While most waters in East Hampton Town were often of a high quality in 2023, what happens on the land affects what happens to surface waters, and more people and more land use mean more nitrogen loading, leading to more harmful algal blooms, the town trustees were told on Monday during an annual report on the waterways.
Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences told the trustees that efforts to mitigate degraded water quality have paid off in Georgica Pond, yet Wainscott Pond is “a system that’s gotten steadily worse over time,” with toxic cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in bloom for much of the year. Fort Pond in Montauk, which is not under trustee jurisdiction, also experienced intense cyanobacteria blooms, reaching more than 200 times above the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation threshold in early September.
- All complete annual Gobler Laboratory reports, and this year’s, are available at the “Reports” tab at the top of this website opening page.
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