Ottumwa Lagoons Among Iowa's Most-polluted Bodies of Water
by Carly Schuffler, KTVOTV3.com
Why wait for Bush to destroy the nation's water with sewage dumping? Iowa is already doing it!
(Ottumwa) The lagoons add beauty to Ottumwa's parks; but look a little closer, and you may be surprised at how dirty they are.
“They are among the worst in the state that are in cities,” said Ottumwa City Administrator Steve Rasmussen.
Several factors contribute to the lagoon pollution. Possibly the most-obvious source of pollutants is the city's combined sewer overflows.
“All storm water, all waste water, both domestic, residential and
commercial, industrial goes into one pipe, and when the sanitary sewer
is overloaded it'll overflow into, in this case, the Ottumwa lagoon,”
said Ted Payseur of Veenstra and Kimm, Inc.
Believe
it or not, raw sewage discharge in the lagoons isn't the biggest
problem. Chlordane, a dangerous pesticide outlawed in the 80s, is in
the water, in the silt and in the fish.
“This
insecticide gets into the environment and ends up settling in the
sediment in the lagoon and unfortunately it's half life is decades
long,” said Payseur.
Also high levels of nutrients, like phosphorus and nitrogen, trickle in from farm fields and fertilized lawns.
“In the
case of the Ottumwa lagoons, Kettle Creek which comes in kind of north
has about a 2,300 acre watershed and of course there's a great deal of
land outside and some of this has ag contributions,” said Payseur.
Nitrogen
levels will drop once Ottumwa's sewers are separated, but the DNR has
placed the Ottumwa lagoons on a list of impaired properties and
initiated a total maximum daily loads (TMDL) process for the city to
watch and improve lagoon water quality.
“There's
no quick fix for this; the DNR's TMDL process is a process whereby the
community will move through a long process to fix it. If we make sure
it doesn't get any worse, and work gradually to make sure it gets
better, we'll get there. We will succeed at this,” Rasmussen said.
(Source)
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