Group names Geist a polluted waterway

INDIANAPOLIS (WANE) - Geist Reservoir was named on a list of Indiana’s polluted waterways Monday by the Environmental Law & Policy Center.

The list of polluted waterways, as determined by ELPC, is posted on an ELPC run website that aims to use stories focused on Hoosiers to point out how Indiana laws have “allowed the state’s rivers and lakes to become fouled by algae blooms, toxins, sedimentation and dangerous pathogens,” an EPLC news release says.

The story on Geist Reservoir is told by resident Scott Rodgers, who is also the director of the Geist/Fall Creek Watershed Alliance, focuses on summer algae blooms linked to phosphate pollution.

A summer 2011 study by the Center for Earth and Environmental Science at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis found Geist had cyanobacterial cell counts above 100,000 cells/ml and microcystin levels below 6ppb. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management issues health warnings when microcystin levels reach 6ppb.

Algae blooms are nothing new to reservoir. In 2009 , state officials warned Hoosiers not to swim in the Geist or Morse reservoirs when levels reached 6ppb.