Village Blue Lake Pontchartrain Offers New Orleanians Insights into Local Water Quality
Published July 27, 2021
Water quality monitoring can be a powerful tool to help inform policies and environmental restoration efforts, and to keep local water bodies healthy. EPA recently launched a water quality monitoring project in New Orleans that’s helping the community learn more about Lake Pontchartrain’s water quality and its greater connection to the Mississippi River.
Village Blue Lake Pontchartrain is a real-time water quality monitoring project initiated by EPA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the New Canal Lighthouse on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Village Blue sensors are taking hourly measurements of algae, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, specific conductance, salinity, turbidity, and nitrate to be displayed in near real-time on the USGS National Water Information System website.
These data can be used by residents and professional scientists alike to develop a greater understanding of water quality issues, such as the ways that heavy rainfall could contribute to changes in nutrients, algae growth, turbidity, and dissolved oxygen levels in water bodies like Lake Pontchartrain.
Community Partnership at the New Canal Lighthouse
Lake Pontchartrain, which is technically an estuary covering 630 square miles, is frequently used by residents of the greater New Orleans area for recreational and commercial activities like camping, swimming, boating, and fishing. The New Canal Lighthouse – operated by Village Blue’s project partner, Pontchartrain Conservancy – serves as both a museum and education center for the community, teaching locals and visitors about water quality, habitats of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin, and critical coastal issues facing south Louisiana.
“The New Canal Lighthouse was selected as the location for Village Blue due to Pontchartrain Conservancy’s management of the site as part of their education and outreach program as well as having an existing NOAA weather station on site,” said Village Blue EPA team member and engineer, Danny Wiegand. “The Pontchartrain Conservancy also monitors lake water quality conditions at this location on a weekly basis that can provide more insight into the data reported by our water sensors.”
Dr. Brady Skaggs, Pontchartrain Conservancy’s Water Quality Program Director, said they’ve done routine water quality sampling in Lake Pontchartrain since 2001, but that Village Blue contributes something new and special.
“EPA has been a great partner on so many initiatives, but this program stands to be groundbreaking for us,” Skaggs said. “We are very excited to see what long-term, stable, round-the-clock data can provide as far as our estuary’s dynamics. We are also excited to see algal measures that are being collected for the first time in Lake Pontchartrain on a 24-hour, 365-day basis with optical sensors.”
Sensors on the Mississippi River
To supplement data gathered at the New Canal Lighthouse site, Village Blue is using water quality data collected from an existing USGS monitoring site in Baton Rouge, Lousiana, on the Mississippi River. Having data from two measurement sites will allow researchers to evaluate river and lake conditions separately and in combination when river and lake waters come together during openings of the Bonnet Carre Spillway, which diverts floodwaters from the Mississippi River through Lake Pontchartrain into the Gulf of Mexico.
Wiegand noted that while monitoring has been done in the lake during flood events, there hasn’t been an ongoing, long-term monitoring program looking at algae conditions in the lake outside of these rare openings of the spillway. “Village Blue will build on the understanding of the lake conditions and responses, especially as it relates to nutrient inputs and potential harmful algal blooms,” he said.
Village Blue EPA team member Mike Schaub explained that growth of certain forms of algae can lead to the release of algal toxins that can be harmful to humans and animals, and can also reduce dissolved oxygen concentrations in water or reduce water clarity, which can be harmful to aquatic life such as fish. “Exploring these relationships in natural water bodies through data collection can help EPA better understand the dynamics of algal blooms and perhaps devise management strategies to mitigate them,” Schaub said.
Visualizing the Data
In addition to displaying Village Blue water quality data in real-time online, EPA and partners at Pontchartrain Conservancy plan to develop an outreach program around a “kinetic sculpture” that visualizes the data in a creative, three-dimensional format that looks like a fish. The sculpture, designed and constructed by EPA, will be located at the New Canal Lighthouse and will use electronics and LED lights to move and change color, indicating changes in the water quality data. For example, the height of the sculpture changes relative to turbidity, the speed at which the tail moves reflects dissolved oxygen, the color of the fish represents salinity concentrations, and the color of the base corresponds to algae concentrations.
Chris Cook, Director of the New Canal Lighthouse, said they’re excited not only to have Village Blue sensors collecting more data but also to have a new way to display and interpret the data. “We'll be pairing the kinetic sculpture with a live data feed from the sensors, and between the two we will be able to capture attention and pull visitors into deeper discussions about the health of the lake,” Cook explained. “We are also surrounding this installation with complementary hands-on experiments, so visitors to the lab will have many different questions to explore, all guided by real, current data and observation.”
Future Connections in South Louisiana
The Village Blue team hopes this project will result in greater awareness of the complex connections between human activity and water quality in Lake Pontchartrain and looks forward to future collaboration with more community and academic partners in the region.
“We hope that the data produced in this project will be used by regional entities alone or in combination with additional data sources to expand our scientific knowledge about broader water quality issues in Lake Pontchartrain,” Schaub said. “We also remain interested in expanding our relationships with other state and regional environmental resource agencies in south Louisiana to make use of the data outputs from this project.”
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