By Star-Ledger Editorial Board
It’s mid-July, and Lake Hopatcong has been desecrated by huge splotches of green slime that you keep at a safe distance, one measured by your tolerance for a horrid stench.
The largest lake in New Jersey is usually filled with swimmers, boats, jet skis, and fishing lines. Now it’s an untouchable vacation fantasy — yes, during the hottest week of the year, and the hottest year ever recorded — because you can’t tip a toe in it without risking a skin rash right now.
A harmful algal bloom has forced the Department of Environmental Protection to shut down all activity on the lake since June 17 (except for boating), and maybe it’s something you could endure if this slop had an expiration date. But the truth is, nobody knows. The DEP cannot even guarantee that the lake will be swimmable before summer’s end, though it seemed to be making progress in the most recent water sampling.
But that’s only one problem area: On Thursday, Greenwood Lake also got a no-swim advisory after tests registered levels of cyanobacteria that were 10 times higher than our health standard. Blooms have also appeared in four smaller lakes.
So this is no longer an anomaly for New Jersey.
This is manmade damage created by environmental apathy — a foul-smelling ooze that kills marine life, chokes ecosystems, ruins vacations, kneecaps businesses, sickens pets, and wrecks home values.
And it demands an aggressive response on state and local levels, because when you ask DEP Deputy Commissioner Debbie Mans whether this is the new normal, she replies, “Well, we’re not sure.”
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We can be sure about this: Even if Mother Nature lifts this stain in her own time, preventing its recurrence will require effort from every stakeholder – the DEP, the four communities around the lake, and the property owners.
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are triggered by phosphorus, a nutrient that generates algae. During heavy rain, the phosphorus leaches into the runoff from home septic systems and lawn fertilizer and ends up in the watershed, so with virtually every inch of Lake Hopatcong’s shoreline developed, it tends to proliferate.
So this is no longer an anomaly for New Jersey.
This is manmade damage created by environmental apathy — a foul-smelling ooze that kills marine life, chokes ecosystems, ruins vacations, kneecaps businesses, sickens pets, and wrecks home values.
And it demands an aggressive response on state and local levels, because when you ask DEP Deputy Commissioner Debbie Mans whether this is the new normal, she replies, “Well, we’re not sure.”
We can be sure about this: Even if Mother Nature lifts this stain in her own time, preventing its recurrence will require effort from every stakeholder – the DEP, the four communities around the lake, and the property owners.
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are triggered by phosphorus, a nutrient that generates algae. During heavy rain, the phosphorus leaches into the runoff from home septic systems and lawn fertilizer and ends up in the watershed, so with virtually every inch of Lake Hopatcong’s shoreline developed, it tends to proliferate.
So this is no longer an anomaly for New Jersey.
This is manmade damage created by environmental apathy — a foul-smelling ooze that kills marine life, chokes ecosystems, ruins vacations, kneecaps businesses, sickens pets, and wrecks home values.
And it demands an aggressive response on state and local levels, because when you ask DEP Deputy Commissioner Debbie Mans whether this is the new normal, she replies, “Well, we’re not sure.”
We can be sure about this: Even if Mother Nature lifts this stain in her own time, preventing its recurrence will require effort from every stakeholder – the DEP, the four communities around the lake, and the property owners.
Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) are triggered by phosphorus, a nutrient that generates algae. During heavy rain, the phosphorus leaches into the runoff from home septic systems and lawn fertilizer and ends up in the watershed, so with virtually every inch of Lake Hopatcong’s shoreline developed, it tends to proliferate.
Climate change is a major factor. More rain means more runoff, and higher temperatures can make algae turn into a toxic bloom within days.
It hardly matters now whether the state provided adequate funding for lake maintenance (short answer: no), whether the towns were alert to root causes, or whether property owners act responsibly. What matters is what happens next.
