Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Paul Dearlove

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. So it’s pretty early in the summer and yet we’re kind of seeing this vivid green scum in our lakes already. And we’re seeing some warnings to stay out of certain bodies of water. So joining me to kind of talk about what that is and why that is, is Paul Dearlove, he’s from the Clean Lakes Alliance.

Paul Dearlove:

Glad to be here, thank you.

Marisa Wojcik:

Paul, thanks for being here, yeah. So first of all, what is cyanobacteria? And kind of, what is the term that we would know it by and what’s happening?

Paul Dearlove:

Good question, so cyanobacteria is actually, a more frequently heard phrase for it is blue-green algae. That’s the more common reference to it. But it’s a bacteria; it’s a photosynthesizing bacteria, so it can get its energy from sunlight. Cyanobacteria has been around for over 2 billion years on earth, so this isn’t necessarily a new phenomenon. It’s in all our lakes; the problem is that, through human activities, especially, we are increasing the nutrients that are getting into our lakes that are causing cyanobacteria to form these massive blooms, like what we’ve been seeing on our local lakes here in Madison.

Marisa Wojcik:

What are some of these nutrients and where are they coming from?

Paul Dearlove:

So, the biggest nutrient of concern to us, Clean Lakes Alliance has been working on reducing the amount of phosphorus that’s getting into the waterways. Phosphorus is a nutrient that essentially limits the growth of algae, or cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria needs certain ingredients in order to thrive. They need sunlight; they need nutrients; they need carbon. They need just some basic elements, and phosphorus is usually what’s in the shortest supply. So it’s a critical ingredient and it’s in the shortest supply. It’s also something that’s easier for us to manage. Phosphorus is contained in things like manure, fertilizers, even leaves. So in the fall if we get a lot of leaves in the streets, and you get rain on those leaves–

Marisa Wojcik:

Oh really?

Paul Dearlove:

Leaves can produce a nutrient-rich tea that’s phosphorus-laden that then runs into our storm sewers and then into the lakes untreated. So lots of different ways for phosphorus to get into the water, even soil eroding from farm fields, from building sites, contains phosphorus. So that’s something that we can control, because we can control the amount of leaves in the street through different collection-type programs; we can control how we deal with manure that’s generated. We can control how much soil erosion occurs by protecting the soil with a blanket of vegetation, for instance. So, if we can keep the phosphorus out of the lakes and rivers, then we can start to manage the amount or the intensity of the cyanobacteria blooms.

Marisa Wojcik:

We can change that recipe.

Paul Dearlove:

Right, right.

Marisa Wojcik:

This year we’ve seen a lot of erosion though, because of rainfall, and is that kind of why we’re seeing a lot of the algae blooms pop up early and in the intensity that they’re happening?

Paul Dearlove:

That’s a good observation and we’re having a tough year, as you know, locally and I’m sure statewide too, because we had a very wet spring. You know, with changes in climate, different weather patterns that we’re seeing, we’re starting to see more-intense rainfall events, more frequent, so we’re getting wetter. And when the water does fall from the sky, it seems to happen in larger, more intense rainstorms, which is a lot harder to manage. So when we design best management practices to control how water runs off the landscape and what it’s bringing with it, into rivers and streams and lakes, you design those practices based on what you can expect in terms of water running off the landscape. And if our rainstorms are getting more frequent, more intense, or they’re happening at times when they weren’t happening in the past, like we get warmer winters, and you have, like you remember the February rainstorm we had?

Marisa Wojcik:

Mm-hmm.

Paul Dearlove:

Well, that water cannot absorb into the ground, because the ground’s still frozen. So let’s say you have residential fertilizers that are leftover from the spring, that’s melting into the snow melt, or you have manure that’s being spread on frozen fields, because manure’s always being generated and we have significant dairy operations in our watershed, that has nowhere to go, but right into the ditches and streams and then our sewers and then into the lakes. So that is a problem. Basically we’re intensifying the delivery mechanism that’s sending phosphorus-rich material into the water. So wetter spring, and now we have warmer weather. So warmer temperatures means warmer water temperatures, and that causes cyanobacteria to flourish.

Marisa Wojcik:

Your organization works on kind of the Yahara Watershed, but this happens in lakes all over the state, or is it more common in certain areas than others? Because it’s been happening pretty intensely in kind of the Southeast Wisconsin area.

Paul Dearlove:

Right, it can happen anywhere. Parts of the state, and country for that matter, are obviously different. You know, we have different soil types in the southern part of Wisconsin, for instance, than the northern part of Wisconsin. We have more fertile soils, more productive farmland in the south; the geology’s a little different. So our risk for cyanobacteria blooms are probably greater in the southern half of the state than the northern part of the state. The risk increases when watersheds increase, so the watershed is the land area that drains to a particular water body. If you have a very large watershed, or a very large landmass that’s shedding water to that water body, you have more opportunities for phosphorus to get into the water. So what we’re dealing with here in the Greater Madison area is a 500-plus square-mile watershed, feeding five lakes. So it’s huge; so the risk is higher.

Marisa Wojcik:

Yeah, right, and when it’s this hot outside, people want to go and jump into a body of water. So is this bacteria toxic? I mean if we see a warning but we don’t see any algae, should we be like, “Ah, it’s fine. I can still jump in the lake”?

Paul Dearlove:

Well we have a great asset here; the lakes are an amazing resource for the community. The vast majority of the time if you went down to the lake to go boating or fishing or swimming, you’re going to be fine; the risk is just not there. But that’s not the case all the time. I mean, just a week or two ago we had just about every beach closed throughout the entire five-lake chain, 16, 20 beaches were closed, because of cyanobacteria. There are two things that close beaches. One is cyanobacteria, and the other is E. coli bacteria, so two different types of bacteria. E. coli, more commonly it’s a bacteria found in the guts of warm-blooded animals. So if you have pet waste, cow manure, things like that, even human waste, getting into the water that is E. coli, and E. coli is an indicator that pathogens that are associated with those animals, that can cause you to get sick, might be in the water too, so it’s an indicator that is tested. And if you have a high level of E. coli bacteria, then you close the beach, because you don’t want people to get sick, the chances are there. Cyanobacteria is sort of the same way. Cyanobacteria may or may not produce toxins. There are like 2700 strains, or different species of cyanobacteria that are known right now; there’s probably a lot more than that. Only some of those will produce toxins. There are certain species; they have fancy names like Microcystis and Anabaena. But there’s a few that we keep an eye out for. You can tell through a microscope what species they are. And those can produce toxins, but you never know when they are. So the best we can do is, you can pay for expensive testing, it’s like $250 per test, a single test, to check for toxins. But then that takes, sometimes a few days to get the results back; by then the bloom could be gone. It might not have been producing toxins but now it is; so it’s very looking backward, looking in the rear-view mirror.

Marisa Wojcik:

So even within a couple of days the blooms can clear?

Paul Dearlove:

The blooms can be very ephemeral. So they can form in a manner of hours; they can form in particular parts of a water body and not others. The massive bloom that we saw on Mendota and Monona especially, just this past week or two, that one was patchy but it covered the entire water body. Cyanobacteria does best in calm conditions. When it’s warm, sunny, and calm. And once you had those runoff events where you had lots of rain washing lots of phosphorus in, that’s a recipe for huge blooms.

Marisa Wojcik:

So it kind of sits there and stews.

Paul Dearlove:

It stews and then the cyanobacteria can regulate their buoyancy, so when you look at the water, it can look like pea soup. Cyanobacteria is in there. People mostly know about cyanobacteria through the scums that they form. So when they regulate their buoyancy in a calm day, they can get to the surface for that sunlight. They form that oil or paint-like sheen on the water surface.

Marisa Wojcik:

Mm-hmm, but it might be lower down.

Paul Dearlove:

It could be lower down. If the water looks like pea soup, that’s a good indicator that’s probably a blue-green algae bloom. Well mixed, but pea soup, you can’t see more than a few inches under the water. Probably would avoid the water at that point. If you have what looks like a paint slick, and it doesn’t have to be green, it can be like hues of blue and white; it can look like even toothpaste. Like last year around this time, it looked like frothy toothpaste covering the water surface. But the surface blooms form on those calm days.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay, so if I want to go windsurfing or tubing, how do I know for sure if there’s a particular threat or warning out not to go in the water? Is there any sort of way that I can double-check that I’ll be safe?

Paul Dearlove:

That’s the $64,000 question, right? Everyone wants to know; they don’t want to have to be algae experts, they don’t have to go out and try to figure out is that a cyanobacteria bloom or “blue-green algae”; is that green algae, which is benign.

Marisa Wojcik:

Oh, okay.

Paul Dearlove:

So we want to know that, right? What Clean Lakes Alliance did for our area is we developed a website that you can go to, a dynamic website you can get on your phone, called LakeForecast.org. And if you get on Lake Forecast you can get an interactive map and you can see which beaches are closed, which ones are open. And our citizen monitors are feeding information to that website, so it’s like trained weather spotters, but for algae blooms and poor water quality conditions. They are trained in how to identify them, so you can go to this site and you can find out, okay I’m going down to Tenney Park Beach, or whatever beach it might be, and you can look to see what is the latest report for that area.

Marisa Wojcik:

Is there a centralized kind of information hub for the state?

Paul Dearlove:

Unfortunately, no.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay.

Paul Dearlove:

Unfortunately no, so generally, regardless of where you are in the state of Wisconsin, if you have public beaches on your local water body, they’re owned by somebody, right? If they’re not a private beach, they’re a public beach, they’re either owned by the state, so like maybe Wisconsin DNR owns that and manages that beach. It could be the county where you live; it could be a town, a village, a city. So you would want to first know who owns that beach. Sorry, there’s a little bit of like, sleuthing, detective work you have to do, because if you know who owns the beach you can get on their website and most likely they will have information about whether the beach is open or closed, you would hope. Otherwise you have to go down to the beach and then hope that there’s a sign down there that’s warning you if a cyanobacteria bloom has been spotted or if it’s closed because of E. coli bacteria.

Marisa Wojcik:

So if I want to risk it, and I don’t want to go through all of the research, and I just want to get in the water, I want to bring my dog with me, what are the potential health side effects that could happen if I or a pet were to go into a lake that had toxic cyanobacteria?

Paul Dearlove:

Well pets and kids are most at risk. I want to make that very clear. So dogs and kids don’t really have that maturity and thought process to be able to determine if something’s safe or not, even visually.

Marisa Wojcik:

Sure, yeah.

Paul Dearlove:

So, if there’s any doubt I would keep kids and dogs well clear of the water, even though it can affect all of us if there’s toxins being released. Precaution is the best way, so again, if the water looks like pea soup, or if you have a sheen on the surface, a very evident sheen, looks like green paint’s been spilled, maybe there’s weird colors associated with it. Maybe it looks like an oil slick: stay away from the water. The very kind of rule of thumb, quick test for determining whether it’s a cyanobacteria bloom or if it’s a more benign algae bloom, which you don’t have to worry about, is the stick test. So if you can put a stick in the water, in this bloom that’s forming, this algae, if you can drag the stick through the water and lift it up, if something’s hanging from it, it’s most likely not something you don’t have to necessarily worry about it creating toxins, it’s not cyanobacteria, it’s not blue-green algae. Blue-green algae is something that will not collect on the stick. If you tried to scoop it up it would just fall with the water through your fingers and through your hand.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay, and if I were to go into a lake with toxic cyanobacteria, what are the side effects I might see health-wise?

Paul Dearlove:

So the ways that you can be exposed are one, through your skin, just surface contact. You might feel itchy; it might start to develop a rash. You can also ingest, so that’s why we worry about pets and kids, because if a pet goes in the water, they will lick their fur afterwards, and so a good thing to do if you think your dog was in water that might have had cyanobacteria in it, a good practice is to hose off your dog before your dog can sort of lick their fur clean. But ingestion is one way, so a dog going down and drinking the water, a bad thing. Kids not really thinking about it and ingesting the water. Then you might get like diarrhea, you might just get stomach cramping. Another way that people don’t think about is respiration. So, cyanobacteria can aerosolize. So, if you think about a motorboat going through a green paint slick cyanobacteria bloom, right? That prop wash is agitating the water and creating water vapor. Well the toxins can be in that vapor. So if you’re water skiing through a cyanobacteria bloom, and you’re behind a boat and it’s got its–

Marisa Wojcik:

It’s churning it up.

Paul Dearlove:

It’s churning it up; you can inhale, and then you can have respiratory distress, like trouble breathing and so forth. So, multiple ways where you can be exposed. Again, this all sounds very dire, right?

Marisa Wojcik:

Yeah!

(laughs)

Paul Dearlove:

But it’s really pretty straightforward in terms of how, if you look at the water and it doesn’t look right, and you avoid that water at that time, 99% of the time you’re going to be safe.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay; so the last question for you: is there ways that we are kind of abating or mitigating this from happening? Is it on individuals to not use lawn fertilizers? Is it more of a policy issue? What do we do to kind of prevent it from getting more and more intense?

Paul Dearlove:

It’s all of the above. Most of our water bodies are suffering from like, the death by 10,000 cuts kind of situation, where it’s going to take all of us doing small actions to have a cumulative impact that’s going to translate into cleaner water. So, simple things we can do at home: get leaves out of the street. So we talked earlier about leaves in the street gutter accumulating in the fall, rainwater going through that. What’s a simple way, if you rake your leaves six times during the fall, once you’re raking those leaves out, rake in just the three feet from the gutter of the street, get those leave out of there, because that’s going to send phosphorus into the storm sewer. We all have space in our yards, or most of us have space in our yards, to have lawns; why not direct our downspouts to those lawns so that the water can absorb into the lawn versus going down the sidewalk, going down, picking up stuff in the street. So the more we can get water that’s shedding off of our roofs, our driveways, sidewalks, into the soil, into the ground where it can be filtered, that’s a good thing. You’ve heard of rain gardens? That’s just a pretty garden that’s next to your driveway or your roof downspouts that accepts water and gets it into the ground, so it doesn’t overtax the storm sewer system. So those are just sort of simple things that residential, you know, homeowners can do. For farmers we encourage them to adopt farming practices that keep soil in place and minimize erosion. Limiting fertilizer use, that’s a good point that you brought up. We’re fortunate that in Wisconsin, in our area we have a phosphorus fertilizer ban. So phosphorus is not allowed except in unique situations, like if you’re trying to start a new lawn, or if you have a soil test that shows that your soils are deficient of phosphorus. Otherwise if you go to a commercial provider and you get lawn fertilizer, the phosphorus has been taken out. So that’s helped a lot. But lawn fertilizer is going to be a small, around here it’s going to be small piece of the larger puzzle.

Marisa Wojcik:

Okay. Well Paul thanks so much for joining us and for telling us more about this.

Paul Dearlove:

Glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

Hopefully we’ll all be a little bit safer out on the lakes. If you like this interview, please share it and please leave your comments below; we want to hear from you. For more from Here & Now, visit Wisconsin Public Television at wpt.org and thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.