DERRY Journal Editorial: Lough Neagh 'blue-green algae' blooms highlight pollution crisis in our waterways must be acted upon
Last summer high levels of phosphates in Lough Neagh resulted in beaches from Magilligan to Castlerock being red-flagged as ‘blue-green algal blooms’ flowed down the Bann to the sea.
Popular bathing spots were closed due to the potential toxicity of the blooms. Seaside businesses were affected, holidaymakers disappointed by ‘do not swim’ signs that appeared with the blue-green tide.
Environment minister Andrew Muir has now published his Lough Neagh report and made 37 recommendations on how to get a grip on the environmental catastrophe.
Its most important recommendations relate to a reduction in nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) in the lake and the land around it. Commitments to remove ‘excess phosphorus from the environment’ and to ‘reduces phosphorus and nitrogen inputs’ and ‘phosphorous loading’ in agriculture must be acted upon.
This can’t be a crisis for today, forgotten tomorrow, nor a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Back in 1967 a massive bloom in Lough Neagh caused by the anabaena flos-aquae cyanobacteria made headlines. Then it disappeared.
Dr. CE Gibson, a marine biologist, told a symposium in 1978, however, that it was likely there was a higher volume of algae in the lake ‘perhaps causing a greater problem in terms of oxygen demand at the bottom’ in the late 1970s than there had been in 1967 when it was exhibiting its ‘spectacular water bloom’. Our waterways need to be carefully tended and monitored. The pollution must stop.