Great Black Swamp

Clip: Season 1 Episode 7 | 8m 15sVideo has Closed Captions | CC

The roots of Lake Erie’s perennial harmful algal blooms go back more than a century.

This year’s algal bloom covered 620 square miles of Lake Erie by mid-August but, unlike in 2014, drinking water was not affected in nearby communities. The major cause of the blooms that many scientists point to is excessive nutrient runoff, mainly phosphorus and nitrogen from surrounding agriculture fields or wastewater. But the story of this modern crisis is tens of thousands of years old.

10/28/2019

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