Municipal officials are keeping close tabs on the Thames River.
Area residents may have noticed a brown streak in the river over the last week or so.
Chatham-Kent’s General Manager of Infrastructure and Engineering Thomas Kelly says unlike the typical blue-green algae bloom that forms in area waterways most summers, the sediment that stretches from Kent Bridge to Chatham is a brown algae.
“They believe the problem is something that also occurred in 2015, it’s a naturally occurring algae,” Kelly says. “Essentially it occurs when you have very heavily nutrated water under certain conditions, nitrogen and phosphorus that would come from leaking septic tanks, but also runoff from fields from fertilization, and sometimes just overall rain and very warm, humid conditions.”
Tests are being done by the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority, and is being monitored by provincial and federal officials as well.
“They do not believe there is any risk to any human activities, however they don’t recommend pets swim in the river,” Kelly says. “We don’t take any of our drinking water from the river, but there’s definitely high algae diversity present within the water.”
It could be another three weeks before the water clears up.
