reducing external loading.

They want to develop and define a nutrient budget, calling it a “critical next step.” They also want to continue long-term monitoring of the lake to determine trends and provide an early warning for HABs.

“It’s really about the phosphorus and nitrogen reductions. The algal blooms will stop and certainly decline when phosphorus and nitrogen decline,” he said.

But there’s no short-term solution to make that happen.

“For example, if we were to apply a chemical treatment like alum to the lake, that will bind with the phosphorus and pull it out, but we still have a lot of external loading,” he said.

In 2024, they’re going to be doing tributary monitoring.

“We want to understand where is that phosphorus coming from and where is the nitrogen coming from. What types of events does it come in with? Is it only with the biggest precipitation events? That’s what we’ve seen in other lakes that we’ve studied,” he said.

That will help them assess pro-active management, including buffer zones, swales, and other artificially constructed structures, that might help prevent the flow of phosphorus and nitrogen into the lake.

Chautauqua Institution President Michael Hill thanked Rose for his presentation, as well as the county legislature and others who have invested and partnered with the Jefferson Project.

County Executive PJ Wendel also thanked Rose for the presentation and believes it will make a difference.

“This is science in that lake. Nothing anecdotal. No old wives tales, no old fisherman stories. This is the science working and telling us what is happening,” he said.