Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage

Are you known as, "that ______ guy" or "that ______ lady? If so, you have surely been gifted a book, or ten, about that ______ thing, for better or worse. As a standup paddleboarding (SUP) dabbler since 2007 and SUP race enthusiast since 2014 I'm actually surprised that I wasn't given a SUP book until recently. Library and bookstore shelves aren't exactly overflowing with SUP offerings- maybe that's why it took a while. You see, SUP is like tofu- it's very wholesome but (I assume) most people would rather die than read a book about it. I did a cursory search just now and there are literally more books about tofu than there are about SUP. (How to know your ______ is boring AF: there are more books about tofu than ______.)

I'm not a professional writer (my wife is) but I gather that there a few tricks for turning a boring topic into something more palatable, much as a gifted chef can make tofu nearly edible. 1. Combine it with something totally unrelated and much more interesting. The small town bookstore owner also solves murders. 2. Raise the stakes. It not just a long paddle; it's a very dangerous solo ocean crossing. 3. Twine it into deeply personal or philosophical musings. 4. Use it as a vehicle to explore and opine on interesting aspects of culture, history, science, etc.

Dan Rubenstein's "Water Borne: a 1200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage," which my mom gave me for Christmas, uses a bit of techniques 2 and 3, but mostly technique 4. Rubenstein is a Canadian journalist who seems to be a thoughtful, responsible, good-hearted, person very concerned with environmental conservation, social and economic justice, and other important things now subject to anti-woke backlash in the US. Dan's long, inland paddleboard journey; a circuit on rivers, lakes, and canals from the Great Lakes region to New York City and back is an impressive logistical and endurance feat. He often paddled ~50 km (30 miles) per day day on a 14' inflatable BadFish sup loaded with camping gear, and he had to deal with strong headwinds, wrong-way river currents, ocean-type waves on the Great Lakes, and "Deliverance" type peril in some run-down urban and rural areas. But he never frames the story in a macho, proving-his-greatness kind of way. He's humble and self-deprecating with dorky dad energy that I resemble and appreciate as a sane antidote to the toxic energy of the egomaniac males like Hegseth and Musk who dominate the news these days.

Picture from a nice TotalSUP article about Dan's Journey

Part of Rubenstein's responsibility is that he's working his ass off doing journalist stuff the entire time he's paddling. Almost every day he has a meeting arranged with some local-to-that-part-of-the-waterway environmental activist, scientist, historian, barge operator, quaint inn proprietor, urban youth outreacher, or other person who is deeply involved in honoring and improving their part of the world. It's inspiring to get a view of all these people in all these places rallying around green and "blue spaces" for ecological restoration, economic revitalization, equitable access, etc. We need that kind of water stewardship everywhere to reverse the harmful effects of pollution, privatization, shoreline "hardening," etc. At the same time, it's exhausting to read through so many sequential accounts of those do-gooders and the similar challenges they're facing, so I found myself reading the book in kind of small doses at a time. Dan also has random encounters with kind, quirky, and occasionally creepy people along the way, which adds some fun and keeps things down to earth.

The most awkward, painful-reflection aspect of reading this book was Rubenstein's constant, critical interrogation of his own privilege as an educated, middle-class, straight white male in a nation that (like the US) gained its riches through exploitation of nature, indigenous people, poor workers, etc. But as awkward as attempts of privileged people to be politically correct / woke always seem to be, I think it's still important that we keep awkwardly working to be better, more humble, more real human beings. The alternative is deepening the harmful divisions in society that prevent human progress and could lead to our destruction, and that's no good.

Anyway, cheers to Dan. Water Borne isn't going to sell like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, but it's an honest and intelligent book about the hope and challenge of healing our waterways and healing the social-environmental fabric of our world. Two thumbs up from this _______ guy.

Florida Democratic Primary Ballot for August 18, 2026 election - Thoughts

There's an election coming up soon in Florida, and since I signed up to vote by mail I have my ballot now. I'm registered as a democrat, so my version of the ballot lets me vote for candidates in the democratic primary elections, as well as in elections for non-partisan positions like judges and school board members. Interestingly, I also get to choose between two republicans in a "universal primary" for District 5 County Commissioner, because Florida law opens up the primaries to all registered voters if all the primary candidates are from one party.

I tried to do a reasonable amount of a research into all the candidates before I marked my ballot, looking not only at the candidates' own campaign websites, but also at what the local newspapers and trusted pundits were saying about them. The News-Press usually has some local candidate information, and I think it's viewable even to non-subscribers. (I actually subscribed to that newspaper recently, which is the first time I've ever purchased a newspaper subscription. It seems to be a good local news source that covers shit in more detail than you get on the TV news. Also, I know and admire some of the writers a lot, including Amy Bennett Williams and Chad Gillis who have often covered science and environment stories I've weighed in on.)

Anyway, this is what I marked (the X is who I voted for), with a little explanation of why:

United States Senator - 
Angie Nixon (X) 
Alex Vindaman

- Both senate candidates have admirable qualities such as being willing to speak truth to power at personal risk. However, I chose Angie Nixon because of her support for peace in Gaza where my friend Rachel was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003 in a pattern of violence against Palestinian civilians, aid workers, and human rights activists that the US has abetted for far too long. This needs to change. 

US Congressional Representative for District 19 (Byron Donalds' seat) -
Victor Arias
Robert M. Neeld
Howard Sapp (X) - 

- Sapp is a respected local leader who has been in tough political races before. He has also raised the most money.

Governor and Lieutenant Governor -
Evelyn Castillo-Bach
Thomas Eloy Fernandez
Dayna Marie Foster
David Jolly / Gwen Graham 
Dotie Joseph (X)  
Stephann Norman

- Dotie Joseph is an legitimate democrat with 8 years experience in the Florida House. David Jolly is the favorite in this race but he was a republican until recently, which I think is suspicious. 

Chief Financial Officer
Earle Ford
Annette Taddeo (X) 

- Taddeo has political experience and seems to unequivocally support stuff I care about.

Commissioner of Agriculture
Joey Mendoza Atkins (X) 
Donald A. "Don" Prichard

- Mendoza Atkins says he'll actually follow the recommendations of the Blue Green Algae Task force, which includes some scientists I admire. Also, Mendoza Atkins is the only candidate with a website.

Board of County Commissioners District 5
Amanda Cochran REP (X) 
Trish Petrosky REP 

- Cochran is a rural Lee County resident opposed to sprawl and endorsed by the non-partisan "Vote Water" environmental organization. Petrosky on the other hand was appointed by Governor DeSantis, is not really from around here, and is expected to be a rubber stamp for environment-destroying special interests

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 19
Vera Bergermann (X) 
James Stewart 

- Stewart was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Stewart has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Bergermann was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

Circuit Court Judge 20th Group 27
Ryan Kuhl (X) 
Amanda Levy-Reis 

- Levy-Reis was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Levy-Reis has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Kuhl was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

County Judge Group 5
Mike Colombo (X) - Not appointed by DeSantis
Javier A. Pachecho - Appointed by DeSantis

- Pachecho was appointed by Governor DeSantis. That suggests that Pachecho has far right conservative views like DeSantis does. Colombo was not appointed by DeSantis and is more likely to have independent views.

School Board Member District 6

Jada Langford Fleming 
India Palencia (X) 

- Fleming is one of those ultra-conservative "anti-woke" crusaders who I think are dumbing down and education and censoring important topics. Palencia is known for standing up for minorities. 

Stop the "rollout" of PLASTIC GRASS at FGCU

College campuses are usually quiet in summer, but Florida Gulf Coast University buzzed this week with an impassioned effort to stop the rollout of PLASTIC GRASS in the central quad. Plastic grass already sneaked its way onto campus in two other places this year, including a 4000 square foot area around the student center that used to be real grass and trees and is now an uninhabitable plastic heat-collector.

While mowed lawn is far from the best type of land cover for nature (you may have seen my other posts advocating for unnecessarily mowed areas to be "rewilded"), it's still WAY better than plastic grass, despite whatever BS hype you might hear from plastic grass salesmen. Some reasons real is better than artificial include:

1. Plastic grass is not alive. Nothing can eat it. Real grass, on the other hand, supports a food chain of bugs and worms and bunny rabbits and things that in turn support birds and other predators.
2. Plastic grass is made from oil in an energy intensive process that contributes to CO2 pollution and other types of pollution.
3. Plastic grass breaks down (quickly in the searing UV of the Florida sun) and introduces microplastic particles and toxic chemical pollutants like PFAS into the soil and water, hurting wildlife and endangering human health.
4. While real grass that's overmanaged with fertilizer, pesticides, watering, etc. can be a burden on the environment, grass actually grows fine in south Florida with no intervention other than mowing. It gets weedy, but that's a good thing because the biodiversity of the weeds leads to more efficient resource use and resilience, and the flowering weeds look pretty and support all sorts of beautiful and important pollinators like honeybees and butterflies.
5. Real grass with no chemicals added can also help sponge-up chemical pollution running off from other areas.
6. Real plants naturally cool the landscape via "evapotranspiration" (wicking water from the soil up through their roots and leaves into the sky), and also by conversion of light energy into chemical energy via photosynthesis. Sunlight hitting plastic grass, on the other hand, just turns into HEAT, making artificial turf areas much hotter than natural grass; even hotter than pavement sometimes. Trees cool better than grass, but grass is still way cooler than plastic. We've known this stuff about the heat problem of plastic turf since the early 1970s, at least, but just to demonstrate it again I deployed a thermometer on the real and fake grass at FGCU last week-

The plastic grass on campus is particularly galling because FGCU, my employer, is conspicuously branded as Florida's "environmental university." Environmental sustainability has been a central part of FGCU's stated goals since its founding in 1997. This may be partly to offset the original scandal of our campus' construction over sensitive wetlands and panther habitat that was supposed to be preserved. (This was part of a trojan horse deal to let land baron Ben Hill Griffin develop a bunch of surrounding property that was also supposed to have been protected. Very Florida.) Anyway, despite the dirty beginnings, FGCU has USUALLY done a good job of being green. We've kept most of the campus as natural preserve areas, we've let native plants grow around our stormwater ponds to the point that they've become diverse wetlands, we've integrated hands-on environmental education into almost all our academic programs, and we've hired a lot of biology, environmental science, environmental engineering, and marine science faculty who've been active in research intended to help protect the environment.

So how did we go so wrong with the plastic grass? I think it's because the business and operations parts of the university, in their enterprising zeal, have developed a very bad habit of making environmentally-consequential decisions about campus management and development without involving any of the environmental experts we have among our faculty. FGCU does have a Sustainability and Resiliency Council co-chaired by a wonderful environmental scientist who I sincerely love, but it doesn't seem like that group can do anything besides make recommendations that get ignored. I understand why the business and operations folks don't like involving faculty. We faculty are a bunch of opinionated know-it-alls who are never quite satisfied with anything, and decision-making processes we're involved in often become slow and painful. Also, we might say "NO" to some big building or project that the expand-the-enterprise folks are giddy about getting underway. Nevertheless, faculty from relevant disciplines MUST be included in decision making processes to avoid these kind of glaring, should-have-known-better, publicly-humiliating mistakes. What's the point of all our big brains and expertise if the people making decisions never ask us what we think?

In an official statement addressing the plastic grass controversy, given for a News-Press story about the plastic grass that I was also quoted in, our university's spokesperson pointed out that the planning folks did send around a survey last year to ask what people would like to see for the campus quad area. I remember the survey. It was pretty open-ended and of course I filled it out and said I'd like the quad area to be kept as natural as possible, and oh by the way please remember to ask us or at least tell us when you're making some big environmental decision. "Would you like us to replace the real grass with plastic grass?" was absolutely NOT one of the questions on the survey, and I highly doubt that any of the other staff or students who filled out the survey said anything remotely like, "I want to see more plastic grass." So I think the decision to use plastic grass was a poor interpretation of whatever feedback the planners got from that survey and one that, again, could have easily been avoided if there was anyone on the decision making committee with even the slightest knowledge and appreciation of science and environmental stuff.

The fight is still on. I have hope that we can stop the plastic-rollout from happening in the main quad, and maybe we can even tear it out of the areas it's already gone in. Some students from our ornithology club made an online petition that you can sign if you want to help. (790 signatures so far!) It's wonderful to see bravery and leadership from the students on these campus environmental issues. I was heartened to see their commentary in this Gulf Coast News TV segment, for example. I'm also excited to see one of our top research students, Anthony Dues Jr. has started a substack blog tackling the topic with a scientifically informed rant. This ain't over.

Sea Breeze / Land Breeze - The Gulf of Mexico Breathing

Florida doesn't have any mountains to look at but we do have some primo clouds. Clouds have interested me ever since I was a kid, but since getting into windsurfing and studying marine science, both of which require learning about the roles of ocean and atmospheric circulation in weather and climate, I've developed a cloud obsession bordering on the unhealthy. Clouds are neat in themselves, but their patterns and changes over time tell an awe-inspiring story of the planet's life; its giant, slow breathing and pulsing movements of water, energy, and heat. One cloud pattern I love to watch in summer in Florida is related to the seabreeze / land breeze cycle that unfolds each day and night.

Sea Breeze is wind that blows from the ocean towards the land. It's driven by solar heating of the land during the day, which causes hot air to rise over the land, drawing cooler air in from the sea. If conditions are right the seabreeze forms tall, billowing clouds as it rises over the land. These are the source of Florida's summer thunderstorms, which are particularly intense over the middle of the state where the Atlantic Coast sea breeze coming from the east collides with the Gulf Coast sea breeze coming from the west.

Land Breeze is the opposite of sea breeze. It's wind that blows from lands towards the ocean, when the ocean is warmer than the land so air is rising over the ocean and sinking over the land. It happens at night, because land cools off faster than water does. So when the sun sets in Florida the thunderstorms over land usually peter out, but majestic thunder clouds may form over the ocean. On summer mornings in Florida, especially on the Gulf of Mexico side, you can often look out and see gorgeous, side-lit walls of thunderclouds that formed over the ocean at night.

I can't see the beach from my apartment complex, but I know which direction to look to see those over-the-Gulf clouds, and they're often spectacular in the morning. Likewise, in the afternoon I look east to see the eruptions of storms forming inland, and I try to time my bike ride home from work to not get caught in them. Below is a comparison of the morning and afternoon skies today, demonstrating the pattern pretty well. (I should note that it's never exactly the same, and there definitely exceptions to the land clouds in the day, sea clouds at night rule, but the exceptions are interesting, too.)

Here's what the morning conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Land breeze pattern, with the activity over the ocean and nothing happening over land.

Here's what the afternoon conditions look like on the iwindsurf.com radar. Sea breeze pattern, with land heating generating rising air and thunderstorms over the peninsula, but not much going on over the waters.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the morning from iwindsurf.com. Air is still flowing off the land out into the ocean.

This is the modeled wind strength and direction for the afternoon from iwindsurf.com. You can see landward flow caused the seabreeze, plus locally increased winds around the thunderstorms.

The stark folly of poisoning a lakeshore (photos)

Next to my apartment complex is a large retention pond (henceforth, "the lake") which captures and processes runoff from the sprawling development around it. The major developments that border the lake are: Hertz Arena (where the ECHL champion Florida Everblades hockey team plays), Waterline Estero apartments (where I live), The Springs at Gulf Coast apartments, the Miromar Outlets mall, and the Interstate 75 highway.



According to satellite imagery on Google Earth, which I can rewind to 1985, there was some sort of waterbody there even the 1980s, though it was surrounded by woods then. My guess is that the lake began as a quarry, maybe related to construction of the interstate, before it was modified into a retention pond. Anyway, that's besides the point. The point is that nowadays it's an urban waterbody with the important jobs of:

1) Controlling flooding

2) Filtering pollution out of runoff water

3) Being something nice for people to look* at so they'll spend more money on rent, shopping, shows at the arena, etc.

*People used to do more than just look at the lake. In the early 2000s they did waterski shows in it, but that stopped before I arrived in SWFL in 2012. Probably for the best, but it's kind of sad they don't even allow fishing in the lake now.

4) Providing some vestige of habitat for plants and animals that are losing a lot of their other "real estate" as urban growth explodes in the area

Despite its burdens, the lake seems to be functioning well. I'm judging this by the fact that compared to other retention ponds in the area the water is surprisingly clear and full of submerged aquatic vegetation and fish. I know this from lots of looking at the lake, and a bit of snorkeling and deploying underwater cameras in it.

The lake's submerged aquatic vegetation, specifically Vallisneria americana, known as tapegrass or eelgrass, is its secret to clear water. The plants absorb excess nitrogen and phosphorus from the polluted runoff, so there's less in the water to fuel algae growth. This works really well, up to a point. If the loading of nutrient pollution becomes too extreme, or something knocks back the plant life, a lake can suddenly shift from plant-dominated with clear water to algae-dominated with murky water. This dynamic is called ASS - Alternative Stable States. For more info see Scheffer, M., Jeppesen, E. (1998). Alternative Stable States. In: Jeppesen, E., Søndergaard, M., Søndergaard, M., Christoffersen, K. (eds) The Structuring Role of Submerged Macrophytes in Lakes. Ecological Studies, vol 131. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-0695-8_31

I am nervous about this lake switching from its current, clear-water state into an algae-dominated ASS. The reason I'm nervous is that some parts of its shoreline are being managed very poorly. Specifically, the shoreline along Miromar Outlets and I-75 is being sprayed with herbicide to kill all the shoreline plants, leaving just bare mud and rocks. This video clip and the photos below it show the contrast between a well-managed part of the shoreline in front of The Springs apartments, and the terribly-managed part of the shoreline in front of Miromar Outlets.

Natural shoreline in front of The Springs apartments- Keep up the good work.

Semi-natural shoreline in front of Hertz Arena- They mow and do some "spot" spraying of plants, which I think is unnecessary, but it could be worse.

Herbicide-nuked shoreline in front of Miromar Outlet- Ugly, unsafe, and environmentally atrocious. Tsk tsk.

I assume Miromar is doing this as some misguided attempt to make it look "neat and tidy" because there's no legitimate ecological reason to do it. Here is why they should stop spraying herbicide on the shoreline:

1. It causes shoreline erosion.

2. It leads to more runoff pollution entering the lake. One reason ecologists recommend keeping a generous buffer of littoral and riparian vegetation around urban water bodies is because these plants are very effective at intercepting and removing pollution from runoff.

3. It reduces the abundance and diversity of native plant and animal life- bees, butterflies, birds, frogs, fish, etc.

4. While there might be a perception that nuking the shoreline down to a barren wasteland increases people's safety from alligators, it probably does the opposite, because it invites people to go closer to the water's edge where they're more likely to encounter an alligator. I think if the shoreline is reedy and brushy people are less likely to go down to the water's edge.

CONCLUSION: This lake is a local treasure, but it's in danger of losing its ecological integrity because of foolish management on the outlet mall side. I'll see if I can get in touch in with them and convince them of the error of their ways. If any of you readers know one of the higher-ups at the organization, please let me know.

Current thoughts on wealth inequality

 1. Billionaires* shouldn't exist. Their existence** is bad for society. Some people say, "Another's wealth doesn't hurt you- in fact you should be thankful to those great billionaires for stimulating the economy, creating jobs and investment opportunities, etc." I think that is bullshit, because there are several obvious ways that extreme wealth of a few individuals DOES hurt the general populace. Here are three:

a. Those with extreme wealth hoard and guard resources that could create more happiness for more people if they were shared and accessible. Waterfront is my favorite example of this. A huge portion of America's riverfront, lakefront, and oceanfront lands are the private property of a small number of rich, super rich, and ultra rich people, such that the 99% of normal, non-rich people like me are forced into fighting each other over a few tiny slivers of public access points. And in the most expensive waterfront areas the dang rich people who own the property aren't even HOME most of the time. Their gross mansions are empty, because they're off in some OTHER mansion somewhere because they're so stupidly rich they own like ten of them. 

b. Extreme wealth inequality fucks up democracy. Democracy is based on the idea that every person has an equal, intrinsic worth - a soul that matters, regardless of if they're rich or poor. (And regardless of their body pigmentation and whether their gonads make eggs or sperm.) But the existence of a few individuals with massive piles of excess wealth, combined with a political system with few campaign finance restrictions, combined with how well lobbying and corruption work, combined with monopolistic media network ownership by said few individuals, makes it so that a very wealthy person's influence on government is many orders of magnitude greater than a normal person's influence. And this gets worse over time as laws get passed that allow the ultra wealthy to influence things in ever more ways, and disenfranchise normal voters. We need to fix this not only with reforms to protect democracy from undue influence by ultra rich people, but also with reforms to prevent people from becoming ultra rich in the first place. (I think a lot of people would agree with me on the first part of that, but I'm not sure as many are ready for the second part because we are often sustained by the fantasy that someday, somehow we, too could become ultra rich.)

c. Extreme wealth inequality fucks up rule of law. Rule of law is supposed to go along with democracy to ensure that individual rights and safety are protected for everyone, regardless of their wealth. But extreme wealth buys armies of lawyers, fixers, cronies in government, etc., so that rich people become ever less accountable to the rule of law, and instead can deploy it as a weapon to intimidate and harass non-rich people. Just look at how little consequences there have been for Jeffrey Epstein's associates, for example, and how much flaunting of environmental, trade, copyright, and labor laws today's ultra rich people get away with. 

Sometimes apologists for the world's billionaires will admit that extreme wealth inequality is bad, but will make some kind of argument like, "It has to be this way, because the only alternative is COMMUNISM!" That is also bullshit. There are ALL KINDS of regulations, policies, and reforms to economic and social policies that can promote equality and protect democracy without being anything like communism. Getting the laws and regulations tuned properly to maintain balance is a challenging and never ending task, but it's better than just letting it go and having inequality get to the extreme emperor and slaves kind of level that its morphing into today.  

2. Trillionaires are 1000 times worse than billionaires. A trillion is a thousand times a billion, so all the things that are bad about a billionaire existing** apply times a thousand to the case of the trillionaire. 

*Since how much wealth a billion represents depends on the value of the currency, inflation, etc., there should be some independent definition of this level of extreme wealth, which won't go out of date. One way to do it is relative to the wealth of a median household in the country or the world. I saw one reference that in 2022 the median net worth of an American household was $193,000. If we take a billion and divide it by that median net worth ($1,000,000,000 / $193,000) we get 5,181.
Which means a billionaire is someone who has over 5000 times as much money as a typical person. Having even 100 times as much wealth as a typical person is hard to excuse, in my opinion, and I think its dumb for a society to let individuals accumulate more than that. 

**On the issue of existence, what I mean is that nobody should be allowed to have that much money - not that the people with that much money now don't have a right to live. They have a right to live, because we all do. They just don't have a right to hoard that much money, because nobody does. I'm advocating for societal measures to break up their monopolies and trim their wealth down to less dangerous levels. I'm not advocating for a spree of assassinations. Thank you for your attention to this matter. 

Reflecting on the reflecting pool

How about that algae bloom in the Washington DC reflecting pool that Trump just “fixed” in his typical manner- with foolish vanity, at great expense, amidst illegality and corruption, without heeding wiser counsel, and ultimately ineffectively? It’s a moment of schadenfreude worth savoring. For me as a scientist, it’s also a moment to lure people into learning about algae blooms. 

Here’s what you need to know: 

1. “Algae” is a broad biological category, encompassing all organisms that get their energy from the sun, except for true plants, which diverged from algal ancestors about 470 million years ago. The algae alive today include everything from giant seaweeds to single-celled phytoplankton and pond scum. 

2. Algae are the essential, first level of most aquatic food chains. Without algae there would be no fish, shrimp, clams, coral, sea turtles, dolphins, etc. 

3. Algae also make a large portion of the oxygen we breathe, and are important in the global cycling of other chemicals necessary for life, like carbon dioxide, nutrients, etc. 

4. SOMETIMES algae are a nuisance. Excessive algal productivity is called eutrophication, which rhymes with nutrification and stems from pollution by excessive nutrients- nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer or wastewater. If the eutrophic overgrowth of algae causes harm to people or the environment it’s called a HAB (harmful algal bloom). 

5. Like nutrients, high amounts of light and heat also stimulate algal growth, and can favor more toxic forms of algae. An ancient and often toxic group of algae, the cyanobacteria (aka blue green algae), flourish in waters too warm for most other algae, like dark-bottomed reflecting pools. Cyanobacteria especially flourish when phosphorus levels in the water are high. I think the algae in the reflecting pool now are mostly a type of non-toxic green algae called Desmodesmus, but there’s more than one type of algae in the pool, and the dominant species are likely to shift over time, possibly to more harmful cyanobacteria like the Microcystis aeruginosa we often get in Florida. 

6. The best way to keep algae from getting out of hand is to make sure you’re not adding any extra nutrients to the waterbody you’re managing. The other best way is to make sure the aquatic ecosystem has living components that can remove nutrients and/or remove excess algae. 

 a. True plants like cattails, lily pads, and pond weeds compete with algae for nutrients and light and can help lower nutrient levels to the point where algae will no longer grow in excess. 

 b. Algal grazers like tiny crustaceans and snails can help suppress algae, and filter feeders like clams and mussels can sieve vast quantities of microscopic algae particles out of the water 

7. For small, artificial bodies of water, like swimming pools or fountains, algae can be suppressed with toxic chemicals like chlorine, copper sulfate, or hydrogen peroxide. However, these compounds kill desirable aquatic life, too, and are not appropriate for large scales or natural environments. The Department of the Interior says the hydrogen peroxide they are trying to kill the reflecting pond algae with now is non-toxic, but that's an exaggeration. A high dose of hydrogen peroxide will kill anything. If you decide to control algae chemically, you’re losing your chance to control the algae biologically (like with plants, grazers, or filter feeders) because the chemical controls will kill the biological controls. Also, chemical suppression of algae does nothing to remove nutrients from the water, so the fuel for the next algae bloom remains and the algae will come back with a vengeance as soon as the algae-killing chemicals wear off. This creates a kind of chemical-addiction cycle that is great for pool and pond management companies, but isn’t great for customers, or nature. 

8. In my opinion, anything bigger than a swimming pool should be managed as a true aquatic ecosystem, with plants, grazers, filter feeders, and all the other living things that keep algae in check naturally. Trying to maintain a huge reflecting pool in a lifeless state is a pretty dumb idea, in my opinion, dooming the managers to never-ending, expensive algal vacuuming and toxic chemical treatments. 

9. Some of the algal bloom problems in the reflecting pool are because of high nutrient levels in the water it’s filled with. The water comes from the Potomac River Estuary via a little reservoir called the tidal basin, which exchanges with the low-salinity estuary at high tide. Like the Chesapeake Bay, which it is a part of, the Potomac is quite high in nutrients from a variety of human sources. So it is unsurprising that a stagnant pool filled with its water is prone to algae blooms. 

10. Sometimes in the past the reflecting pool was filled with potable water from the city’s drinking water supply. That water was lower in nutrients and would initially be less prone to algae blooms than the Potomac water from the tidal basin. BUT that was an expensive use of precious drinking water, and it wasn’t just a one-time use, either, because water would be lost to evaporation and leaks. Plus, water changes would eventually be needed because the initially clean water would get contaminated from fertilizer rich runoff, bird poop, etc. and after a while the nutrient levels would be just as high as Potomac water, anyway. So, I think the Obama era re-plumbing of the reflecting pool with dirtier but cheaper to flush-through tidal basin water was an OK idea. 

11. I think the BEST way to do the reflecting pool would be more like a natural lake than a cement bottomed pool. The center would have to be dug quite deep to remain as open water, but to keep the water quality good the borders of the pond would have to be shallow wetlands vegetated with cattails, lily pads, etc. Instead of just existing to reflect the monuments around it, this “green” reflecting pool would perform multiple ecological functions, providing plant and animal habitat and naturally removing excess nutrients from the urban runoff passing through it.