The water quality of Boone Lake is tracked by volunteer residents who work with the University of Rhode Island Watershed Watch. Throughout the season, from May to October, they record the depth of the lake, temperature, clarity, dissolved oxygen, phosphorous, and chlorophyll levels, E.coli, nitrates, ph, alkalinity, and chloride.
The general trend that they have found is that our lake is clear in the spring and early summer. Then, due to the large amounts of phosphorous that are released from the sediment we have algae bloom in the late summer through fall. The more phosphorous and nitrogen, the larger the algae bloom we will see.
The amount of phosphorous and nitrogen that accumulates in the lake comes from different sources such as runoff of lawn fertilizer, animal waste, road salt, rotting leaves and lawn clippings, and failed septic systems.
Some of these issues can be easily mitigated by creating a buffer of plantings at the water's edge, picking up after your domesticated animals, using little or no fertilizer on your lawns, storing any fertilizer you do use in a watertight container on a concrete floor, by minimizing the amount of lawn clippings and leaves that end up in the lake and by making sure to have your septic tanks and Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems (OWTS) pumped and inspected regularly.
New homeowners are reminded that any failed septic systems must be replaced within a year of purchase and that DEM considers all cesspools as failed systems.
Remember. . . the quality of our lake is directly related to our property values!!
More information will be uploaded to this page so come back soon to read past water quality reports, find out more about septic and OWTS, and for tips to help improve the health of our lake.