Heed The Warning

Climate change is devastating, and its worst impacts are looming, as this newspaper’s “Rising Tide” series of articles in the Residence section is dutifully documenting. But it’s not the only crisis on the horizon: There’s another, and, similarly, we’re creating it ourselves.

Over the decades, the land has been farmed and houses have been built, and both have introduced a steady stream of harmful chemicals and nitrogen pollution into the environment. Like a series of canaries in a coalmine, local lakes and ponds have been going feet up. The pollutants are leaching into the bodies of water, creating unhealthy marine environments in which certain forms of algae and cyanobacteria thrive. It’s the first sign that things are going badly awry.

Stony Brook University’s Dr. Christopher Gobler spoke with Southampton Town Trustees last week. His focus was Sagg Pond in Sagaponack, which he’s been observing for a decade, intensively since 2019, but his message is much more widespread — it’s about the entire region.

Sagg Pond is steadily getting worse, and the reason is the history of agricultural production and the plethora of septic systems surrounding it. Lawn fertilizers and pesticides contribute, as do road runoff and other factors. But the farming and the septic systems, in particular, are destroying surface waters. It’s becoming more and more noticeable.

The worrisome question: How long before the underground water supply, on which the region depends for potable water, is tainted?

Flushing ponds and bays provides some resolution to the surface water problems. In particular, it can be beneficial to the shellfish and fin fish that live in the waters. It can help kill the most harmful algae and cyanobacteria, which are harmful to humans and pets, and it can go a long way to restoring the appearance of the ponds and lakes, not a small victory if it can be achieved.

Underneath, though, there are bigger issues. Pollution from 20 years ago continues to work its way into both surface and groundwater — if we stopped adding more pollution right now, there is plenty already locked and loaded, working its way toward clean water, to contaminate pristine water for years.

As with climate change, so many of the effects of this destruction are slow enough to be almost unnoticeable — until they’re not. We are at that point with climate change, and we are also there with water pollution.

There’s time to act, in both cases, but the longer we refuse to make it a priority, or remain unconvinced there’s a workable strategy to fix it, the quicker the danger accelerates, gains momentum. We’re being given a signal, a warning — a dead canary in the coalmine. It’s up to us whether we act decisively or simply plow forward into the pitiless darkness ahead.