[Durham INC] FW: New Jordan Lake Bill Might Sting

[Pat Carstensen]

How about we just hire a bunch of teenagers to go out and kick their feet to stir the water?

Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 18:52:49 -0400
From: molly.diggins at sierraclub.org
Subject: New Jordan Lake Bill Might Sting
To: NC-CONS-FORUM at LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG

FYI, from a media advisory we sent out today.Molly
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Tomorrow at 10 am, the House Environment Committee will take up a revised version of S 515, Jordan Lake Water Quality Act.




S 515, as passed by the Senate, would entirely repeal the Jordan Lake rules and create a subcommittee of legislators to start over.  Jordan Lake is a source of drinking water for an estimated 300,000 people in the Triangle area as well as a major outdoor recreation destination.




The House proposal is expected to delay clean-up of the lake for an additional three years while funneling public funds from the cash-strapped Clean Water Management Trust Fund (~$1.5 million over two years) for a pilot project using a questionable technology.




But what is this technology?




One company has emerged as having actively sought consideration as the cost-effective solution to reducing algal growth in Jordan Lake -- and it’s not new technology.  




SolarBee is a water circulator that has been used in municipal water tanks and small holding ponds and acts to increase dissolved oxygen around an aerator.  Similar technologies have been around since the 1960s.   




The SolarBee unit is 16 ft across and extends several feet into the lake.  It appears it could take tens if not hundreds of units to treat the algal blooms in Jordan Lake. 



(http://lakes.medoraco.com/sitools/gettool/spec10000v18)




SolarBee has been used in North Carolina on Greenfield Lake, a small urban lake in Wilmington.  The city uses a number of strategies to improve conditions in the lake including algaecides, grass eating carp, the SolarBees, manual removal of invasives, and others.  




Cape Fear Riverkeeper Kemp Burdette, whose organization Cape Fear River Watch is based in Wilmington, had this to say:  “the idea of using SolarBees in Jordan Lake seems a bit like trying to put out a forest fire with a spray bottle.”









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