Lake Lariat Closed as Percautionary Measure

E

exnodak

New Member
And thats just my point..... Our kids have been swimming in this soup all summer and just now after the balloon goes up and the chatter starts you show all kinds of concern.

How many kids have been taken to the Dr. and diagnosed with ....whatever? "They just got into something" The Doc prescribes a skin ointment and they are sent home with neurotoxins and heptatoxins in their livers. How is the medical community supposed to be aware? This is not run of the mill for them.

Yet you still don't seem to be taking it seriously. As it stands, you are clearly more afraid of being wrong than you are of risking the health and welfare of anyone in contact with the lake.

Why wasn't this stuff tested by the people responsible for managing the Lake? Hmmm, now who would that be again????

Its been around all summer. Isn't there even one person on the POACRE staff or Board that is responsible enough to say: "Maybe we should find out..." What is our management here for anyway? I would think that anyone with experience with a lake community should know that you don't take such risks just because you aren't absolutely double dipped in crap positive sure.

It sure seems like the tag on the bottom of your posts is really hypocritical right about now.

In the world of epidemiology and toxicology when you hesitate, someone gets hurt or dies.
 
ladyhawk

ladyhawk

Active Member
Midnightrider said:
Also, as a owner of a lake front lot, i would like to know why i wasn't notified if you are going to "close" the lake to swimming. This is the first i have heard of it.
Click to expand...

As soon as I received the notification I sent it out to ALL Board members. There were a few board members who felt we would should wait until we got official word from the Health Department. I had decided to post it online anyway if I did not get any direction by the time I got off from work Monday afternoon. It was rather late in the evening on Sunday when I was notified. Most people work Monday and the kids are in school and the beaches are closed. So when I got home, I posted it and was on the phone with another board member who told me Bernie sent a request to post it online which I was grateful for and I immediately posted.

Today, I was told that the Health Department did call the POACRE office and told them to close the beaches when they received the reports. I will be calling them first thing tomorrow to verify this. I do not rely on rumor and speculation but instead verify things as necessary. But I do not rely on waiting for someone else because of my experiences with Cyanobacterias. My Vet agreed with me on this one.

June
 
R

residentofcre

Guest
exnodak said:
And thats just my point..... Our kids have been swimming in this soup all summer and just now after the balloon goes up and the chatter starts you show all kinds of concern.

How many kids have been taken to the Dr. and diagnosed with ....whatever? "They just got into something" The Doc prescribes a skin ointment and they are sent home with neurotoxins and heptatoxins in their livers. How is the medical community supposed to be aware? This is not run of the mill for them.

Yet you still don't seem to be taking it seriously. As it stands, you are clearly more afraid of being wrong than you are of risking the health and welfare of anyone in contact with the lake.

Why wasn't this stuff tested by the people responsible for managing the Lake? Hmmm, now who would that be again????

Its been around all summer. Isn't there even one person on the POACRE staff or Board that is responsible enough to say: "Maybe we should find out..." What is our management here for anyway? I would think that anyone with experience with a lake community should know that you don't take such risks just because you aren't absolutely double dipped in crap positive sure.

It sure seems like the tag on the bottom of your posts is really hypocritical right about now.

In the world of epidemiology and toxicology when you hesitate, someone gets hurt or dies.
Click to expand...

It has been tested all summer by the Dept of Health. If any test from the Dept had come back with any questionable results, we would not hesitate to shut it down.

The fact is, the results have not come back from the Health Dept or DNR. If the results are indeed calling for the closing down of the Lake, then I would definitely close it down.

Either way, I know we need to get busy on cleaning up the lake. The time is now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
K

Kain99

Guest
Wow! The Ranch club has finally gone to total shiat! Very sad. My baby niece lives there.
 
E

exnodak

New Member
The health department's routine tests are only for coliform bacteria. NOTHING ELSE unless the customer orders it.

It is pro forma and the samplers aren't trained to identify any other problems. They are samplers, not trained biologists.

So, it could be anything in the lake: cholera,typhoid, dysentary, polio, e-coli, cryptosporidium, etc, etc, etc. If all they are looking for is coliform, that is all they will find and that is all they will report. Unfortunately, that is the way the law is written. Pretty dumb, eh?

This is a fatal flaw in depending on a mechanical health bureacracy to be your safety net. So, you need to know you are on very thin ice citing that the Health Dept. reports didn't send up any red flags. It was the thick mat of yellow green slime that should have warned you.

Responsibility cannot be dispensed by authority.
 
woogie

woogie

Active Member
I also remember about 7-8 years ago the lake (Lariat) was polluted
by runoff from defective and failing septic systems. The management
waited until "all the reports were back" before closing the lake then,
too! MANY people got sick, got shin rashes and fevers and such as
a result of the delayed action by the property manager and others.

I wonder it his might be related? The above incident was blamed on
a hot, dry summer as well. Oh yeah, and it also caused an "algae
bloom".

One of many reasons that I moved away from there.
 
ladyhawk

ladyhawk

Active Member
residentofcre said:
It has been tested all summer by the Dept of Health. If any test from the Dept had come back with any questionable results, we would not hesitate to shut it down.

The fact is, the results have not come back from the Health Dept or DNR. If the results are indeed calling for the closing down of the Lake, then I would definitely close it down.

Either way, I know we need to get busy on cleaning up the lake. The time is now.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I have to agree with exnodak. Waiting on someone else to make a decision is not in my best interest as a Board member. We are responsible to our community. I really don't care about "sounding the alarm", "creating a panic", "ruining our community". Rumor and inuendo have caused things like this already. I would prefer to risk those than to risk the health of our community members.

Recent rains will help the situation but I don't know how much rain we will need to bring the bacterias back to an acceptable level, whatever that may be. We could take tests now and we might see a very small improvement. All I know we can do at this point, is continue to warn everyone as much as we can, continue to monitor with more testing and then when we get the all clear, remove the warnings we have out there.

Members living along the lake as well as those within the community can help by checking their septic systems to ensure they are not leaching and refrain from using fertilizers and pesticides on their lawns.

Another method would be aerating the waters. Running underground piping (as Mrs. Tice suggested to me once) but then we have to worry about boats and swimmers and of course the cost associated with doing this. Aeration and vigilence of members will still take some time regardless what solution is chosen. There is no immediate solution to the lake. This is something that should have been looked at probably before I moved here 10 years ago...
With all the money that has been put into the lake and the beaches over that time.. You would have thought somebody would have done something before now... Even one of the Board terms I was on before...

June
 
ladyhawk

ladyhawk

Active Member
greyhound said:
This is interesting...

Drinking water from Lake Lariat

http://www.clamproject.com/
Click to expand...

There is a small problem with the idea of "drinking water" due to over use of Southern Maryland aquifers. And the people involved with the Clam Lake project have realized this based on the following:

"Although Lake Lariat might never be a reservoir, surface water impoundments need to be considered as possible drinking water sources to augment or replace aquifer based water sources sometime later in this Century."

The lake is man made thus the Dam. Because the lake is man made there are no guarantees that it will always be there. Even though the Lake is fed by stream waters and rains, there would not be enough water replaced at any given time. It would not take long before it turned into a Dry lake bed. So based on that, I still don't see how anyone could turn a surface water into a water source as the aquifers are. Even if we pulled ocean water and desalinated it, we would still eventually have the same problem.

The only good I see to the Clam Lake Project is that it could be a viable way to clean up our water sources making ponds, streams and other water sources cleaner allowing the fish, clams, crabs ect.. to be healthier for us to eat. Maybe even getting to see our shoes when we are chest deep in the waters as Mr. Bernie Fowler has dreamed to see again! I know what he talks about.
You can see your toenails in the waters of other countries outside the US where you are warned not to drink the water...But I haven't figured out why their water is so much cleaner than ours....

June
 
E

exnodak

New Member
The clam project is probably our best hope with a logical approach, and I fully endorse it. They were the first ad hoc group to intelligently identify the problems and propose a solution and business plan to fix it. But I understand they've had a long uphill battle with DNR and other agencies including some on the POACRE BOD that seem to have competing agendas. They publish reports regularly in the Roundup Times. They need a lot more support from the community in order to get their grant requests.

Even if they are successful, it will take more than the clam project to fix this.

Aeration is good, but a bubbler system pushing air down through the water can't work. It induces too much nitrogen back into the water through the compressor. It would give the fish the bends. The best thing would simply be jet fountains pulling cool water off the bottom and spraying it out over the surface of the lake. It'd look good too, but expensive to operate.

Lake Lariat has no waves which is how larger bodies of water get oxygenated. Oxygen kills most of the bad germs. Still water is the breeding ground for pestilence.

The number one polluter in my book is the Golf course. It is the primary source for all kinds of chemicals including the mercury in the lake. Second is all the yard fertilzer and decaying mulch that washes into the lake. Third is the amount of dead brush and wood allowed to sit on empty lots. It decays and contributes tons of nitrogen in runoff. Fourth is the failed septic tanks that the County Health Department absolutely refuse to order repaired. It seems they would rather force the "new and improved" (big joke) nitrogen removing (not!) systems on us or force us into an unnaffordable community system.

The newer functioning and well maintained septic systems lend the least amount of pollution as long as they are maintained every 3 or 4 years.

Kinda scary that the leaches didn't survive, isn't it? What else isn't surviving out there?
 
ladyhawk

ladyhawk

Active Member
Kain99 said:
Wow! The Ranch club has finally gone to total shiat! Very sad. My baby niece lives there.
Click to expand...
greyhound said:
Finally? :killingme
Click to expand...


Really sad that someone seems to find this situation so funny..

This is just the risk I took in posting to the site, but at least I know I did the right thing.

Have you thought about the seafood you eat and where it comes from? Do you know what test results were on that water? Something to think about...

I know the Health Department had a standard of how much seafood you shouldn't eat from various water sources.. And I believe the bay was on the list at one time... Someone please correct me if I'm wrong..

June
 
greyhound

greyhound

New Member
ladyhawk said:
Really sad that someone seems to find this situation so funny..

This is just the risk I took in posting to the site, but at least I know I did the right thing.

Have you thought about the seafood you eat and where it comes from? Do you know what test results were on that water? Something to think about...

I know the Health Department had a standard of how much seafood you shouldn't eat from various water sources.. And I believe the bay was on the list at one time... Someone please correct me if I'm wrong..

June
Click to expand...

I lived in CRClub many years ago. Before that my grandmother had a house there. It was a nice vacation getaway until the Old Court Savings & Loan scandel. Lots were auctioned off and the Ranch Club changed.

Have you been in the County a good length of time. The people that have been around awhile know what it was like.
 
ladyhawk

ladyhawk

Active Member
greyhound said:
I remember when the lake was so clear that you could see to the bottom (the early 70's).
Click to expand...

Wow! I wish I could have lived here then.
Do you have any pictures to share?
I would love to put them online so the members can see what it once was....

Maybe it could help us get more people involved...

June
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top