The Iowa DNR’s Water Quality Bureau is adding testing for the bacteria that leads to blue-green algae blooms at county and city beaches.
Spokesman Mark Moeller says they already do testing for E. coli bacteria at local beaches and this will add the blue-green algae test used at state beaches. “Is there a problem with these? We don’t know, but this will actually give us that information kind of going forward to help them, you know, if there is a need for an advisory to put one there,” Moeller says.
Blue-green algae blooms can be toxic to people and pets. Moeller says cyanotoxin in the water can lead to the blooms.
“Blue-green algae are going to be found in all of our systems, they are naturally there. But as far as bloom goes, there are numerous conditions that can lead to the bloom,” he says. “Excess nutrients is one of them, but you know, things like hot summers or lack of wind, things like that.”
Blooms can often happen after rains was nutrients in lakes, but Moeller says they are not always toxic. “Whether one’s toxic or not, there are other stressors that come into play with it. Because we do know nationwide, there are very, very low nutrient lake systems that will have blooms that do get toxic on them too, that are at a far lower level than what we are at,” he says.
Moeller says there will be 35 to 40 county and city park beaches are all over the state that get the additional testing. “They’re already collecting an indicated bacteria sample testing for that E. coli. So they would just then collect another bottle for us to ship into the state hygienic laboratory,” he says.
The Legislature approved an extra $500,000 to make the city and county beach tests permanent.
