The pollution patrol
Water is the lifeblood of the Adirondack Park’s tourism, adventuring and second-home economy, as well as its wilderness. Its lakes and rivers face multiple threats ranging from salt to human waste and invasive plants and aquatic animals.
Hundreds of volunteers routinely monitor or test many waterways, including Nevton Dunn, who has a home on Mirror Lake.
Dunn, a retired engineer, often canoes the roughly 2.5-mile perimeter of the lake in a lightweight solo boat, collecting any trash he finds and almost daily yanking out non-native purple loosestrife plants.
Last year Dunn discovered sewage leaking into Mirror Lake.
“It was black water and a sewer odor,” Dunn recalled. “It was very localized.”
The dark pool was about seven feet by ten feet, and evidently came from one of the nearby motels laundering clothes and sheets that also produced white, soapy, sudsy backflow, he said.
It was tested the next day, revealing within a few days optical brighteners common in laundry discharge. Later results from the Endyne lab in Plattsburgh showed at
