If you look at Florida's Treasure Coast, you find a large algal bloom here. This slimy green green shade looks even more gooey from outer space, as confirmed by the July 2nd pictures of NASA's Landsat 8 satellite.
Florida's Lake Okeechobee can show you billions of green microbes in a crazy spawn spin.
This blue-green algal bloom was seen first in the lake in early May. As it has been fuelled by agricultural wastes, it has been growing and reached an estimated 239 square miles, which cover about one-third of the lake.
Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in Martin and St. Lucie counties earlier this week, and he later added Lee and Palm Beach counties. Scott "blamed the federal government for neglecting repairs to the lake's aging dike that's considered one of the country's most at-risk for imminent failure."
The blooms began to inhabit downstream coastal communities in Martin, St. Lucie, Palm Beach, and Lee Counties many weeks ago. The US Army Corps of Engineers started to discharge lake water through special channel locks, so that the water does not flood towns and sugar farms in the southern parts.
As the nytimes reported "An aging dike system forces the Army Corps of Engineers to release controlled discharges through channel locks east and west from the lake to protect nearby towns from flooding. However, those discharges, which carry pollutants from agricultural lands that flow into the lake from the north, pour into rivers and lagoons downstream, which eventually dump into the ocean."
The Californian residents are worried, even as the place is beginning to "smell like wet garbage." There is the worry that the blooms are composed of microcystis that can be toxic to human and animal life.
As the green algal blooms are raising public outrage, the Army Corps is reducing the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee. However, if the green muck continues to spill to regions in the south, it is a mess that someone else will have to handle.
