Please don’t park here

The City has designated the middle section of the Crystal Lake parking lot as a fire lane and painted big “No Parking” signs on the pavement. There is a serious reason for this. People parking in that area blocked emergency vehicles from driving to the...

Stormwater runoff is yucky

I was intrigued to read a press release this week from the Charles River Watershed Association and the Conservation Law Foundation about stormwater protection for the Charles River. Excerpt: [CRWA and CLF] have reached a proposed settlement with the U.S. Environmental...

Alert: Crystal Lake is closed

Swimming at Crystal Lake is closed at least for a week due to heightened levels of algae in the water. No one – humans or pets – should have contact with the water. • Do not swim in Crystal Lake • Do not swallow water from Crystal Lake • Keep animals away from Crystal...

If it’s a problem at Walden Pond, how about Crystal Lake?

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Here’s an excerpt from a Boston Globe article about Walden Pond (bold added for emphasis).

As the climate changes, the water is expected to get warmer, which will favor algae that make the water murkier. The warmth also helps more phosphorus, a key nutrient for the algae, escape from the sediment at the bottom, he said.

“Phosphorus is a fertilizer. You put it on a crop, the crop grows better. . . . You put it in a lake, the algae grow better,” he said.

The other problem with the warmer temperatures is that it will lure more people seeking relief from the heat to the pond, “and a certain percentage of them pee,” he said. Previous studies have found that half the phosphorus in the lake in the summer comes from human urine.

Is there any reason to suspect that this wouldn’t be just as true at Crystal Lake?
Newton’s Crystal Lake conundrum

Newton’s Crystal Lake conundrum

It’s August. It’s hot. Folks are swimming illegally at Crystal Lake and — in the process — perhaps harming the lake’s fragile ecology and putting lives at risk. To make matters worse, the official (i.e. legal) part of the swim season closes in just over two weeks (Aug. 20) so after that a law-abiding citizen has three choices: Be hot, swim elsewhere or stop being a law-abiding citizen.

When I saw Richard Primack’s column in today TAB, I was hoping he was going to