Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Jefferson Project’s recent report on its activities on Chautauqua Lake in 2023 is confirmation of something most people who deal with Chautauqua Lake already knew – internal loading of phosphorus is a big problem.

That’s a fact that we’ve known since 2012, when the Total Minimum Daily Load document prepared by the state DEC was released to the public. We’ve referred to that document often in this space over the years. The TMDL’s analysis was one of the reasons to back additional projects to build sewers around Chautauqua Lake and to do regular testing of septic systems to make sure phosphorus wasn’t leaking from those private systems into the groundwater and eventually into Chautauqua Lake.

So perhaps the most important thing to come from the Jefferson Project report is this paragraph on Page 29 of the Jefferson Project report: “This research indicates that internal loading is a major driver of productivity in Chautauqua Lake, and impacts many of the water quality issues of concern for lake residents and stakeholders. This finding has important implication for lake management policy, as any actions taken to reduce external loading, while necessary, are very likely to not result in immediate improvements in water quality due to the large load of legacy nutrients stored in lake sediments.”

So we reiterate a point we’ve made often in the past 12 years – it is high time to figure out how best to deal with the phosphorus and nitrogen that already exists in Chautauqua Lake. That is what the biggest cause of the lake’s problems – and decreasing that internal loading will give taxpayers the biggest bang for their Chautauqua Lake maintenance dollars.

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Jefferson Project Confirms What We Knew About Source Of Lake’s Phosphorus

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06.02.2024

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Jefferson Project’s recent report on its activities on Chautauqua Lake in 2023 is confirmation of something most people who deal with Chautauqua Lake already knew – internal loading of phosphorus is a big problem.

That’s a fact that we’ve known since 2012, when the Total Minimum Daily Load document prepared by the state DEC was released to the public. We’ve referred to that document often........

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