Scotia officials hopeful lake clears murky hurdle

PHOTOGRAPHER: Patrick Dodson

The beach at Collins Park in Scotia remains closed to swimming on Thursday, May 28, 2015.

Memorial Day weekend has come and gone, and warm weather is finally here, but no children are swimming at the county’s only public sandy beach.

That could change by the time school lets out for summer in late June, but only if the water is clear, Mayor Kris Kastberg said. It would be the first time in four summers that the beach has opened.

The beach at Collins Lake has been closed since Tropical Storm Irene sent the lake’s waters flooding over its banks and into the park in August 2011, with clay sediment from the Mohawk River making the lake’s waters too murky for public swimming.

“Every year, the clarity gets better. It’s just a natural process,” Kastberg said, adding that the village has budgeted to hire lifeguards for the beach this summer. “So we’re hoping that this is the year.”

To pass the county Health Department’s inspections that are required for the lake to open, the swimming area must have 4 feet of visibility at all times, Kastberg said. That’s to ensure that lifeguards can see swimmers when they’re underwater.

The same rules apply even if the village only opened the beach for wading, Kastberg said.

Last year, the village’s testing of the water showed a range of visibility from 10 feet to close to none. Due to the varied results, officials then decided to wait at least another year to open the beach and hold off on hiring lifeguards.

Village parks employees will test the water’s clarity next week, and if they’re satisfied with the results, the county will inspect the water “for the official OK,” Kastberg said. The testing will involve sampling water from a portion of the swimming area where, over the winter, crews covered the ice with 26 tons of sand in hopes it would melt to the bottom of the lake and cover the sediment.

“If that did seem to do the trick, then we would cover the rest of the bottom with sand to make the swimming area a little bit bigger,” Kastberg said.

Bringing in sand is the village’s latest approach to subduing the sediment. In 2012, the village treated the lake with alum, a chemical compound that clumps the sediment particles together and pushes them to the bottom of the lake. In 2013, it stopped treating the lake with a weed-killing chemical called Sonar in hopes the plants would grow and tie up some of the sediment, which can be kicked around by swimmers and make the water murky.

If village officials decide to reopen the beach, it would be too late to offer swimming lessons there as has been done in the past “because you have to sign kids up ahead of time,” Kastberg said. But the beach would be open daily and possibly in time for the Fourth of the July, he said.

“The entire village government, and the Parks Department, wants to get public swimming, because the beach is full when it’s open,” Kastberg said. “It’s just frustrating having to wait for Mother Nature to take its course.”