Dan's Papers - October 10, 2008

Mill Pond in Water Mill is where Mosey Muller used to swim and play under water tag as a kid - his family has lived on the edge of the pond for over 60 years. Sometimes the water was crystal clear. Other times a little murkier, with visibility of 5 or 6 feet. In the winter, Muller and his friends would ice skate on the pond and when they got thirsty, they'd chop a hole in the ice and take a drink. When Muller was in high school, his love of the pond led him to do a study of the watershed to determine factors that affect it.

Today, along with a lot of other long time Water Mill residents, Muller is wondering why so many fish died so suddenly at Mill Pond, and if it still safe to swim with your head under water. (Having heard that blue green algae can be toxic, he keeps his head above water when the pond is murky.) He has noticed that in recent years the algae blooms are happening faster, and that there are big swings in the quality of the water, which can go from being crystal clear to pea soup and back again.

Muller's high school report revealed that during rains an enormous amount of water laden with farm soil would rush down Deerfield Road and into the pond right at the sharp corner near his family's home. A plume of soil would extend out into the pond. At that time, in the upland area that makes up the Mill Pond watershed, he discovered washouts - ravines created by the rushing water in the farm soils that were up to five feet deep. There are fewer farms today, so better fertilizers combined with efforts to reduce pesticides have decreased their impact on the pond somewhat, but not completely.

Last week's storm rains created a latte-colored river flowing down Deerfield Road. There are 13 catch basins between the corner where the soil-laden water enters the pond and the intersection of Deerfield and Head of Pond Roads. Muller had questioned the storm basins' ability to take up all the flow from upstream, so to speak, as the water level of run-off typically rose very quickly and ran so rapidly down the road that only the first 1/4" of rain actually went into the storm drainage system. The rest ran out into the pond.

According to Freddie Havermeyer, a Southampton Town Trustee whose beat includes both Lake Agawam and Mill Pond, the first 1/4-1/2" of rainfall contains the most contaminants that could pollute the pond, and catch basins do siphon this first flush off successfully. But this is not the entire source of the problem with algae and fish kills.

According to Havemeyer, Mill Pond and Agawam have similar issues: extensive upland drain fields that allow road run-off to go directly into the lakes. In the last 30 years, many houses have been built along Mill Pond's waterfront with lawns that slope down to the water, like the situation at Lake Agawam.

Steve Storch, who uses sophisticated compost teas to fertilize his customers' lawns and gardens, works at a few places around Mill Pond. He feels that the problem is "stress from the surrounding environment ... not any one thing." Like others, Storch wonders if toxins from old agricultural run-off are still in the lake sediments, which can get stirred up. So by many accounts, the major culprit in Mill Pond's recent fish kill seems to be run-off from surrounding houses' gardens and lawns, as well as septic leaching, and lake and pondside homeowners need to shoulder much of the responsibility. The nutrients in fertilizers run into the lake and create ripe conditions for massive algae blooms that cloud the water. When there is a cold snap - like the one that preceded the fish kill in Mill Pond - the algae die and decompose, cutting off the supply of oxygen for fish. After the wind stirs up the lake water, the oxygen is replenished and the water clears up - which solves the mystery of the big swings in water clarity that Muller has been noticing in recent times.

Having pinpointed the problem, the trustees and everyone else are ready to move toward a solution. Creating attractive landscape buffers that keep irrigation and rain from flushing run-off from lawns and gardens into the lake is one of the simplest solutions, along with the reduction of fertilizers and pesticides. Recently, a pamphlet was created and mailed it to all who live around Lake Agawam, but now the issue is one of compliance. How can the towns enforce a greater concern for the health of a lake than the look of a lawn?