Boaters are wrecking local lakes

• As a kid, a couple of highly anticipated weeks every summer were spent at Pine Point Day Camp, located along the northeastern side of Gardner Lake, between St. Thomas More School and the Hopemead State Park access area. Camp was fun with new friends and new things to do outside. But the primary reason I wanted to attend was the free time we had each day, which was spent fishing along the rocky shoreline north of the day camp.
• Every day I saw big smallmouth bass cruising along the shoreline in 6 to 10 feet of what was then crystal-clear water.
  
• Unfortunately, the days of clear water in Gardner Lake and most other developed bodies of water in the region are over. The reason is a high level of human presence both on and around the shores of this and other popular lakes. Some days it's difficult to see a white dinner plate on the bottom in 3 or 4 feet because of the turbid conditions that have developed on this lake over two or three decades.
  
• Unfortunately, at the present time, this is the situation on just about every developed lake in the region. Any lake rimmed with homes and run frothy by outboards is faced with the degradation of its water quality because of the addition of nutrients (in the form of phosphates and nitrates) from septic system seepage along with fertilizers used on lawns, gardens, and farms.
• Blend this all together by millions of rotations from the propellers of boats and nozzles from jet skis, which mix exhaust from their engines like a blender into the water and serious water quality problems are inevitable. Four-cycle engines are much cleaner burning, because no oil is burned with the gas, so all they add is fuel emissions, a far cleaner option.
• It all adds up over time. Green lawns unfortunately also create green lakes. Light, pea soup green is not the color the water in our lakes is supposed to be. Hydrocarbons from exhaust along with some potentially dangerous toxins created from the combustion of gasoline and oil, are constantly being added directly to the water via engine exhaust.
• If you want to open your eyes to this huge problem, read a book by Andre Mele, published in 1993 by Norton Publications, called "Polluting for Pleasure." It is an in-depth look at the horrendous oil pollution problem that is being created by huge numbers of two-stroke recreational boats and gas-burning engines.
• To quote Mele, boats are injecting or "spilling 15 times more oil into our waters than the Exxon Valdez -- every year. Unregulated powerboats are creating a national disaster." Anyone who rides on the water contributes to this problem. Nothing burned is good for the environment, though the primary culprit here are two-cycle (two-stroke) engines. The primary reason is they are dirty, requiring the addition of oil into the gasoline.
• Each stroke of every piston blows partially burned gas and oil directly through the exhaust pipe into the water. According to "Polluting for Pleasure," the result is an oil emulsion in the water, 55 to 65 percent of which evaporates, leaving roughly 35 to 45 percent remaining in the water. Doing the math, roughly 2.6 ounces per gallon of gas burned from each pint of oil that's mixed in a standard 50:1 ratio with six gallons of gasoline in older outboard engine remains in the water in the form of emulsified oils that is essentially like a toxic bathtub ring on a given body of water.
• Ficht technology and oil injection systems on more modern two-stroke outboard engines have improved their emission levels to half of that level with the best producing a 100:1 oil to gas ratio, but certainly have not even come close to eliminating this invisible, but insidious, pollution problem.
• Solar or battery power is the only way to totally eliminate this dangerous form of water pollution, one that many people do not even think about as they bounce along in their boats. At this point in time, clean means traveling at a much slower, quieter pace, which lake dwellers would appreciate.
• Using Gardner Lake as an extreme example among our local lakes and ponds, there are too many boats permanently sitting on this 529-acre body of water. Gardner Lake has about four major clusters of boats at small marinas or campgrounds and dozens of others moored to private docks around its perimeter. Boats are always leaking something into the water, plus handling two-stroke oil and simply pouring gasoline from gasoline containers into boats is never a clean job, so minor spills and splashes of oil and gas occur constantly on a lake.
• The biggest polluters are older two-stroke engines and pretty much all the jet skis, which are essentially filthy, despite their slick, clean looks.
  
• Mele's eye-opening book was published prior to stricter clean-water regulations that have been put in place since the late 1990s. Despite improvement in technology forced by this legislation, the problem still exists and continues to increase.
  
• Oil emulsions physically cloud the water, because they are mixed in like a blender by the action of the propeller, but they tend to remain near the surface because oil is less dense than water. The result is a layer of turbid, toxic water.
• In addition to runoff into the water shed and the oil pollution in a place like Gardner Lake, extremely high levels of boat traffic create constant wave action that breaks along the shoreline, stirring up fine particulate matter from shallow water into suspension. These suspended particles further lower the water clarity, add nutrients to the water column and can contribute to loss of healthy macrophytic plant growth because light penetration into the water is reduced. It's all a vicious cycle.
• The result, after decades of such abuse in the form of nutrients and oil pollutants constantly being added to lakes, is numerous lakes that turn green every summer with algae blooms, while others may literally clog up with emergent plant growth or both.
• High levels of nutrients in the water act as fertilizer for aquatic plants and algae. The result is proliferation of nuisance plants such as milfoil, to the point that boats can't run through the mats of vegetation that may totally cover the lake surface. Water chestnut, milfoil, and parrot feather are three plants of most concern.
• In the future, cleaner, more efficient forms of propulsion for boats along with more efficient hull designs will be developed, further reducing the pollution and damage to our waters.
• Add central sewer lines for lakeside houses, ban fertilizing lawns, slow everyone down and there could be some significant improvements in water quality over time, especially in smaller lakes that have less water volume to absorb the various forms of human abuse they must withstand. (Bob Samspon, Jr. Norwich Bulletin).