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Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Development of Park Harming Adirondack's Lakes and Streams

All throughout the Adirondacks, local governments are motivating to reduce pollution and protect water quality of the area’s streams and lakes—specifically salt pollution. The Adirondack Lake Assessment Program, managed by Paul Smith’s College, compiled data for dozens of Adirondack lakes showing evidence of rising levels of chloride and sodium due to salt pollution. Lake George has been found to have a rise in salt levels nearly triple the amount existing 30-years ago.
            When it comes to the deliverance of salt into a lake, storm water is the main culprit. This storm water comes from residential, commercial, and municipal sources. As we have discussed in class, over the past century of the park’s development, many communities have expanded within the Adirondacks, including private properties and tourist attractions. These properties are often built along the shores of lakes and ponds with large homes, extensive driveways, and green lawns well kept with fertilizers and pesticides.
Local roads are built to service these residential and commercial structures. These roads contribute high levels of storm water during rainstorms, which flow directly into streams or lakes. Surprisingly, this is often by design. Highway engineers are more concerned with public safety than water pollution, and prioritize getting water off of roads as quickly as possible during rainstorms. As a result, Lakes with long stretches of highways and developed areas close to shorelines are experiencing the highest levels of pollution. Especially during the winter, runoff contributes to salt pollution in the lake. In the winter, trucks de-ice the highways with salt, which when melted, will directly flow into the areas water sources.
This highlights one of the main issues regarding the development of the Adirondack Park, and is something we have been discussing in class over the past several days. What many people struggle with is balancing the recreational development of the park with the exploitative use of it’s resources. The highways and roads being built as pathways through the region allow the park to become more accessible, yet it destroys the forests that the park was established to protect. Even private owners, who go to the park out of a desire to live in nature and seclusion, are invading the region by building their properties and roads in some of the most aesthetically valuable areas of the park. These ideas are hard to balance, and have been a topic of debate for many years.
However, there is hope for reducing the harm done to the park. Many local governments are prioritizing lowering water pollution levels. People are making moves to change winter highway de-icing by investing in substitutes to salt, and new technologies for de-icing equipment. Hopefully these efforts will lead to progress and pollution levels will start to go down in the region’s lakes and streams. Luckily, these local governments are aware of their water pollution issues and are placing a high priority on curtailing any further damage done to the park’s aquatic ecosystems.

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