Port of Alsea and watersheds group begin to plan how to — or if — rid Eckman Lake of toxic algae

 

By JORDAN ESSOE/YachatsNews.com

WALDPORT – Eckman Lake’s best days may be behind it.

The stagnant manmade reservoir off the lower Alsea River gets shallower every year and is plagued by toxic algae. Is it time to take out the dam under Oregon Highway 34 that cuts the lake off from the bay?

Next week, the Port of Alsea and the MidCoast Watershed Council will convene the first in a series of public meetings to review the numerous problems with the lake and explore possible solutions for the blooms of toxic algae that have been worsening over the last decade and threatening the health of people, pets, and wildlife.

“One of the guys from the watershed council told me about four years ago ‘a child could die in that lake’ and that stunned me,” said Roxie Cuellar, the port’s manager. “Our goal is to get rid of the algae.”

Potential strategies, such as dredging or trying to restore depleted oxygen levels in the water through aeration, are costly and may not provide a long–term solution. Over the last four years, the Devil’s Lake Water Improvement District in Lincoln City has spent $250,000 aerating Devil’s Lake, and while they have improved the condition of the water, the technology is not able to eliminate toxic algae.

The most obvious remedy for Eckman Lake appears to be lowering the spillway or removing the dam under Highway 34 so that water from Alsea Bay may enter the lake every day. This could be a long-lasting fix for several aspects of the problem at once.

“If you were to get good flushing in there and were able to restore it more to a tidal channel, all the algae would be gone,” said Derek Wilson, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife habitat conservation biologist.

MidCoast Watershed Council coordinator Evan Hayduk agrees — but is careful not to endorse any plan ahead of the public meetings. Some community members will likely object to the idea of trading a lake for a tidal channel, even if the lake is contaminated and the tidal channel would be healthy and greatly benefit much of the wildlife, including the coho and chinook salmon that spawn upstream.

“I don’t want to say that’s what we’re shooting for,” said Hayduk. “That’s just one of several potential outcomes.”

The first outreach meeting is 6 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29 at First Baptist Church directly across the highway from the lake. The meeting is intended to describe the issues and allow everyone with concerns or ideas to voice them.

Many reasons for algae

Free-flowing water from the bay would eliminate the toxic algae problem in the lake for several reasons, primarily because of its salinity, cooler temperature, and ability to consistently flush away excess sediment and nutrients.

The toxic algae in Eckman Lake, commonly called blue-green algae, is not literally algae at all but a type of bacteria called cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria flourishes in stagnant, warm water that is rich in nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen.

There are thousands of species of cyanobacteria, and it does not always produce toxins. It is common all over the world in soil, freshwater, saltwater, and in the air.

When a harmful agal bloom, or cyanoHAB, occurs, it is because of an overgrowth of toxin-producing bacteria. A cyanoHAB usually includes a mixture of different toxins, other microbes, and pathogens. There are hundreds of possible toxins and their damaging effects on humans can range from skin rashes to severe illness.

“After skin rashes, the second most likely health outcome is gastrointestinal distress,” said Curtis Cude, healthy waters program coordinator at the Oregon Health Authority. “Some of the cyanotoxins are harmful to your liver and some others are neurotoxins that cause problems with your nervous system. At a high enough level, people can experience dizziness, tingling and disorientation.”

Researchers also believe there may be a link between exposure to cyanotoxins and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s.

Although cyanotoxins are considered quite potent and sufficient exposure can kill an adult, the CDC reported only one human death associated with an outbreak in 2020, and it wasn’t from direct contact with a bloom at a recreational site – the victim ate mussels and snails that were contaminated with a toxin.

A cyanoHAB may look oily or like pea soup or bright paint has spilled on the surface of the water.

“I have seen [Eckman Lake] be the craziest color of blues and greens you’ve ever seen,” said Wilson. “It doesn’t even look real.”

It can also appear as other colors, as foam or scum, and it may smell strange.

“It’s a rotting-type smell,” said Hayduk. “You look at the lake in late summer and it’s kind of a green, brown, nasty looking color. Which probably deters people from swimming in it and getting sick. That’s a good thing.”

The water can also appear clear and normal and still be toxic. It is impossible to know the safety of the water definitively without testing it, and no local or state agency has the budget or personnel to constantly monitor all the small lakes and ponds throughout Oregon.

After a citizen alert in 2018, the Department of Environmental Quality found cyanotoxin in Eckman, but at levels too low for the state to issue a health advisory.

CyanoHABs can be fugitive events – sometimes here one day, gone the next, making them difficult to confirm, track, and quantify. But once cyanotoxins develop in an environment, they are likely to recur, and can easily occur at higher levels.

At the urging of the OHA, the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, which manages the small W. B. Nelson State Recreation Site next to Eckman Lake, posted warning signs by the entrance to the dock where visitors fish.

Since cyanoHABs develop mostly in the summer and early fall when the weather is the warmest, mid-coast parks manager Dylan Anderson has suggested removing the warning signs during the colder months of the year.

Some community members feel the signs are not nearly enough.

“The signs are ridiculous,” said Port of Alsea Commissioner Chuck Pavlik. “They say: don’t let your dog swim in the lake because it’ll poison him. Who puts a sign like that up? Close it. Put a fence up. Say ‘toxic water – danger.’”

Mark Wiederhold, former Port of Alsea board chair, fondly remembers playing in the lake with his kids years ago, but says he would never go swimming in it today. “The creek itself is good. But the lake is – I don’t want to say toilet – it’s a cesspool or something like that.”

Although Eckman Lake’s problem with toxic blooms has been widely known for at least a decade, up to this point nothing has been done to address it. A major reason for that is lack of funding. Another reason was confusion over who owned it.

“The port just realized that we owned the lake six years ago,” said Cuellar, who made the discovery by going through old files. They had previously assumed the lake belonged to Oregon Department of State Lands.

Marina improvements associated with a 2018 bond measure created another distraction for the Port, but their new facilities have now been completed. And working with the watershed council to obtain state grants promises to resolve some of the funding obstacles to helping Eckman Lake.

“I’ve been told – and I’m hoping it’s true because we don’t have money – that depending on what approach we take there is money available for this,” said Cuellar.

Highway work created lake

Eckman Lake was formed between 1957 and 1959 when the Oregon Department of Transportation replaced a wooden bridge along Highway 34 with a concrete one, which dammed Eckman Creek. Before that, Eckman Slough was just part of the system of mud flats, marshlands, and tidal channels of the estuary. Locals used to fish for flounder and catch crabs from the wooden bridge.

The lake filled up with freshwater and for many years seemed like an idyllic spot for water sports, fishing, and birdwatching. It was also just gorgeous to look at. The memory of the lake in its heyday is a powerful nostalgic touchstone for locals who grew up near it.

“My wife was raised around here, and I remember the days when we went boating and jet skiing out there. There was a wooden jump for water skiers,” said Wiederhold.

Not much of that water play would be possible today because the lake is much shallower than it used to be. The average water depth now is about five feet.

“There are portions of the lake that if you kayak across, you almost ground your kayak on it because it’s so shallow,” said Hayduk.

The reason the lake’s depth keeps shrinking is because any sediment that enters from the creek has no way to escape. It all settles on the lakebed.

Shallower water creates warmer water, which makes cyanoHABs more frequent. There is also the issue of the sediment itself, and whatever else is entering the lake and altering the nutrient composition of the water and its pH level.

“The city has a dam [above the lake] for their water supply,” said Cuellar. “And water is released every once in a while from the bottom of the dam, and that carries a lot of silt with it.”

Wiederhold, a retired excavating contractor who worked for Eckman Creek Quarry, says tailings from upstream quarries are also carried down by the creek.

“Quarries are at fault for increased sedimentation, plus you take logging and road construction,” he said. “You can’t really point the finger at any one source.”

Anything that increases the nutrient count in the water makes cyanoHABs more likely and more formidable.

A problematic possibility is that some of the older septic systems that skirt the lake could be leaking. Aside from the risk of E. coli and Salmonella, leaky septic systems are commonly known to elevate nitrogen and phosphorus levels – the very nutrients that cyanobacteria thrive on.

Wilson and Wiederhold agree the old septic systems are likely a problem.

“The houses up on the ridge above Eckman Lake have all been there forever and all have septic tanks and drain fields,” Pavlik said. “And all of that drains to the lowest point, which is Eckman Lake. What are you going to do, ask all of those homeowners to put in new $20,000 septic systems to stop the pollution that they’re putting into the lake? It’s a no-win situation.”

Several community members have also suggested that biosolid disposal by M&E Septic Service in the foothills above Eckman Lake is also contributing to the nutrient pollution in the lake.

M&E has a permit from the DEQ to apply biosolids to land near Eckman Lake. The DEQ requires buffers to try to prevent these applications from getting into nearby waterways, and has not issued any violations to M&E.

In a written statement to YachatsNews, DEQ said it “believes it is unlikely that the application of biosolids, or treated septic tank sludge, by M&E Septic Service to agricultural fields in this basin is contributing to agal blooms at the lake because these applications are regulated by DEQ.”

Josie Walch, co-owner of M&E Septic Service, described their disposal site as a significant distance from the lake.

“The likelihood of anything getting its way into the creeks or systems is super slim,” she said. “I know people see our trucks going up there all the time, but we follow setbacks from the DEQ and we follow regulations very, very strictly. We treat it with lime. We make sure the pH is balanced. Basically, by the time we apply it, it is fertilizer.”

Solution years away

Once a solution for Eckman Lake is identified and agreed to, the second stage of the process will involve looking at available technology and applying for grants. By the time the solution is implemented, it is expected to be 3-4 years down the line.

Funding will take time, and so will coordinating between all participating agencies and interested parties.

While some agencies may take a passive approach, others will be intricately involved, and Cuellar anticipates the list of stakeholders to include no less than the Port of Alsea, the MidCoast Watershed Council, the DEQ, ODOT, ODFW, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, the Oregon Water Resources Commission, Oregon Department of State Lands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Oregon State Marine Board, the Department of Land Conservation & Development, and Lincoln County.

• Jordan Essoe is a Waldport-based freelance writer who can be reached at alseajournal@gmail.com