Lovely Day on the Lake

 

    It's a lovely bright shining day in Northern Idaho. Your family is visiting Twin Lakes and decides to have a beach day at the lower lake. You walk in the warm sand towards the cool water and a breeze hits your face. You are instantly refreshed when you submerge into the deep water. You dunk your head underwater, only to see the glimmer of toxic metals amongst the sand! You push yourself to the surface and gasp for air and when you open your eyes you see that all around you are rotting disgusting dead fish. It's a lovely day on the lake.

 

    Thankfully, this isn't what lower Twin Lakes looks like YET. But the mining in areas surrounding the lake will cause this eventually unless something is done. The lower lake connects to many small streams and rivers that carry toxic metals like aluminum and lead from the important mining industries in Northern Idaho. It isn't just Twin Lakes that's affected. Many other large lakes such as Coeur D'alene Lake are suffering from toxic metal pollution as well. But that's not the only problem. Algae blooms are also taking over! Algae blooms are poisonous to fish and wildlife. Something must be done.

 

    This is an interesting problem because the mining industry is big, important to the economy of Idaho, and provides lots of jobs for people. The community could try and find alternatives to relying on mining for money like working at a supermarket or starting a small business. The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality also has resources for schools, citizens, and businesses to help them cut down on waste and pollution. People can research and join local clean-up groups to try and slow down the pollution, but it's going to take a more creative idea to fix this issue. That's where I come in.

 

    My solution is called “The Lake Roomba”. It would be a submersible dropped by a crane boat into one of the more heavily polluted areas of lower Twin lake. The submersible would have magnets to magnetically attract the metals, and UV sterilizers and kill toxic algae blooms simultaneously. To make sure it would not go off course there would have to be a programmed navigation system that would have multiple preset routes of the lower lake. Because algae blooms can be killed with at least 4 hours of UV interference, we would have the submersible running for at least 4 hours a day and doing different routes each time for maximum effect.

 

 

 

Citations

Emily Benson Image credit: Jerome Pollos for High Country News June 24, 2019 From the print edition. “A Dangerous Cocktail Threatens the Gem of North Idaho.” High Country News – Know the West, 24 June 2019, www.hcn.org/issues/51.11/pollution-a-dangerous-cocktail-threatens-the-gem-of-north-idaho.

Sarles, Connor, and Connor Sarles. “Health Advisory Issued for Lower Twin Lake Due to Toxic Algae Blooms.” KXLY, 19 Dec. 2019, www.kxly.com/health-advisory-issued-for-lower-twin-lake-due-to-toxic-algae-blooms/.

“Where This Occurs: Lakes and Rivers.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 18 Apr. 2019, www.epa.gov/nutrientpollution/where-occurs-lakes-and-rivers.

Written by Zachary H

What water means to me (to raise awareness to water issues all over the world, the United Nations celebrates World Water Day every year and this year's World Water Day is March 22): 
What water means to me is life. We can't survive without water. We use water to drink, to clean ourselves to wash our clothes, and to power our homes. It must be hard to not have clean water or to not even have it at all.
#Water2Me