So this is going to be a little series starting 2 weeks ago and going through the 7 most polluted bodies of water in the US. Since I didn’t start in order, I am not going to follow the order of the list in the original article.
One of the other bodies of water mentioned in the article (The 7 Most Polluted Bodies of Water in the US) that I didn’t know about is Onondaga Lake. “Once upon a time in the 19th century, Onondaga Lake was a popular tourist destination, replete with beaches, resorts and amusement parks. However, industrial pollution combined with agricultural runoff and wastewater rendered the lake unsafe for swimming by 1940 and fishing by 1970. Today, you won’t find any colorful umbrellas lining its shores…Recent revitalization efforts have made the lake cleaner than in 100 years. It reopened to fishing in 1986. It was designated as a superfund site in 1994.” That’s a lot to unpack in a small blurb.
Onondaga Lake is in central New York just northwest of Syracuse. There is a lot of really great information in the source articles if you want to deep dive down this rabbit hole.
This lake was beautiful and a sacred place within the territory of the Onondaga Nation. After the American Revolutionary War, the land was transferred from ownership by the tribes of the Onondaga Nation to allow salt mining from the brine with the condition that the salt was to be available to all. In addition to mining salt from the brine, many other industries developed on the lake shore dumping all of their industrial waste into the lake. Additionally, the combined sewer system (we’ll go over that in another post soon, but basically sewage and stormwater combined), untreated, from the city of Syracuse also dumped into the lake.
So the timeline for pollution of the lake starts just after the American Revolution and continues until approximately 1986. As early as 1901, ice harvesting was banned in the lake due to the unsafe levels of pollution. In 1940, swimming in the lake was banned. In 1970, fishing was banned due to mercury contamination (and mostly still is today with some exceptions). In 1986 when the site was closed due to increasing environmental regulations. In 1994, Onondaga Lake was designated a Superfund Site. (EPA’s Superfund program allows the EPA to manage the cleanup of the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites.)
What was dumped into the lake? In addition to the sewage and human waste, large amounts of sediment from stormwater and mud boils in the tributaries that feed the lake increased the turbidity. Between 1946 and 1970, 165,000 pounds (75,000 kg) of mercury was discharged into Onondaga Lake causing surface water contamination. Sediment in the lake bottom are contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), pesticides, creosotes, heavy metals (lead, cobalt, and mercury), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), chlorinated benzenes, and BTEX compounds (benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene).
Efforts have been and are continuing to be made to reduce the amount of pollution going into the lake and to clean up and remediate what is already there. As always, there are differing opinions on whether or not those efforts are successful and if they do enough. The bottom of the lake has been dredged to remove contaminated soil, but not all of the contamination was removed. What was left in place was capped. Fishing for some species has opened up again, but not for all species of fish, and pregnant women and children are advised not to eat any fish from the lake due to high mercury levels.
Onondaga lake is not the cesspool it was 40 years ago, but neither is it the pristine, idyllic lake from the pre-revolutionary times.
Sources:
https://environment.co/the-7-most-polluted-bodies-of-water-in-the-us
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onondaga_Lake
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/waterbodies/lakes-rivers/onondaga-lake
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/SiteProfiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=second.cleanup&id=0203382
https://dec.ny.gov/nature/waterbodies/lakes-rivers/onondaga-lake
https://www.oei2.org/our-watershed/history/
https://www.thenewshouse.com/off-campus/whats-really-going-on-with-onondaga-lake/
