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Show Eastern shoreline of lake unsafe for water sports, ecologist says "The eastern shorline of Utah Lake from Lincoln Beach to Lehi is unsafe for water contact con-tact sports during the months of June, July, August and September," Sep-tember," says Dr. David A. White, aquatic ecologist and assistant professor of zoology and entomology at Brigham Young University. Dr. White is coordinator of the Utah Lake Research Group which is currently engaged in a three-year research study under the auspices of BYU's Center for Environmental Bi-oology. Bi-oology. The project should be completed in 1971. According to Dr. White, Utah Lake has never been a cold, clear, deep lake not in the last 10,000 years at least. The Indians who lived around the lake for centuries probably did little to change the lake's environments en-vironments and its water quality. All lakes slowly fill with sediment sed-iment and become dry land but the natural process can be ac celerated by the activities of man, and this is what is happening hap-pening to Utah Lake. Accelerated erosion, organic additions, drawdown, reclaiming of marshes, chemical addition, diversion of inflow waters, and the changing use of the drainage drain-age basin can all accelerate the filling of a lake. And during the past century this has been the fate of Utah Lake. "In fact, it has probably changed more in the past hundred years than in the previous ten thousand years," said Dr. White. Dr. White and his associates have established 24 sites in different dif-ferent areas of the lake from which they take samples twice a week during the summer months and twice a month in the winter. Contamination is measured by counting the number of E. Coli bacteria present in 100 millilitres of water. The E. Coli bacteria are used as indicators of contamination because they are found only in the intestines of mammals (man, cow, horse, sheep, etc.) With a Coliform count of 1,000 or more per 100 millilitres, water is considered contamminated and unfit for human use. For example, the water sample taken in the Provo Boat Harbor on July 15 showed a Coliform count of 3,200 per 100 millilitres and reached a peak of 28,000 in August. Dr. White says that much of the contamination along the eastern shorline is due to the runoff of agricultural waste into in-to the waterways which flow into the lake. One cow will produce pro-duce as much waste as 17 human hu-man beings and in 1964 there were 64,000 cattle in the Utah Valley producing as much waste as a human population of more than one million. In addition, some 4,000 pigs and 200,000 chickens add to the animal waste load of the Utah Lake drainage area. Although the sewage treatment treat-ment plants have greatly reduced re-duced the municipal waste problem, there is still some pollution from this source particularly par-ticularly in the spring when the drains and sewers are overloaded over-loaded and break down. Storm drains and sewage systems are interconnected in some areas and in other places the sewer pipes are connected to open field drains. A bloom of blue-green blue-green algae often appears where a polluted waterway enters en-ters the lake. "The mouth of the Provo River Ri-ver has its bad days," said Dr. White going on to exxplain that 70 per cent of the fertilizer ferti-lizer used on lawns of homes along the rivers also gets washed into the lake. The Coliform Coli-form count increases as the weather gets warmer and when the flow of water is restricted. However, the outlook for water wa-ter sports enthusiasts is not entirely gloomy. The western shoreline is relatively safe, and, if you care to go out to the center of the lake, the water is almost fit to drink. t |