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USEPA Inland HAB Risk Management - Lake Harsha
Citation:
Allen, Joel. USEPA Inland HAB Risk Management - Lake Harsha. Presented at Ohio Section of the American Water Works Association, Cincinnati, OH, September 13 - 16, 2016.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation is intended to provide an overview of the ORD HAB related research being performed at Lake Harsha in southwest Ohio. The audience will be made up of attendees to the Ohio Section of the American Water Works Association HAB Workshop.
Description:
Freshwater inland lakes and reservoirs supply approximately 70% of the nation’s drinking water and industrial needs. These are typically open ecological systems and susceptible to Harmful algal blooms (HABs) which are increasing in frequency, intensity, and geographic range. Impacts of HABs range from nuisance to catastrophic with the potential for human health and ecosystem effects. HAB taxa often produce toxic compounds but not always in toxic concentrations. This variability between and within blooms and the influence of environmental factors upon their manifestation presents challenges to environmental/recreational and drinking water risk managers.Management of HAB risk to human health requires knowledge and forewarning of bloom events and the production of toxin followed by appropriate mitigation responses. Research gaps exist in our understanding of the influence of temporal and spatial extent of environmental drivers; the role of new technologies for monitoring, modeling, and prediction; the efficacy of treatment strategies; and the combination of strategies in a system capable of HAB risk management from the source to the tap.
