EASTHAMPTON — The cleanliness and health of Nashawannuck Pond will be on the minds of two groups of volunteers on Saturday.

While members of Easthampton High School’s National Honor Society will be picking up trash littered along the edges and in the pond in an initiative known as “Green For Us,” members of the Nashawannuck Pond Steering Committee will be deploying a preventive treatment in a number of coves around the pond that are intended to reduce the occurrence of algae blooms.

“To the naked eye, the pond appears very clean until you look down into it,” said Emma Pelletier, a senior at Easthampton High School and a member of the National Honor Society. “You see a lot of trash, a lot of plastic, a lot of garbage just in there. And so a team of us students are going to be cleaning up the trash on, coincidentally, Earth Day.”

Pelletier, the chairperson of the Green For Us initiative, said the idea behind the trash cleanup day is the first of what she hopes will become several efforts to make the earth a greener place. Though she will be graduating from Easthampton High in May and intends to attend the University of New England in Maine, she hopes that others will pick up the torch and carry the initiative forward.

“If we want to keep having a planet and having healthy, natural resources, we need to care for it as we are the main caregivers for our environment,” she said. “We just need to do our part to help it and continue to keep it living.”

Staving off algae blooms

Last year, the pond’s steering committee installed nearly 100 onion bags stuffed with barley straw at several sites along the shore of Nashawannuck Pond.

The bags were part of a pilot project to inhibit algae bloom growth at the pond, some of which contain microscopic single-celled organisms called cyanobacteria. Toxic cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, can cause acute and chronic health hazards to plants, animals and people.

Lakes and ponds all over the world have been experiencing an increased occurrence of these algae blooms as a result of warmer temperatures. Water bodies that are shallow, stagnant and rich in nutrients from agricultural runoff including fertilizer are experiencing a particularly significant impact.

Paul A. Nowak, chairperson of the Nashawannuck Pond Steering Committee, explained that as the barley straw decomposes, it has been found to release a non-harmful agent that prevents these blooms from occurring.

The results of last year’s experiment proved to be “a promising success,” said Dr. R. Allison Ryan, a retired physician and neurologist from Florence who brought the barley straw idea to the Nashawannuck Pond Steering Committee.

“There was no evidence that any cyanobacteria bloom either by visual inspection or by a certain amount of serial, microscopic water testing, so that was considered better than average historically for Nashawannuck, which had been subjected to blooms pretty reliably for several past years,” Ryan said. “On the basis of that, we were encouraged to repeat it.”

Much like last year, a group of volunteers will come together Saturday morning to stuff the onion bags, which will be deployed during the afternoon by volunteers on two boats who will stake the barley straw bags in water that’s 2-3 feet deep.

In reviewing their process from last year, they found some areas they could improve upon, Ryan said.

When volunteers retrieved the bags at the end of the season, there was a bit of a struggle because very little of the barley straw had decomposed, making the water-logged bags heavier. This year, volunteers will be using the same amount of barley straw — 10 bales — but will decrease the amount put into each onion bag. As such, Ryan said they will be able to increase the number of onion bags by about 30%.

“We’re aiming for a much better rate of decomposition,” she said.

While the barley straw appears to have been effective, Ryan said their success is by no means proof the problem has been solved.

Aside from the changing climate, the other main factor that determines cyanobacteria blooms is one that’s difficul to control —  nutrients. Phosphorus and nitrogen are two important nutrients that promote the growth of cyanobacteria, often coming from human sources such as poorly managed storm water runoff, pet and wildlife waste, industrial waste and fertilizers.

Nashawannuck Pond isn’t alone in these ongoing challenges. Reports from the Cape Cod Times and New York Times have shown that algae blooms are taking over more of the bays and rivers on Cape Cod every summer.

“I see this problem is not going away,” Ryan said. “There is a need for a multifaceted approach to controlling these blooms, and that will probably require some regulatory and state action in terms of stricter controls on agricultural runoff.”

Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.]]>