Health watch at Ken’s Lake

Midweek at the large reservoir south of town, where people enjoy swimming, paddle boarding and fishing…it was quiet. New yellow signs dotted the shores of the lake reading ‘HEALTH WATCH – harmful algae in water!’

This algal bloom could be the first documented incident of its kind at Ken’s Lake, according to Southeast Utah environmental health director Orion Rogers. He says the bloom is actually a cyanobacteria that grows like a plant. 

ROGERS: And cyanobacteria [has] been on Earth longer than probably anything else. We can thank it for our oxygen in our atmosphere that it started producing back in the Precambrian [period]. So it’s been around forever. There’s lots of different kinds, some of them can produce toxin, some of them can’t. The one that we detected [in Ken’s Lake] last week was confirmed to be a species that can produce toxin. However, the toxin testing that we did, came back ‘non detect’ so no toxins were present in the sample that I took last week. However, that can change overnight. That can change very quickly. 

So that means Rogers will continue to test cyanobacteria for toxins. If the algal bloom at Ken’s Lake does start producing toxins, exposure can cause stomach pain, neurological symptoms and liver damage. And even without the toxins, exposure may cause gastrointestinal distress and skin irritation. Currently, the health department strongly advises humans, pets and livestock to avoid the water at Ken’s Lake. 

ROGERS: Right now, we’re at a health watch level. That could get increased to a warning level or a danger level, depending on what we find. On the health watch end of it, it says to be cautious when swimming [but] really it’s not a great idea.

KZMU NEWS: Okay. So really, you’re saying if you can avoid swimming, please do that.

ROGERS: Just avoid as much contact with the water as possible.

KZMU NEWS: How did this come to be? How did the Southeast Utah Health Department start sampling? Does it always sample? 

ROGERS: So Ken’s Lake has not typically been sampled in the past. I don’t think it ever has, because it’s not a lake that was assumed to be highly suspect for having a harmful algal bloom. I received a number of concerned citizen calls about the lake. So I went out there to see whether or not it was true. The first time I went out there, I didn’t see any sign of the bloom, but decided that I would go check it out again last Wednesday [September 6th]. And I saw what looked very likely to be harmful algal bloom.

KZMU NEWS: What does it look like? 

ROGERS: It can look like a whole bunch of different things. It can look like grass clippings floating on the surface sometimes. After it goes through like this genetic shift that can happen generally when it has begun producing toxins, it’ll look like spilled paint on the surface. But it can vary widely. 

Generally, right now the [algal] bloom seems to be hanging out kind of at the inlet and along the typical bathing beach out there that many people frequent. It’s somewhat hard to see if you don’t really know what you’re looking for currently, unless you’re in the inlet area where it’s very prolific. But I flew a drone around the lake and from an aerial view, you can see the extent of it and it is relatively extensive.

KZMU NEWS: Is it around the shoreline? 

ROGERS: Yeah. 

KZMU NEWS: Okay, so mainly where people are going to be entering the lake?

ROGERS: Right. And so it’s strongly cautioned to not be submerging yourself in that water, just because even if it’s not producing toxins, it has a high cell count right now. And when there’s a high cell count, which is however many little creatures there are per milliliter, it can cause skin irritations, gastrointestinal distress, stuff like that. So it’s especially important to keep dogs out right now, because dogs consume a lot of that water. So right now it’s still okay to be out there on boats, things like that, that are going to limit exposure, but certainly nothing that’s going to cause ingestion and definitely don’t be swimming where it’s obviously a bloom. 

KZMU NEWS: Can you tell us what causes it?

ROGERS: That’s a complicated question. Generally what’s needed is a high nutrient load in the water for it to thrive on. It’s a plant. So it also needs light and it also needs warmth. So just like your house plant, it needs water, it needs nutrients and it needs a relatively warm environment. And so typically, where we see algal blooms, and what they’re generally associated with is areas with a high agricultural use. Uses of fertilizers, the presence of livestock and their feces getting into the water and providing fertilizer, essentially. And so that’s where we generally see it. So it is a little bit surprising to see it at Ken’s Lake because the nutrient factor is not there as much as it is in other areas. 

However, just speculation there could have been sediment stirred up by some of the flooding that we’ve seen recently that would add to the nutrients, amongst many other things. So at this time, it’s really not terribly clear why it’s happening this year, and we haven’t seen it in the past. It may happen next year, it may not. It’s a very difficult piece of science. It’s just such a fickle organism that not a lot is truly understood.

However, one thing that is certainly understood is that algal blooms are being identified more and more every year. And in atypical places. So there’s a lot of high alpine lakes and reservoirs in Colorado that are starting to see blooms now that haven’t seen them in the past and are also somewhat surprising to see them. So what the root cause is, no one really knows right now, at least with this situation [at Ken’s Lake]. But continued testing is the plan to kind of get a better idea of what’s going on.

KZMU NEWS: You’re going to be continuing to test and sample Ken’s Lake. Could this algal bloom go away?

ROGERS: When the temperatures drop, it’s going to go away. I’d be very surprised if it lasted past Thanksgiving.

KZMU NEWS: You said you wanted to do some more studies. What is on your mind and what are you curious about in the next few years, when it comes to these algal blooms and new places in our area?

ROGERS: Just measuring things that are necessary for a bloom to happen. And just to gain a better understanding of if we can predict these, if we can do anything to try to reduce that nutrient load. It’s not the case [at Ken’s Lake], but other studies in the past have found leaking septic systems going directly into lakes and causing huge blooms. And that’s something that can be fixed. In this case, Ken’s Lake is upstream of any septic systems that are close. The nearest ones would be in Pack Creek and [those are] very unlikely to be affecting the lake because of distance. 

KZMU NEWS: So that’s a little bit of a mystery right now. So getting a little bit more information about why this could be happening. 

ROGERS: Yeah, and so we just need to use caution. I think that it’s just pertinent to realize that these [algal blooms] are just part of our lives now.

Orion Rogers is environmental health director at the Southeast Utah Health Department. He wants people to know Ken’s Lake is not a water source for local drinking water. The water from the lake is used agriculturally, and he says it’s still safe to use on trees and crops. For more updates on this issue, you can follow the Southeast Utah Health Department on social media.