Public beaches in Westport, Port Henry and Moriah faced closures in the past two weeks due to dozens of harmful algal blooms throughout New York’s shoreline.
As water temperatures have increased due to the hot weather – it’s increased the harmful blooms throughout the water, as well as Lake Champlain. Vermont’s comprehensive blooms tracker has detailed scores of HABs this month and while most of the blooms are small and considered generally safe, some have been rated as “high alert” under Vermont monitoring standards, meaning they were more persistent and widespread.
A high alert bloom was documented near the Westport boat launch on Wednesday. It comes as 30 million Americans are in harm’s way as dangerous storm barrels its way through multiple states this weekend.
The blue-green algae, also know as Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algaes, starts to rise to the water surface and form green blooms around this time of year and persist into the fall. It can also be exacerbated by torrential rainfall too…