“The trends are going in the wrong direction — but slowly.”
That was the message Dr. Walter Boynton of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory had for the Calvert County Commissioners Tuesday in delivering results of the 2010 Mill Creek and Patuxent River Water Quality Monitoring Program.
There is also an upward trend in algae and algae blooms detected by the monitoring stations, even in drought years. “The prevalence of algae increasing in drought years is scary,” Boynton said. “It’s a double problem. Some of it is from local causes and some is from the larger system we’re a part of.”
Algae blooms have been more frequent in recent years, “which leads us to believe that the land around the estuaries is having a large effect.” The trend in oxygen content is downward, and while not statistically significant at this point, “It is troubling,” Boynton said. “It’s an early hint that things are not good.”
A likely culprit: Homeowners over-fertilizing lawns. In streams that don’t exchange water much with the Patuxent River, oxygen levels have been found that are “extraordinarily low,” he stated. “This is typically caused by local nutrient addition, as in over-fertilizing lawns.”
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