So it seems like Santa Rosa poisoned Perch Lake...

[KevinNM]

The lake gates are locked and it is posted against swimming and fishing. We walked down the road and onto the dock. There were a few really tiny fish noticed, but the vis is awful and the algae looks dead. Apparently the rest of the fish (the ones the state stocked in the lake a little while ago) died and were already removed. There is apparently some sort of bacterial issue now. I heard 2 different versions of how this happened:

1: The fishermen complained about the chiggers, so the town brought in a company that sprayed the land around the lake. And it rained and washed the insecticide into the lake. But I can't see how this kills the algae.

2: Someone got the bright idea of using an algecide on the lake. Which worked, killing all the algae. Which then rotted and used up all the oxygen and killed everything else in the lake, and the mass of dead stuff incubated something bad.

It may well be both 1 and 2, though I'd bet on 2 for the real devastation. So don't plan on diving Perch for a while.

 

[Tjack]

Tragic

 

[boulderjohn]

You would think that the town would be able to employ people who know what they are doing in this regard. My family used to have a cabin on a lake in New Jersey, and in the 40 years I went there for vacations in the summer, the lake was almost always in great shape because they hired people who knew what they were doing to keep it that way.