Natures Solutions - Humans Problems

The thing about Nature, is that it absolutely never has "problems"... Actually, it only ever has Solutions!
Natural systems are very complex balancing mechanisms... They respond to changes, and they do it incredibly efficiently and spontaneously... Nature is the supreme problem solver.

And this algae bloom on Lake Atitlan is no different. Nature is simply responding to the changed conditions in the most efficient way it can... If conditions have changed so that the fish and crabs and pond weed are no-longer the most efficient operators, then those creatures will become less prevalent (or totally absent), and whatever form of life is best suited to the new conditions (in this case Cyano-bacteria) will become far more prevalent.
At present, the system is out of balance so we can expect that there will be fluctuations in various populations until a "stable flow" of energy has formed. Its like a pendulum. If you give it a whack, it will swing back and forth for a while till it settles to its new balance position.

So, for nature, the algae is a solution, not a problem.
For humans however, we see it as a problem.... And thats the trick. If we try to fight the algae, then we are fighting nature, and its a losing battle.... Every Time!
The trick is that the Algae is the effect, Not the cause.... And, if we dont like Natures solution to a problem, then we better remove the need for nature to behave this way.... ie we need to target the cause, not the symptom...


And in this case, the cause (well, by far the largest component of it) is, to use the vernacular... "Bleedin Obvious"!!
There are about five HUGE contributors that I think should be dealt with before we start worrying about the more subtle issue.
I mentiond that the algae need Light, Warmth, and Nutrients to grow... The natural environment provides the light and heat to the lake, and there is precious little that people could do with these even if they wanted to.... But, the nutrients issue is the exact opposite! Humans have far more control over this than Nature does at the moment.... And the humans are doing a REALLY bad job with it!

The five largest contributors to Lake Atitlans algae problem that I see are are as follows:
1) Detergents
Huge amounts of modern, non bio-degradable detergents are being poured directly into the lake every day. I estimate that there are about 200,000 people living in the catchment area of the lake, and there are probably 50% of those people washing their clothes and bodies directly in the lake or the streams that flow into it. The other 50% are using the same detergents but the washing water goes into a septic system rather than directly into the lake... (By the way, Im just making these percentages up from my instictive, observational based gusesses).

2) Artificial (and to a far lesser extent, natural) Fertilisers
Again, about 50% of those people in the catchment have plots of land from say 100m square to maybe 1000m square, and they pretty much all grow maize for their own use or coffee trees for a cash crop. Every single maize plant that gets planted every season also gets a handful of modern, artificial fertiliser planted with it. Every coffee tree also gets regular fertilisation... Thats a lot of fertiliser... and artificial fertilisers are highly water soluble and all the water goes very quickly into the lake (The slopes are very steep around here)
On the "natural front, the soils in the lake catchement are naturaly high in Phosphorous and there has been quite a lot of roud building activity which exposes the subsoil and a lot of errosin takes this soil into the lake... and land-slides in rainy season do the same thing)

3) Pesticides and Herbicides
Again, the coffee and maize, (and fruit and vegetables) gets more"modern treatment"... After the simple hoe, the local farmers next most valuable piece of equipment is their spray backpack... I see them everywhere walking around spraying each and every plant with pesticides. Im less sure about herbicides but I believe that these also get a fair bit of use for the vegetable crops. Again, these are highly water soluble and they easily get down the steep hills and into the lake when it rains.

4) Coffee Bean Processing
When the coffee is harvested, the beans are processed using large amounts of water. So, the locals put the processing plants right on the lake shore if they can. More importantly, the coffee beans, when harvested are covered in the skin and "meat" of the berry. The processing peels off this skin and meat that is very sweet (full of sugars) and these skins are left in a huge stinking pile right on the lake shore where they compost for a few months, releasing all those nutrients straight into the lake water.... And believe me, there are hundreds of tones of this stuff here every coffee season.

5) Domestic Sewerage
And finally, there is the sewerage effluent of 200,000 people here. There are no functioning community sewerage systems (ie that have processing plants) here that I know of. I would estimate though that probably 3/4 of the people here use toilet systems that drain into septic tanks. Its the other 1/4 of the toilet systems (both community and individual homes) that dump their waste water directly into the lake rather than a septic tank system.

So, those are the major contributors. Now what are the effects?

Well, first a little bit about how waste nutrients are processed by nature... My limited knowledge on this (I am a qualified "landscape technician" by the way) is that bacteria and microbes and fungus and nematodes etc. process these nutrients and complex chemicals before they can be used by plants... (This is what goes on in your compost pile and the general top soil) The soil biology is I believe a far more complex and diverse system than the plants and animals that we humans see as "the biological system" going on above the soil!
Actually, the simple compounds of synthetic fertilisers can be directly used by plants but nature doesnt care if the plant involved is the tomato plant you put it there for, or an algae or a bacteria...whoever gets it first will use it. Nature doesnt care if the "processing" happens in the soil at the tomato plant site, or in the lake where the dissolved fertiliser washed to... And thats the problem.... The nutrients dont get processed in the soil, they get processed in the lake.

We cant avoid having the nutrients processed somewhere, but we can avoid them being processed in the lake. Actually we desperately do want the wastes processed... just not in the lake.
Those septic toilet systems actually do a great job.... In fact they are specifically designed to do this. The septic tank is the "processing plant". All the nutrients in the human waste get processed in the tank and the water that then seeps slowly back to the water table through the soil is more or less clean and inactive. The only down side (in arid climates) with septic systems is that they use lots of water.... but we've got lots of water here at the lake and huge amounts of it falls from the sky each year.
And this septic system is also more or less what modern sewerage processing plants do too... They just accelerate the process by providing lots and lots of aeration (for the preferred aerobic bacteria to process the nutrients) and lots and lots of mixing (again so the processing is thorough and rapid)... and then the more or less clean water is released back into the environment.

So, what we actually want is for the bacterial processing of fertilisers and sewerage to happen in the soil or in treatment plants rather than in the lake water. The post processing water can then go straight into the lake. :)

And what effect do the pesticides and detergents have in the story?... Well, that Im not well qualified to be certain of, but Id put my money on them degrading the natural systems in the soil that do the "processing" and thus nutrients and wastes that pass through the soil are not processed nearly as much or as well as they would be if the insecticides etc. were not there. Also, I suspect that this particular cyano-bacteria is the current dominant user of the nutrients in the lake because its a really tough critter and can tolerate the detergents and toxins in the water far better than other plants... like water weeds.... They would love all the nutrients too, and they dont stink like this stuff, but I suspect they cant tolerate the toxins and detergents (not to mention that they are currently being over-whealmed by the cyano-bacteria), so there are virtually none of them on the lake.


So, these five big problem areas are very large issues for the communities here... For them to make significant changes to the habits of a life-time (actually, the habits of many generations) will be virtually impossible.
"We need to educate them" I hear you say, and I totaly agree, but I can tell you for sure that the process of education and change will without a doubt take many years.... a decade or two if the process happens "quickly"! ... And that just isnt fast enough for the lake.

But why cant they see that what they are doing is bad for the lake?
Well, the people here are I believe, just as intelligent as you and I.... Its not a matter of intelligence. They simply dont have the benefit of the education and exposure to uncorrupted information (corrupted by advertising and lobbying etc). But even if they did have those benefits, it would still be a tough job to convince them... The problem is that they have had these "bad behaviours" for generations and this has never happened to the lake before... So they just cant see the "cause and effect" relationship. And on top of that they resent the "rich Americans and Europeans" who always come here and tell them what to do all the time and treat them like they are stupid etc. etc...
So, in my opinion, changing local behaviours will be slow and difficult. There is no doubt that the effort should be made and persisted with too, but we need some other action as well. Some action that circumvents the old behaviours.

What to do then?
Well, here is what I would do if I could (not that I would ever get the chance though... for which we probably should be greatfull !)
... note here, that at the moment, opinions around here are very much like ass-holes!... Everybody has got one!...and some people seem to have more than one!!!

Note here also: I obviously think there are plenty of people who know lots more about this sort of thing than I do and I do and will continue to listen to their ideas whenever I can get them. But here is my current outlook...

So, "If I were King" :
1) Id simply ban the use of synthetic fertilisers, insecticides, and detergents in the entire catchement by federal law (volcano crater plus a similarly sized area of an adjecent valley actually). And there is no point making laws if you are not going to enforce them, and in this case it would be relatively easy... There are only four roads that come into the valley. Id have the valley declared a "special environmental protection area" or some such by federal law. Id put check stations on the four roads and Id train and employ 100 people to operate those stations (need to have anti-corruption systems in place too). Those stations would check all trucks for synthetic chemicals entering the valley... I think you would stop 90% of the stuff ever getting into the valley that way and it would completely resolve the problem of local habits. If they cant get the stuff, then they cant buy or sell it and then they cant use it.
In effect I would instantly make the valley, the worlds largest "organic community" over night.... And I think that would have massive tourist attraction potential as well as attracting all sorts of international environmental funding, and making the local communities "world leaders" rather than world followers.
Yes, its "Draconian" but it would be an effective and relatively cheap solution for three of the five main offenders... (But then of course; Id just be another "dictator" in the locals eyes regardless of good intentions or otherwise, so I guess we should be greatfull that Im not "the King" :)... On with the story...  )

2) Coffee processing, natural fertilisers, and natural detergents.
Well, the problem here is that the nutrients from these things are getting into the lake. So, for the natural fertilizing, detergents and coffee processing problems, under the same federal "special environmental protection area" laws, Id ban these things within 100m of the lake and 30m of any surface water and water courses (streams, rivers, lakes). This would be tough on the local vegetable gardens which are all down on the lakeshore (which is why I say 30m and not 50m or 100m) but I see no other way. The theory here is to try ensure that the nutrients that do dissolve into the water when it rains, move through the soil...slowly, giving them time to process, rather than flushing directly into the lake via surface water flow.
Likewise this would be tough on the coffee processing plants... They would have to move, away from the lake shore... Id say 100m or more... But, again, I see no other way. The up side would be for the tourist industry in that the huge stinking piles of coffee bean skins would no longer be right in the middle of the tourist areas like they are now.
Again, you need to police this, and its definitely harder to do. The Lake shore line is easy enough to police... Again, a few dozen or so people could cover it, and perhaps another hundred or so for the water courses and the rest of the catchment. But if you want it to work, the "bad habits" need to be changed and quickly.

3) Sewerage...
Well, obviously direct dumping of sewerage into the lake needs to stop! ASAP!
Real sewerage processing plants need to be built... And these things are seriously expensive and power greedy... Like many millions of dollars! Again, I see no choice if the lake is to be saved. The good thing about this is that there are in fact only a couple of towns on the lake with any sort of public sewer collection system (and the two that I know of do dump directly into the lake) so there are not many of these beasts that need to be paid for.
Now, the bulk of the valley population use septic systems, and these work... But the valley population is rapidly increasing , and there are absolutely no regulations about these ad-hoc septic systems... So while its working today, it will not be for long... But, the obvious "build communal sewerage systems and processing plants and enforce regulations etc." solution will take time to implement and Im OK with that.

4) You would still need to get the stuff that is already in the lake out!
Yep, once you stop filling the system up with crap, you can focus on getting the old crap out.
Its not that hard. If it was all dissolved chemicals and nutrients, it would be quite hard to get out of the water. But, nature is helping with this, and the algae is capturing the nutrients and turning it into a solid form. And now you can get hold of it more easily.
I would suggest the same systems we use in aquariums and combine a mechanical filter system with a "foam fractionation" system (protein skimmer we call it in the aquarium world). These things are made in "industrial" sizes and could be installed in a couple of places on the lake... Like say where the wind naturally blows the algae too (The winds are very predictable here and you can see the algae collecting where it is blown). Again, these systems cost millions of dollars, but I say do it slowly... It will take a few years for the whole bio-system to stabilise, so you can take a few years to harvest out the muck... And, I suspect that the harvested algae, could quite easily be composted and used as a very effective organic fertiliser to replace the synthetic fertilisers currently being used ! (Though you would need to do some study on that one to ensure the by-products of the decomposing algae are not toxic)


So, thats my take on it... You can do it all as slowly as you want or as fast as you want. The longer you take to implement, the longer it takes for the lake to recover.
There is I believe a significant environmental and in fact economic up-side to what I suggest.
The catchment area of the lake is actually quite small, and the land is steep, and there is lots of rain fall here. So there is not much "accumulation" of the toxins and nutrients, and if you acted quickly Id guess it would only be a couple of years before the lake was well on the way to recovery. But if you go slow, it will be decades (or never!) before you can swim in the lake again!


Well, thats a huge post, and like I said, "there is no shortage of opinions" around here at present. But thats my take on it and a short version of more or less what direction I would head...

If I were King! :)))