For nearly 40 years, volunteers and environmental experts have made sure Smith Mountain Lake is ready for a season of fishing, swimming, and other recreational use.
And while finding help over that time is rarely a problem, concerns about Harmful Algae Blooms are bringing new focus to their work.
Ferrum College laboratory supervisor Carol Love has been monitoring Smith Mountain Lake since the late 1990’s.
On a pontoon boat on a sunny morning in May, with highs in the 70’s, she’s looking specifically for bacterial samples.
“Sometimes the lake looks like chocolate milk after a big rain storm," Love explains. "And that’s your turbidity, that’s what we’re measuring.”
Turbidity refers to the cloudiness of the water. If it’s murky, or easy to see through. Love’s team is looking for E Coli, by filling a sterile bottle with water, and putting it on ice.
“Being out here, on a boat on a beautiful day, is a really hard way to spend your working life. We are out here when it rains, and when it’s cold, so it’s not always beautiful” Love admits. “I personally like getting the students involved. I really like teaching a new group of students each year what we’re doing.”
Joining Love is Ferrum student Richard Marshall. He hopes to build a career around helping people understand the human impact on waterways.
“I want to be doing something where I’m making a difference,” he explained. “I’m educating people. I’m providing data. I’m out in the field, I’m not just sitting in an office. This is that.”
The lake’s monitoring season started in late May. Besides checking water quality for silt and mud, the Ferrum team, and volunteers with the Smith Mountain Lake Association are monitoring chlorophyll, or the amount of algae growth from nutrients in the ecosystem, as well as phosphorus.
Some level of each is important, but Director of Water Quality Monitoring Tom Hardy says what has occurred at Lake Anna in Central Virginia in recent years is an example of what can happen with too much, and harmful algae blooms, or HAB’s.
"What caught us off guard here at Smith Mountain Lake, is we have never had any significant algae blooms on the lake since the inception of this lake in 1966," Hardy said. "In 2023, out of nowhere, suddenly they were popping up all over the place.”
Last month, inland waterways throughout Virginia got a budget amendment of $250,000 for Department of Environmental Quality to conduct tests.
A year earlier, Smith Mountain Lake alone got $150,000 to test for HAB’s. Hardy says the Association also contracted with an environmental company to study the lake’s entire watershed.
“There is still much to be learned in the entire science community about algae blooms, no matter where they are, because the country has been experiencing them at levels they’re unaccustomed to seeing," Hardy said.
The SMLA’s more than fifty volunteers include retirees Mike and Gail McCord, who relish the opportunity to go out on the lake.
“It’s just another day in paradise,” Mike said. “The more you’re here, the more you love it. We’re using the map that they first established some 38 years ago, so that all the testing sites for the 38 years have been consistent in the same basic locations.”
Like the Ferrum team, they’re gathering statistics about water quality, lowering the all-white secchi disk into the water until you can’t see it from the surface. They’ll also collect an algae sample.
The McCords moved to the lake about twelve years ago and were recruited by neighbors to volunteer for the SMLA.
Once a volunteer signs up, they’re provided a map with a specific location to go from then on. There’s often a waiting list to do this, currently more than 10 people, something Gail and Mike certainly don’t take for granted.
“You’re out on the lake when it’s quieter, and it’s a regular thing, so you don’t forget to take time to just really enjoy yourself,” Gail said. “To get out was important to us, but also the importance of monitoring the quality. It makes a big difference. I can’t find a vacation to take (Mike) on that competes with being home since we moved here.”
Their water sample will be analyzed by a lab at Ferrum College. A number of new SML volunteers simply check water from their docks for swimming.
The Dock Watch program monitors the lake year-round, including in the winter. Back at the Association’s offices, samples from 20 docks are collected, measuring factors like water and air temperature at the time, as well as the weather.
Samples are measured for the amount of blue green algae. Volunteer Mary Colligan said a lot of folks were caught off guard by their findings in 2023, when results from the lake prompted swimming advisories.
“And we wanted to understand why – and try to predict if this is going to happen again, and what the conditions are that may trigger that,” she explained. “I’m very interested in learning, and trying to understand, and build that baseline – and basically, better position to make sure we’re not in that situation again.”
While those dedicated to monitoring the lake can’t influence factors like air temperatures or the amount of rainfall, Director of Water Quality Monitoring Tom Hardy says getting a better handle on the connection between these factors and the onset of Harmful Algae Blooms, could mean more advanced notice, and more advisories to the public.
The first set of data from this season, released last week, showed Smith Mountain Lake’s water quality is very good, despite some heavy rain in May. Volunteers will continue to take water samples every two weeks throughout the summer.
For those concerned about water quality in other parts of the state, Wild Virginia is recruiting for its free Clean Water Advocates course to be held online this fall.
