By Siddharth Gupta
If you ride past Brickyard Pond on the East Bay Bike Path, you’ll see a striking display of fall foliage. Beautiful!
On the surface, the pond and its shoreline seem perfectly normal: its waters are clear, and the trees surround it with warm autumn hues of red and yellow. But below the surface, the pond is marred with major issues all caused by one thing – too many nutrients.
So why’s that a bad thing?
When a pond has too many nutrients, it can lead to many consequences, according to Michael F. Chislock of the Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, at Auburn University in Alabama. Writing for the Nature Education Knowledge Project, Mr. Chislock said nutrients in the water help plants and algae to grow, and healthy amounts of nutrients are necessary to sustain the pond.
But, according to Chislock, too many nutrients lead to overgrowth of marine plant life, which lowers the water quality and harms animals that use light to find food. It can also lessen the acidity of the water and bring down carbon levels.
Perhaps the most detrimental things, however, are the dead zones. When plants die in ponds, microbes love to eat them, and if there are too many dead plants, there will be too many microbes. The large numbers of microbes will siphon the oxygen content in the pond and create dead zones — places with no oxygen, where most creatures can’t survive, according to Chislock’s article ¨Eutrophication: Causes, Consequences, and Controls in Aquatic Ecosystems” which he co-authored with fellow scientists Rachel A. Zitomer and Alan E. Wilson in 2013.
This entire process of overgrowth is called eutrophication, and Brickyard Pond is eutrophic. Specifically, the water has too much phosphorus and nitrogen, which are typically found in fertilizer and animal waste. In suburban areas like Barrington, people use fertilizer on their lawns and there are plenty of pet animals defecating all around town. When it rains, fertilizer and waste can wash into pipes or drains and feed into the nearest water body, hence the Brickyard Pond dilemma.
The town is aware of this issue and have consulted experts about ways to reduce phosphorus levels. A report from ESS Group, a private environmental consulting and engineering firm based in Riverside, Rhode Island.
One recommendation from ESS was to build systems for the capture and treatment of stormwater as well as monitoring the local bird population.
In September 2020, the Barrington Town Council added an article to the town bylaws about public waters, highlighting their desire to do more to protect water bodies like Brickyard Pond:
“Reducing excess nitrogen and phosphorus in Barrington's public waters will protect and improve the quality of important marine and freshwater habitat,” according to Article VII Protection of Public Waters from Nutrient Pollution.
The article includes rules about where and when to apply fertilizers, and it also recommends using the lowest amount of fertilizer possible.
"For years Brickyard Pond’s water quality and nutrient levels have been changing and getting worse," biologist Matt Ladewieg, Senior Scientist and aquatic resource management expert for ESS, told the Providence Journal.
Obviously, not being careful about what you’re dumping into your local pond can be very harmful. The key takeaway from this situation is to be mindful of what you’re doing to the environment around you: nature is made of carefully balanced ecosystems, and external factors can have undesired effects.
To help combat the effects of nutrient pollution, start by picking up after your pets and reducing your fertilizer use. The hardest problems often require simple solutions, and it’s up to us to make a change.