Cyanos Activity June 26

Water is clean for recreation.

Disclaimer: The information presented below reflects conditions throughout the lake and may differ from conditions on specific shorelines. For information regarding beach closings please contact the Torrington Area Health District or local town officials.

Water clarity continued to decline, Center Lake showed a 0.4 meter drop to 3.2 meters while North Bay showed a 0.9 meter drop in clarity to 2.8 meters.  With the water clarity decreasing to below 3 meters at North Bay.  Eight of 14 stations had clarity <3 meters, with poorest clarity reading of 2.5 meters recorded in South Bay.  However, the water remains significantly grainy with suspended clumps of cyanobacteria (Microcystis and Anabaena that elude my sampling device) that are significant enough now to affect the Secchi disk reading.  These cyanobacteria clumps have potential to form surface scums if conditions become ideal, hot-sunny-calm.  Water temperatures remained about the same at the surface but increased slightly at the bottom.  The weather patterns this year have caused the lake to be mixed nearly to the bottom this summer with a thermocline between 5 and 6 meters as opposed to between 4 and 5 meters recorded for this time last year.   Dissolved oxygen in upper waters increased slightly over last week causing an increase in percent saturation to between 112 and 124%.  Last week, percent saturation was between 108 and 117%.  Higher percent saturation is indication of greater growth rates of phytoplankton.  Dissolved oxygen was depleted at 5.5 meters and deeper, at all stations with that much depth (6 stations with greater than 5 meter water depths).  Low dissolved oxygen values were recorded 4 and 5 meters at all stations suggesting that by next week water at these depths will be anoxic.

Bantam Lake, CT 2017 Cyanobacteria Cell Count and CT DPH 2017 Recreational Waters Category Guidelines (Green = Safe, Yellow = Caution, Red = Posted Advisory)

Bantam Lake, CT 2017 Secchi Depth