Conesus at center of pollution solution
Techniques from weed-eating weevils to solar-powered pumps have been used to attack the nuisance weeds and algae that sometimes clog the waters of lakes such as Conesus, Honeoye and Keuka.
None of them have proved to be a magic bullet.
Now, local scientists who toiled for six years in the Conesus Lake watershed believe their work has demonstrated a truly effective solution: Working closely with farmers to minimize the release of manure and other fertilizers and to control storm water runoff.
Environmentalists and farmers have long believed that those measures help water quality. But the scientists say the Conesus studies sealed the deal by not only showing that proper management can reduce pollutants escaping farms, but also proving that those reductions lead to measurable decreases in algae and weeds in nearby areas of the lake.
“By establishing that connection, we did something very powerful,” said Isidro Bosch, a biology professor at the State University College at Geneseo and the project’s co-principal investigator. “I see this as an example for thousands of small lakes all over the country that are wrestling with similar problems.”
But as Bosch and his colleagues point out, demonstrating what works and actually doing it on a broad scale — a scale large enough to make a lasting difference in Conesus Lake — are two very different things.
“It’s going to take time — lots of time,” said the project director, Joseph Makarewicz of the State University College at Brockport. And the problem with that, as he noted, is that “the general public wants answers.”
Federally funded
The Conesus Lake Watershed Project, as the effort is known, began in 2003 and concluded with the June publication of 14 scientific papers in a special edition of the Journal of Great Lakes Research. The work was funded by two grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture totaling $1.2 million. The project began when the Agriculture Department sought proposals for research into how scientists, farmers and others could work together on water-quality issues.
Makarewicz, a distinguished professor of environmental science and biology who has done a great deal of work on Lake Ontario issues, said it can be difficult to narrow down the source of the pollutants with a lake and a watershed that are as large as Ontario. The researchers’ idea was to use Conesus as a surrogate — a smaller water body that behaves in similar fashion to the big lake.
“We sold them on the idea that Conesus Lake was a great place to do this,” he said. “There was an opportunity … to do experiments and answer questions that apply to the Great Lakes, too.”
The western most and one of the smallest of the Finger Lakes, Conesus is about 8 miles long. Its watershed, or the area it drains, is limited — just 70 square miles, or roughly the size of the Monroe County towns of Penfield and Webster. About 25 streams flow through the hilly countryside down to the lake, which is ringed by summer and year-round homes.
Makarewicz said Livingston County has been “very progressive” in its stewardship of the lake. It’s one of the few Finger Lakes completely ringed by a sewer system, a major boon to water quality. The county adopted a comprehensive watershed management plan and has begun implementing a dozen measures intended to lessen impact on the lake.
Still, Conesus suffers from serious water-quality degradation and is plagued by algae, bacteria and the hated milfoil weed.
Runoff of farm manure and fertilizer often take the rap for Conesus’s water problems, but many observers say that’s unfair. Phosphorus and other pollutants also come from lawn fertilizer, road and parking lot runoff, wildlife excrement and leaking septic systems in homes not served by the sewer.
“This is not something where you can point the finger directly at the ag community or at one segment of the population,” said Peter Kanouse, manager for the Livingston County Soil & Water Conservation District.
Still, farms do provide a substantial portion of the nutrients that fuel feed and algae growth in the lake, and researchers set out to document the benefits of reducing that nutrient load by implementing new management practices on farms.
Clear results
Work focused on a half-dozen largely agricultural “sub-watersheds,” or areas of a few square miles that drain into a particular stream. “Most of the sub-watersheds were controlled by one or two people. The things that you changed or added or manipulated, you could see the results,” Makarewicz said.
First, though, farmers in the watershed had to be persuaded to take part, a task made more difficult by the fact that Makarewicz was viewed with some suspicion by Conesus-area farmers. After a period, he and Bosch realized they needed a go-between.
“The farmers were not real anxious to have people coming on their farms and taking water samples and things like that. We worked with them and got them to buy into the program,” said Nathan Herendeen, who worked for Cornell Cooperative Extension at the time. After numerous “twilight meetings,” as Makarewicz called the get-togethers at the end of farmers’ work days, the barriers were broken down.
“We found it easy to get them to adopt, as long as it was something that wouldn’t cost them a lot of money, or would save them some money,” said Herendeen, who’s now retired from the Cooperative Extension regional staff in Niagara County.
Numerous measures were tried. Basic soil tests sometimes persuaded farmers they could use less fertilizer or none at all. Fields were left fallow at times. Strip cropping, in which alternating rows of different crops are planted to reduce erosion, was encouraged. Barnyard wastes were controlled. “Gully plugs,” or small structures to slow the flow of rainwater down steep gullies, were constructed.
Spreading of manure on fields in the wintertime, where it can accumulate and then wash into creeks when snow melts, was discouraged; in one case, grant money was used to build a manure lagoon so a dairy farmer could stop winter spreading.
The researchers then looked for results in the streams and the lake, and found them. Within two years of the adoption of some of the management practices, nearby streams showed “significant” reductions in phosphorus, nitrates and soil loss. In one sub-watershed, reductions averaged about 56 percent.
When the scientists studied the near-shore areas of the lake where these streams emptied, they found similar improvements. Milfoil declined 30 percent to 50 percent and grew back more slowly. Algae beds also declined in size, with a clear correlation to declining levels of phosphorus and nitrates in the streams.
Bacteria levels fell tenfold in some streams after aggressive manure management programs were put in place.
The research has had a positive impact. “Some practices are already changing in the watershed after seeing what happened in the sub-watersheds where we worked,” Herendeen said. “It’s had an effect beyond just the few farms that we worked with.”
Dean Meyer, who runs the 900-cow Dairy Knoll Farm in Groveland, has done, as Kanouse put it, “just about everything I can think of” to better control nutrient runoff and erosion. Because some of the land on which he spread manure was within the study area, construction of his first manure pit was partly financed by a grant arranged by the researchers.
“Our facilities, our barns and everything else are built so no manure leaves these facilities and runs into the creeks or anywhere else,” Meyer said.
Meyer said he’s always tried to minimize erosion and impact on water quality, but he, like other farmers, is more conscious of it now.
“I think that farmers in general are trying to do the best they can,” he said. “A lot of farmers are interested in improving their land practices. I guess when you do that, you’re improving the water quality at the same time.”
Funding is available from state and federal agencies to pay for the sort of farm changes that the study showed were effective, said Kanouse and others.
“Every year there is work being done. Somebody seems to put a few projects together,” said Kanouse. “It’s an ongoing process.”
Still problems
All of this was to the good, but this summer, Conesus Lake still had plenty of weeds and algae.
“We never claimed we cleaned up the lake,” said Makarewicz, noting that only a half-dozen of the 25 streams feeding the lake had been addressed. “To have an effect on the lake, you have to do all those streams,” he said. “That’s a long-term project — 20 or 30 years.”
Does the community have the patience? One local official said yes.
“I’d say there’s an understanding that the long term is necessary,” said Heather Ferraro, the Livingston County planner.
“It’s everyone’s preference to try to get it fixed quickly. But there’s been a lot of education that the problems of Conesus Lake didn’t happen overnight and they won’t be fixed overnight, and it will take the cooperation of everybody in the water to make the lake better.”
What’s at stake
The cleanliness of our water resources, many of which have been befouled by pollutants, invasive species, weeds and algae.
Findings
Grants available
A growing number of western New York farmers are adopting management measures that protect water quality while, in many cases, saving farmers money or preventing soil erosion. To help farmers with the work, two government programs provide grants for up to 75 percent of a project’s cost. In Livingston County, projects costing from $5,000 to $500,000 have received grants, said Peter Kanouse, manager of the Livingston County Soil and Water Conservation District.
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