These are the unofficial results from the water sampling conducted by Nina & Chuck Henage on 8/24/2006 around 8:00 am. These results should be official later this  week.  I don’t plan to update this notice unless something changes

#1    Dock                            2 estimated  cfu
#2    Cedar Fork Creek    2 estimated cfu
#3    Booker Creek           34 estimated cfu
 
Caution level is individual reading above 400 cfu, or average above 200 cfu. 

Lake water temp:
27.5 C (Dock)
27 C (Cedar Fork Creek forebay)
27 C (Booker Creek inlet arm)

The lake is down one foot from lack of rainfall,  and the water has a sort of greenish cast.  There is a lot of goose down on the surface.  the Booker creek tributary is dry above the forebay.  Our lake looks a lot better than others in the area, but all are suffering from the intense heat and lack of rainfall

This test is an excellent example of the lack of a relationship between the aesthetic properties of the lake and the bacterial content.   In June the water was sparkling clear, but but we had higher fecal coliform  counts.  The rain that fills the lake also washes the poop off the ground in our watershed. 

We had another inquiry about dissolved oxygen. I forwarded this to Sandra Bradshaw, lab director at OWASA.  She has been very                                                                    helpful in the past, so I had  hopes that she might have a suggestion about how we could find out the “DO” status of our lake.  Sandra sent a crew to sample our lake on Monday, 8/28.  Here are the results:

Canoe Dock @ Swimming Area
Date/Time                         8/28/2006 @ 1347
Temperature, C°                    29.2
Conductivity, umhos/cm        177
pH,SU                                     7.7
Dissolved Oxygen, mg/L       6.3

These numbers look good.  Let me know if I can be of further help.

Sandra

Based on her interpretation, we are in good shape.  When I first got involved in our water testing in 1994, I had no idea how to interpret the fecal test results.  At this time, I have no good idea of the range of acceptable values for any of the parameters in the Monday sample results, but “These numbers look good” works for me….

As we approach the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Fran, and face the prospect of our current drought ending suddenly as the reult of “Ernesto”, I would like to mention the role OWASA took at our lake in Sept. of 1996. 

After the storm we were pretty isolated, the roads were blocked, no power, city water was questionable.  All the rain had created a “surf’s up” situation at the lake and without much else to do, a lot of people, mostly kids, were in the lake.  Beyond the immediate concern about fast moving water and submerged debris was the darker worry about contamination from inundated abandoned septic fields in our watershed. 

Our water testing laboratory at that time was in Burlington, and there was no way we were going to be able to get water samples there.   In desperation, I called OWASA to see if they knew of a water analysis facility that we might be able to get to, and expressed the above concern about what might have gotten into the water.  In what I consider to be very civic-minded, OWASA graciously offered to analyze our water.  Within a day, we had rthe results, which turned out to be very comparable to our routine test results!   That began a relationship between LFA and OWASA that has been everything from collaborative to distant,  and as the Monday test indicates, persists to this day!  Thank you again, Sandra!

A reminder about what happens when we get rain after an extended dry spell:   If we get a whole lot of rain at once, there will be mud and silt.  The two forebays should trap some of this, but the water will probably look sort of orange.   That should settle in a few days.  The color means silt is present and could be filling the bottom of our lake.  The first pulse of rainwater will have a lot of washed-off pet poop, unabsorbed fertilizer, etc, making the water “nutrient rich”.  This is generally undetectable to the senses.   If there is enough rain, that stuff should get flushed out,  if not, we may face a late-season algae bloom.  In any case, the bacteria should be elevated for a few days after the first rain, so use caution if you  plan to swim or let your children wade.  The bacteria will either die or get diluted depending on just how much rain we get.  It does not live on its own in water….

Chuck Henage