ITHACA - The public had an opportunity Wednesday night to learn about an expanded, comprehensive monitoring plan to help identify sources of pollution in southern Cayuga Lake.  About 30 people attended the meeting to hear about and provide input on the program, developed through a partnership involving the County’s Water Resources Council and Cornell University staff and faculty.

The plan, drafted by the community partnership of scientists, agency staff and water management professionals over the past two years, has already been endorsed by the WRC and is scheduled to be presented to the Tompkins County Legislature later this summer.

Partnership Committee chair Roxanna Johnston, watershed coordinator and lab director for the Ithaca City Water Treatment Plant, told the group the expanded and coordinated monitoring plan will produce multiple benefits for assessing lake water quality and effective resource management.  Johnson said that tracking of the lake’s water quality will, in part, assist municipalities in complying with stormwater regulations. 

Johnston reported that under the plan, two separate sampling systems will capture water quality changes resulting from rain events, high winds and internal waves, as well as tracking the resulting circulation patterns.  Special studies also will broaden knowledge regarding impacts of invasive species and pollutants, improving the ability to maintain the Lake as a healthy fishery and tourist destination.  Collaboration among individual researchers, she added, will enhance sample quality for the south lake basin, with a new data sharing mechanism allowing for ready access, by the public and researchers alike, to the most current information about the lake.

Several attendees raised concern about what they characterized as a clear link between the monitoring plan and Cornell’s request to the State Department of Environmental Conservation to no longer require in-lake water quality monitoring as part of the permitting requirements for its Lake Source Cooling facility.  They said those monitoring points must be maintained.  Should it be relieved of that requirement, the University has pledged to redirect the $100,000 expense to the comprehensive lake monitoring program set out in the plan.