Since the state Department of Environmental Conservation began monitoring hundreds of lakes across New York in 2013, no lake has experienced blue-green algal blooms more frequently than Lake Agawam. Cleaning it up is a complex problem that’s going to take multiple solutions, and a village, literally and metaphorically.
Newly-elected Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren announced the formation of a Lake Agawam Conservancy Group at the July 23 board meeting while listening to the public’s complaints about the freshwater body and others near it. The board invited several organization heads to present potential solutions, including ways the public can help.
“It’s clear we have a problem we need to immediately work on, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing,” Warren said of the group, a nonprofit public-private partnership that will address drainage issues, nitrogen loading, and road runoff by looking at buffers and permeable reactor barriers, among other solutions. “We hope to raise some money through the organization and work with grant writers to continue to take the steps to solve the issues in this lake.”