Teens present Pushaw Lake pollution study

ORONO – Under names such as “Scum Busters” and “We Hate Algae Dot Com,” groups of teenagers from throughout New England have spent the past month investigating pollution levels in Pushaw Lake, where homeowners have struggled with algae blooms for more than three decades.

Tuesday, the Upward Bound participants presented their findings to the lake’s residents.

In July, the students explored swamps and ditches and streams to collect water samples from throughout the Pushaw Lake watershed, in order to track potential sources of the phosphorus pollution that seems to drive algae blooms.

“I just was blown away by the work that they did,” said Kerry Sack, president of the Greater Pushaw Lake Association.

Thirty-seven students have spent the past month on the University of Maine campus as part of an Upward Bound program focused on math and science.

Upward Bound is a federally funded effort to expose bright children from blue-collar families to college life.

The students’ data will be fed into a computerized GIS [geographic information system] map, so that local residents can select locations in their neighborhood and learn about potential problem areas.

One group identified a gravel pit as a major phosphorus source. Others noted lawns lacking a plant buffer to filter pollutants, soapy scum floating on the water, or manure spread on agricultural fields surprisingly far from water bodies that seemed to be having an impact.

In some places, runoff from a heavy rainfall sent phosphorus numbers “through the roof,” the students said.

“The more you work with water, the more you realize how it’s all connected together,” said Nate Larlee of Thorndike, local coordinator of the math and science program.

High phosphorus levels are a major environmental problem on many Maine lakes, where development is introducing high levels of fertilizers, soaps and animal wastes into the water.

Soil erosion just exacerbates the problem by carrying phosphorus into the lake. Though the problem has been well-understood for years, solutions are lacking.

Students proposed continuing efforts to plant buffers to stem erosion, as well as fining homeowners who thwart the environmental effort of their neighbors with irresponsible landscaping.

Larlee had hoped that the teens, freed from their classroom, would get excited about conducting real-world experiments, in which researchers find more questions than answers.

Tuesday, he was pleased to note that the students had also created additional laboratory experiments of their own – comparing the relative pollution from soap and dog feces, for example – to get a better grasp of the phosphorus problem.

“We don’t only want to be collecting data. We want to really own some of this in the lab,” Larlee said, repeating the students’ pleas.

All of the data will go on to benefit the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Service, said Laura Wilson, who handles water quality work and has worked with the Greater Pushaw Lake Association since 2001.

The data the Upward Bound students are providing might never have been available, had they not been willing to battle the mosquitoes and get their hands dirty collecting water samples, Sack said.

The work also provides great “jumping off points” for further research, to be funded by a federal grant that the association and several partners recently received through the state Department of Environmental Protection, she said.

For more information about Pushaw Lake and the efforts to control phosphorus, contact Wilson at 581-2971.