Maybe you've smelled it. The odor of sewage, dead fish, and something so nasty you've got to roll your windows up when you drive by. That's the smell of Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, New York - at least, it used to be. Once known as the dirtiest lake in New York, and possibly the dirtiest lake in the United States, Onondaga Lake has undergone a major transformation. Soon, you might even be able to swim in it.
The Saga of Onondaga Lake
More than one hundred years of Industrial dumping and the addition of municipal waste from raw and partially treated sewage gave Onondaga Lake its signature smell and its layer of weird looking goo. By the 1950's, the lake stunk horribly, and swimming had been banned for over a decade. People continued to fish there though, until 1972, when fishing was banned due to mercury contamination. The fish in the lake died off, often swimming up and out of the water onto the shore because oxygen levels were so low beneath the surface.
Nearby residents fought to have the lake cleaned up. Municipal officials pointed a finger at a company called Allied Chemical, which pointed a finger right back at the municipality, citing sewage as the problem. After a fight that took decades and the help of federal environmental laws, in addition to court enforced remedial action, Onondaga Lake finally got a new lease on life.
Onondaga County had to upgrade its sewage treatment program, and for the Superfund portion of the cleanup job, toxic mud is being carefully suctioned out of the lake. The mud is ten feet deep in some places, and it contains a lot of mercury - at one point, as much as twenty pounds of mercury were dumped into the lake every day. Allied Chemical's successor, Honeywell, has cleaned up factory sites and has built an underground barrier to prevent any contaminated groundwater from making its way into the lake.
Portions of the lake bottom will be left untreated for now, but cleanup efforts have been a roaring success so far. Bass, sunfish, perch, and bluegill are some of the sixty species now living in Onondaga Lake, and local residents are enjoying fishing in the lake for the first time in almost half a century. A few people remember the lake before it became polluted, recalling memories of beaches and boat houses. Lake Onondaga even boasted an amusement park along its' shore for a while, before pollution caused the lake's collapse.
Lake Onondaga is just one inland body of water that needed attention. All of our waterways are threatened by toxic runoff and other forms of pollution due to mining, unsustainable farming practices, and other problems that continue to make their way downstream, all the way into bays and oceans. San Francisco Bay, the Chesapeake, New York Harbor, and the Gulf of Mexico are just a few examples of areas that could be vastly improved by the implementation of better practices upstream. Lake Onondaga serves as a great illustration of the positive changes that can occur when we all work together to improve our environment.