Letter from the Otsego Lake Watershed Supervisory Committee to Otsego Lake Watershed Residents
Consider Routine Testing of Potable Water
Editor’s Note: With warmer months just around the corner, we felt this was a good time to share the following information from the Otsego Lake Watershed Supervisory Committee, circulated to Otsego Lake watershed residents in October 2024. Although this letter from the OLWSC refers in large part specifically to Otsego Lake, there is good information here for residents of all watersheds.
The Otsego Lake Watershed Supervisory Committee is continuing its work to inform the public on safe practices for the watershed. Recently we came upon some information we felt important to share with you.
First some background. The New York State Department of Health has a long-standing statewide advisory against using surface water for drinking unless treated by a municipal water system. In technical terms, surface water refers to [any] lake, pond, stream, and river where the water table is exposed to the surface of the earth, i.e. any water in the lake (https://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/SurfaceWater). The entire volume of lake water is considered surface water regardless of depth. Unlike groundwater, the open nature of surface water makes it more prone to a wide variety of biological and chemical contamination. Water treatment against living microorganisms such as Giardia and E. coli is relatively easy and can be achieved by filtration, boiling, UV radiation, etc.; however, ensuring the efficacy of household-sized water treatment systems in removing alltypes of potential chemicals is very difficult for typical homeowners.
The Otsego Lake WSC has been working with the Village of Cooperstown and its Water Treatment Plant, which participates in the summertime NYSDOH program to test its raw and finished (ready to be distributed to homes and businesses) water samples for microcystins, a type of toxin often detected during harmful algal blooms. We are happy to report that throughout summer 2023 and summer 2024 so far, even at times when HABs were observed in parts of the source waterbody, Otsego Lake, all biweekly samples collected at the WTP and tested at the NYSDOH lab in Albany have consistently been below the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s drinking water criterion for microcystins (0.3 micrograms per liter) for bottle-fed infants and pre-school children. These are official Environmental Laboratory Approval Program-certified test results. If you are served by the VoC municipal water system, your drinking water meets all applicable standards for a wide range of potential biological and chemical contaminants by the NYSDOH, which follows the guidance of the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Details of these drinking water test results are available as VoC WTP’s annual drinking water reports at https://www.cooperstownny.org/water-and-sewer/.
If you draw Otsego Lake water directly into your lakeside property for household use, below is the latest information that WSC would like to share with you: Unofficial (non-ELAP certified) testing by SUNY Oneonta BFS in 2022-2024 (2024 results: https://suny.oneonta.edu/biological-field-station) showed some low but detectable levels of microcystins even in the middle of the lake at a wide range of depths (up to 26 feet) even when no bloom was visible. Based on the precautionary principle, we encourage all lakeside residents and property owners to review the NYSDOH document titled “Harmful Blue-green Algae Blooms: Understanding the Risks of Piping Surface Water into Your Home,” available at https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/6629.pdf, and make informed decisions on how you obtain your drinking water.
Many lakeside homeowners have purchased water filtration systems; however, it is key to remember that no household system is proven 100 percent effective in removing all potential contaminants. Third-party testing to ensure the removal of a wide range of potential contaminants is extremely expensive for individuals, and the WSC is not aware of any household water treatment system vendors in this area that offer such service to back up the claimed effectiveness of the systems that they sell.
If you would like to get your water tested routinely for total microcystins in potable water, we recommend that you contact the following NYSDOH ELAP-certified commercial labs (source: https://apps.health.ny.gov/pubdoh/applinks/wc/elappublicweb/):
Upstate Freshwater Institute
224 Midler Park Drive
Syracuse, NY 13206
(315) 431-4962
Community Science Institute Inc.
Room 283
Langmuir Lab
95 Brown Road/Box 1044
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 257-6606
Eurofins Eaton-Pomona
941 Corporate Center Drive
Pomona, CA 91768
(626) 386-1100
Babcock Laboratories, Inc.
6100 Quail Valley Court
Riverside, CA 92507
(951) 653-3351
The chemical toxins associated with HABs are not effectively removed by the typical household systems designed to remove microorganisms such as Giardia and E. coli. Ultraviolet radiation can rupture the cyanobacterial cells and release more toxins into the water, and boiling can aerosolize the toxins.
We hope this is helpful to you. We are certainly open to feedback from homeowners. Thank you for being an informed and responsible Otsego Lake Watershed homeowner!
Otsego Lake Watershed Supervisory Committee
Doug Willies, Town of Middlefield WSC Representative
Patricia Kennedy, Town of Otsego WSC Representative
William Richtsmeier, Town of Springfield WSC Representative
James Howarth, Village of Cooperstown WSC Representative
Bertine Colombo McKenna, Village of Cooperstown WSC Representative and Chair