Paul Szmal: Good morning, 816. It's FLX Morning. It's our monthly visit with Seneca Lake Pure Waters. SenecaLake.org is the website. Mark Gibson is here. Good morning.
Mark Gibson: Good morning, Ted. Good to talk with you again. It's always good to talk clean water.
Paul Szmal: The annual appeal is underway. Seneca Lake Pure Waters is funded through memberships and through donations from the public. So tell us about the annual appeal and why it's so important to keep this work going.
Mark Gibson: It's our year-end appeal to members and lakefront property owners and people in the watershed to help us fund all of our programs that we do in our operations. We do tons of work this year. It's been especially busy. We just produced a paper on PFAS chemicals that we're seeing coming into the lake, trying to track them down. Of course, we had a really busy hab season, unfortunately. You know, over 300 reported habs and probably many more that are out in the lake. Educational initiatives and general operations. So there's a lot going on, and we need everybody's help to keep this lake clean and beautiful.
Paul Szmal: And because what Seneca Lake Pure Waters does is largely citizen science. I mean, it's volunteers that are taking these measurements and monitoring streams and creating the hab maps and the warning system and everything you do.
Mark Gibson: Yeah, that's right. We have over 120 volunteers monitoring for habs around the lake. We have people sampling water on a weekly basis, checking clarity and things like that, sending samples off. So there's lots of volunteers, lots of opportunities for volunteering with us, not just in the science part, but also helping us with operations and doing mailings and that sort of thing. So if people are interested, go to our website. There's a spot for volunteering you can fill in.
The other program that we do that we think, you know, will help directly affect the lake and keep it clean is our Sediment Nutrient Pollution Reduction Program. That's where we sponsor, help landowners build retention ponds and do cover crop planting and things like that that will help prevent runoff in these large storm events that we have coming into the lake and keeping phosphorus and nutrients out of the lake.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I think that's been one of the biggest advances over the last few years, and we talk to a lot of different organizations like yours, and everybody's really focusing in on those tributaries and those waterways. What can someone do, just a regular person at home, if you live near the lake or you live on a tributary of the lake, what can we do ourselves in our own lives to reduce that sediment runoff?
Mark Gibson: Just make sure that your landscaping is good, that you plant plants that help hold the soil in. Try not to rake your leaves into the lake. You know, people say, oh, the leaves, and they just go in. But if you rake everything that falls on your yard in, that's detrimental. It can rot and cause problems down the road. Obviously, try to keep fertilizing to a minimum. And if you use that, don't use any fertilizer with that little number, anything other than zero, which is the nitrogen number. You want to keep nitrogen out of the lake. So try to hold your fertilizing to a minimum. And if you do, be sure to do it in a way that prevents it from running into the lake.
You can build rain barrels. If you go to our website, there's a lake-friendly living program that we sponsor that will guide homeowners on all sorts of things that you can do to help improve your interaction with the lake and try to keep everything out of it that shouldn't be going in. That's SenecaLake.org, the website.
Paul Szmal: And one of your newer initiatives that we've begun talking about this year is the Fisheries Initiative. Remind us how that works and what we're learning about the fish in Seneca Lake.
Mark Gibson: Well, we work with the DEC on that. They're the lead agency. They go out and sample fish. What we do is try to coordinate programs on them. We had a fisheries update earlier in the year, and I'm sure we'll do that again. It was very well attended. The DEC will come in and tell us what they know about what's going on in the lake. Unfortunately, I didn't attend that, so I can't speak to that too much. I know from a personal perspective, I see more fish around my dock. Talking to fishermen, I think the fishing is starting to come back. I know people are catching lots of lake trout, and they look pretty good, although lamprey eels are attached to many of them, and I know the DEC has been doing treatment in the tributaries for that. But, yeah, I think the fishing is coming back, and we just really are a conduit for information and monitoring.
Paul Szmal: As you mentioned earlier, this has been a very difficult season for HABS. We know that the nutrient runoff is one cause. Another one seems to be the kind of weather we had for a lot of the summer. While we all love those lazy, hazy, sunny days by the lake, when it's sunny like that and there's little wind, those are conditions for those blooms to grow.
Mark Gibson: That's true. It was a very warm winter. I just heard on the news last night that this is the 11th month in a row that temperatures have been higher than normal. It was definitely quite calm in August and late July, August, when things took off. We did have Debbie come through and have lots of rain and storm runoff into the lake early in the summer, and that sure contributed. It was a region-wide problem. So it's not just specifically Seneca Lake. If you look, all the Finger Lakes had HABS. There's a satellite photo I've seen that shows you can see the green in the top of all the Finger Lakes that are Canandaigua, Seneca, and Cayuga Lake were visible there. So it's been a tough season. Like I said, we've had well over 300 reported blooms. Our monitors have sent out over 800 reports. As you mentioned, we do have a text system, and people can sign up for that at our website as well. This year we sent out almost 28,000 text messages. So it's been a very busy season, and we need money to help keep that going. It cost us about $1,500 to send all those texts this year. So any help that people can provide in the annual appeal is very appreciated.
Paul Szmal: I know you can always use more volunteers. Are there, in terms of HAB mapping, are there areas of the lake that are less covered where you can use more people?
Mark Gibson: There is. If you live south of Long Point on both sides of the lake, especially maybe down farther toward Glenora and across the Peach Orchard Point and south, we really could use more volunteers down there. There's less homes in that area, so it's a little bit harder to find volunteers, but we could use volunteers in that area. If you're there, send us a note. Go on to our website again and send me a note, and we'll get you signed up. It's very easy.
Paul Szmal: How long does the annual appeal last, and what's the best way to give?
Mark Gibson: The annual appeal starts early November. We'll be sending out mailings to the people. It'll go through the end of the year, and it coincides with the end of the tax year. There's many ways to contribute. If you live on the lake or you're a past or present member, you'll be getting a mailing from us, so you can respond to that. You can go on the website and give. Other ways that may not be quite as obvious to people is you can pledge your 401k required minimum distributions to us. We'll take securities and also planned giving. So if you're planning your estate and you want to leave a lasting gift to the lake, think about planned giving in your estate planning.
Paul Szmal: I know that membership is a good way to help support the organization. Again, you'll see a link there at SenecaLake.org. Explain how membership works.
Mark Gibson: Membership is just anybody that wants to contribute really becomes a member. We're kind of changing our philosophy there. We just really want people to contribute and volunteer and become a member, so it's very inexpensive. You start at $30 and become an individual member. If a family wants to join, we'd like to have $50. We'll give the newsletters and everything to multiple family members and beyond that. So it's very inexpensive. We hope that everybody that owns property in the watershed and especially lakefront property owners will join. But right now, we're mapping that. We feel that there's a long way to go to get everybody to join on the lake.
Paul Szmal: You can also volunteer and be one of these citizen scientists. SenecaLake.org slash volunteer. There's also the newsletter at SenecaLake.org slash lakewatch, and the organization's also all over social media, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. So that annual appeal begins in November, and it's your best way to support the work that Seneca Lake Pure Waters does.
Mark, thanks for the update, and let's hope we have a much more HAB-free year and more progress next year.
Mark Gibson: Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much for having us on, and I appreciate all your support over the years.
Paul Szmal: All right.
