E Botulism in the Great Lakes
My mind works in strange ways and so all the things I’m blogging about here go together in my mind. I was watching the Super Bowl and I caught the beginning where everyone was reciting the Declaration of Independence. I thought I just wrote something with the Declaration of Independence in it, and sure enough I did a blog on the 4th of July. I was urging people to be patriotic and contact their reps to support a moratorium on CAFO’s in Michigan. That didn’t happen. As a matter of fact thanks to the MI Farm Bureau and Republican Senate, it’s easier than ever to come to Michigan with a CAFO. Go to the link about CAFO’s below and check out the aerial pictures. Tell me during downpours of rain that those lagoons don’t breach. Groundwater runoff in Michigan ultimately ends up in a lake somewhere. So the opening of the Super Bowl brought up a sore subject for me.
Today, I’m reading an article in the Detroit Free Press about botulism killing Great Lakes birds. It said: “The deaths of hundreds of loons, cormorants, gulls, long-tailed ducks and grebes were scattered across the sand washed up and rotting.” There were 2900 dead birds along a 14-mile stretch of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. That’s ugly. The botulism is being blamed on two foreign, Black Sea area, mussels and round gobies that look like minnows but fatter. Biologists think they are the cause, and it looks like warmer weather, and lower water levels contribute to the problem. The botulism is native to the Great Lakes but hasn’t been around for more than 20 years. The cycle of botulism works like this:
The lakes are warmer and more shallow. The mussels are so numerous they filter the water, which becomes clearer. The sun penetrates to the bottom farther in clear shallow water, and a type of cladophora algae over grows from the sunlight. When the algae dies, it rots and the botulism comes to life. The mussels absorb the botulism, the gobie fish eat the mussels, the birds eat the gobie fish—and ultimately die from botulism.
The article in the Free Press said that the cladophora algae flourished in the 60’s and 70’s because it was nourished by the phosphorus from fertilizer runoff and poor sewage treatment. Bans in Michigan on phosphorus and improved sewage treatment reduced that algae in the 80’s and 90’s. Well, it’s back. 50,000 birds have died from E botulism since 1999.
I remember yesterday’s game, the Declaration of Independence, the CAFOs, and now sewage. I started thinking about a proposal I did for septic systems in Michigan as an assignment for class. Boy was that an eye opener. I found a fairly current article in the Sanitation Journal that said there are over 1.2 million septic systems in Michigan, and up until a few years ago Michigan didn’t have a state sanitary code. Over 40 percent of the new homes in Michigan are in rural areas where septic systems are necessary, and new homes near the water must have above-the-ground engineered septic fields now. But what about older homes like mine?
My husband is a stickler about our septic system, but there are homes along my road that are 40 years old with the original owner in them. Many of Michigan’s septic fields are only inspected when a home sells. Get the picture? The Sanitation Journal said one of the biggest contaminants of our lakes and streams, rivers, springs and such, is failed septic systems, so that’s something the state is really watching.” I don’t know about that, not all of it anyway. I thought we were supposed to be keeping a watchful eye on the ballast water of freighters too, and look at all the mussels.
The Detroit Free Press story link is below. It was an exceptionally poignant story because one of the biologists rounding up the dead birds found one with a band on its leg. It was an old loon he tracked for 14 years or more. A loon that kept a mate for one of the longest pairings ever recorded, and most amount of chicks raised. That would have really got to me.
http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=87.
If you want to see what I mean about CAFO’s: http://www.mythinglinks.org/FactoryFarms_WalmartManureDoc.html
More about CAFO’s: http://www.ccofdc.org/documents/CAFO.pdf
http://www.sanitationjournal.com/mstadavesnyder.html.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008802040334