Stansbury Lake turning lime green

STANSBURY PARK, Utah (ABC 4 News) - People living around Stansbury Lake have a mess on their hands; fish are dying and the water looks Mountain Dew Green. The community is concerned, but the agency in charge of it all said not to worry.

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scotttot - 3/12/2013 7:01 PM
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Regarding the dead fish on the lake and the bright green color, The green color is just algae, natural in stagnant water and will quickly dissipate with circulation and sunlight. I toured with the state fish and game guy this morning; it is believed that the long freeze is the only culprit to the die-off. After testing at multiple locations the only thing found outside the norm is a high level of ammonia in area's that JUST thawed (i.e. the north shoreline adjacent to the Grantsville highway).. The Bayshore inlets, the inlets along Lakeview and the clubhouse all were normal, but on the north side where it is just thawing along the shoreline we did find higher levels of ammonia. Throughout the lake all else tested normal, we are still a week or three from getting back results from the lab but unless something really exotic shows up we need to be patient and let mother nature bring everything back to equilibrium. The speculation is that the decomposing biomass (leaves, weeds, fish poop, bird droppings especially) are breaking down on the lake bottom, normally... but with the ice on top for the extended period of time it is like putting a lid on a jar and none of the byproducts of decomposition can escape until it thaws. Once open water is again achieved the ammonia evaporates and the oxygen is again absorbed... but in the meantime, while under the ice the fish are swimming in a higher level of amonia and it "stresses" them, especially the gills, the larger the fish the more the stress affects them, and this is why so many larger fish died under the ice.. The results we are now seeing floating to the top (mostly "uphill" to the edges of the ice along the shoreline) many of these fish have started decaying under the ice and exacerbating the situation. This is unpleasant but not at all out of the normal in a severe cold winter such as we are just now thawing out from. Scott Totman/SPSA
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