By Craig Manning
TORCH LAKE
TAKEOVER Local residents and labs search for the source of increasing algae blooms in one of the North’s most beautiful lakes
All photos courtesy of the Torch Lake Protection Agency.
10 • june 14, 2021 • Northern Express Weekly
You don’t need to live on the shores of Torch Lake to know how breathtakingly gorgeous it is. A massive inland lake (the biggest in Michigan, by water volume), Torch Lake is known for its party-raising sandbars, its cavernous depths (nearly 300 feet to the bottom at its deepest point), and its pure, clear waters. Local legend has it that National Geographic once named Torch the “third most beautiful lake in the world” (though Northern Express couldn’t verify this claim). Certainly, MLive once named Torch Lake “Michigan’s own slice of the Caribbean” — a comparison others have made over the years, thanks to the lake’s picturesque shades of deep blue and seafoam green. One thing that doesn’t mesh with Torch Lake’s reputation for resplendent beauty? Big blooms of brown algae, which have become increasingly common in the lake’s near-shore areas over the past decade. According to Tom Joseph, a 26-year resident of the Torch Lake community, the algae situation hasn’t crossed over into crisis mode just yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not concerning. While some property owners along the lake have noticed thick mats of algae sticking to the lake bottoms near their docks and beaches, Joseph says that — from his perspective, at least — the algae is not yet disrupting tourism, affecting property values, hurting lake-dependent businesses, or otherwise hindering overall enjoyment of the lake. In fact, Joseph says that tourists or other more casual users of the lake might not even be aware yet that something is amiss. “Like so many things in life, it depends on your perspective,” Joseph says of the algae issue. “We’ve lived here for 26 years, so to us, it's a dramatic change [to see algae in this lake]. It used to be that the water was so crystal clear that, even at the end of the season when we’d take our dock out, there'd be very little evidence of anything on the legs of the dock, or the shore station that the boat sits on. Each year, you see a little bit more. So we are very sensitive to it, and it is a very big deal. But when we have guests come up here, especially from downstate or out of state, they marvel at the purity of the water. They say, ‘What are you talking about?! I've never seen anything so crystal clear.’” Despite the relative subtlety of algae growth in Torch Lake, Joseph says there are enough residents like him — watching the waters day in and day out, constantly monitoring for changes — to sound the alarm. For at least the past five years, the algae blooms in Torch Lake have been under the microscope. Organizations like the Torch Lake Protection Association (TLPA, for which Joseph serves as a board member) and the Three Lakes Association (which focuses on water quality preservation efforts for Torch Lake, Lake Bellaire, and Clam Lake) have been funding water quality studies and other research aimed at determining what is causing the algae blooms — and how those scientific processes might be reversed. In 2019, TLPA launched its latest effort at getting to the bottom of the algae mystery: a far-reaching study aimed at filling in the gaps that previous research had left unexplored. The organization contracted with Environment Consulting & Technology, Inc., a Traverse City-based company, to collect
