What is dirtying up Chautauqua Lake and what's being done about it? An update on the Jefferson Project

One million dollars was set aside this year in the governor's budget, for a project critical to the Southern Tier: cleaning up Chautauqua Lake. And that was welcome news to a group that's been studying the lake's health for about four years now. 

"This lake, unfortunately, is among the most impaired and we've been on a journey to change that," Michael Hill said, the president of the Chautauqua Institution. 

Back in October of 2018, neighbors tell News 4, dead weeds that built up became so thick, it acted like a net of death for fish at the southern end of the lake. 

'You could see them just flopping around on top," Peggy Newell said, a resident on the lake. "It just broke our hearts."

Tens of thousands of fish died. 

"We don't want it to be a swimming pool, but we do want it to be a lake that's navigable, and that fisherman can enjoy,  kids can swim, and just have a good time on the lake," said Jeff Yanus said, another resident there.

Those weeds are problem number one. Problem two: harmful and smelly algae blooms.

"When the animals get into the lake some of them can die from this, and humans shouldn't be near the harmful algae blooms either," John Shedd said, VP of Campus Planning and Operations at the Chautauqua Institution.

But the tide has started to turn on Chautauqua, and it's all thanks to the cleaner tides of a nearby lake. 

More than ten years ago, a group of neighbors on Lake George joined forces with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and IBM to dive into what was dirtying up their lake. The group called themselves, 'The Jefferson Project.'

"They created what they called, 'The smartest lake in the world," Shedd said. 

They found out road salt was a big problem there and after creating actionable change, today, Lake George has been named one of the cleanest lakes in the country. 

So that inspired the start of the Jefferson Project on Chautauqua four years ago. Led by the Chautauqua Institution, pontoon boats with impressive technology are launched every summer on Chautauqua and are attached to the bottom on the lake. They are able to get millions of data points every minute, helping researchers figure out what's wrong there. 

"We found out there low oxygen or no oxygen in major portions of the North Basin," Shedd said. 

"When a lake lacks oxygen at a certain depth, what that means is that certain things that naturally should be growing here aren't growing anymore," Michael Hill said, the president of the Chautauqua Institution. "And that has a ripple effect on the entire ecosystem of the lake."

They've also learned, runoff from agriculture around the lake and people's properties, could be leading to the harmful algae blooms. They've installed monitoring stations in specific tributaries that lead into the lake. 

"There are parts of our watershed that are the major contributors, who are dumping sediment into this lake," Hill said. "We're working to do things now to restore stream beds."

"It also has identified that the bottom has a wave associated with it, similar to what's on the top," Shedd said "And so, when that wave brings up sediment from the bottom to collide with the silt that's coming off of the land into the lake, that's where we find an algae bloom."

So far, all of this has cost about $6 million dollars, according to Hill. But now neighbors are asking, what's the next step?

"I have faith in them, they'll get the data," Yanus said. "But the action part is what's a concern.  We've had data on this lake the past 20 years. It's the action part that I'm concerned about."

Hill said pilot projects, which will lead to larger clean-up projects, will start soon. Change you can see is around the corner.

"Our hope is in the next year or two the actionable things that we can do will be longer than the short list that we can create right now," Hill said. "Our goal: We'll give Lake George the number one spot, but we'll gladly take number two healthiest lakes when we're done."

You may question why does this matter if I don't live on Chautauqua Lake? Well, the lake flows into the Chadakoin River, which then goes into the Conewango Creek. Eventually, it all flows into the Mississippi River. The Jefferson Project hopes what they're doing on Chautauqua will lead to clean-up efforts in bodies of water across the U.S.