On July 28, 2015 a freelance writer attended one of Choctaw Lake’s water quality meetings. Afterwards, she spent some time interviewing Barb Niemeyer, Jim Swihart, and other members of the Lake Water Quality Committee. The resulting article was published in the October 2015 edition of the magazine but can still be viewed on their website.
Whenever Barb Niemeyer bikes around Choctaw Lake in central Ohio, she constantly scans the surface of the nearly half-square-mile body of water and adjacent ditches. She’s not just looking for her favorite bird, the blue heron, or at the plentiful fish skimming the water’s surface; she’s looking for conditions that could create the growth of cyanobacteria, commonly called blue-green algae. The bacteria grows thick in warm, still and shallow water and feeds on phosphorus from various sources including manure, sewage and fertilizer that rain washes into streams. Read the rest here…