What Is That Aweful Smell?

As many have no doubt noticed, starting last Saturday and continuing through today the appearance of the water on Angle Lake has been very murky with a strong fishy odor emanating from the lake.  The source of both of these concerns is attributed to a large algae bloom in the lake.

Algae blooms are naturally occurring phenomena, even though they may have never occurred on the lake before. These blooms result from the right combination of factors being present on the lake (i.e. the right temperatures and quantities of nutrients in the lake). City of SeaTac storm water compliance staff have spoke to King County lake ecology staff and they agree that this bloom is likely a continuation of the last algae bloom that occurred approximately eight weeks ago. Test results have come back from County resources and all three samples taken from the around the lake show the condition to be a Uroglena algae colony.

The good news is that the results indicate that the algae are dying off quickly – County officials predict the problem could be gone by the end of the week. The bad news is that the odor will persist during the dying off period.

(The preceeding infomation was graceously supplied to the ALSC Blog Team through authorities with the City of SeaTac).

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