Onondaga County escapes huge additional cost for lake cleanup | syracuse.com

Onondaga County escapes huge additional cost for lake cleanup | syracuse.com


Onondaga County dodged a bill of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars this summer when environmental regulators eased restrictions on the amount of phosphorus that its sewage treatment plant can dump into Onondaga Lake.
Phosphorus is a mineral that in high concentrations poses one of the greatest threats to the lake’s health. Commonly found in fertilizer and animal and human waste, it can choke a lake to death by promoting the excessive growth of algae, microorganisms that feed on phosphorus.
When algae grows out of control, it gives a lake a cloudy, green appearance and makes it stink, rendering the lake unfit for swimming or other recreational uses. It also sucks up the oxygen that fish need to breathe.
A 1998 federal court order required the county to lower the amount of phosphorus in the treatment plant’s discharge to a level that would have required spending $265 million to $1 billion, county officials said.

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