Birch Cove Beach to reopen
Posted Jul 15, 2011 04:56:30 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A public beach at Lake Banook will reopen for swimming on Saturday morning. A third round of water tests from Lake Banook hasn’t shed any light on the mysterious illness that’s affected 30 people.
HRM officials say the third water quality tests received yesterday show normal bacterial counts at Birch Cove Beach.
“The investigation carried out by Public Health Services found no evidence to suggest an ongoing threat to the public’s health,” read an advisory Friday from HRM. “It was also verified through Halifax Water that there were no overflows from the wastewater pumping station servicing the area.”
After the second round of tests showed e. coli counts within the normal range, Director of aquatics John Henry said that means they’ll start investigating other possibilities.
“I really don’t know what to say at this point,” he said. “We’re looking at some potential others, I’ve heard of blue algae possibly as a culprit. I don’t have any expertise in that field at all, but that was something else that was mentioned. Outside of that, there’s not a whole lot of other things to go on.”
A Dartmouth limnologist tells News 95.7 toxic algae blooms have been identified in other local lakes, and it’s possible they’ve appeared in Banook.
“If a lake is in its natural state, and a natural state means the state it was about 200 years ago, the chances of having toxic algae blooms are remote,” said Shalom Mandaville. “But we have been polluting the lakes basically since the late 1800s. That’s long.”
Mandaville says sunny, calm conditions of the last few weeks are ideal for producing toxic algae blooms, which could cause symptoms similar to those seen in an E. coli outbreak.
He says the toxic blooms aren’t easy to see, and tend not to survive very long, so they’re easy to miss.
