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.