Local pollutants cloud Lake Carnegie
While the crew teams gear up to host races on Lake Carnegie, environmental concerns are brewing in and around Princeton's largest lake.The lake suffers from low oxygen content and a mercury level high enough to prompt an advisory on fish consumption, said Denise Patel, campus organizer for New Jersey Water Watch, an environmental activist group.Most of the northeastern seaboard has mercury-related problems in its waterways, but Patel said New Jersey's are the worst in the region."New Jersey has a lot of environmental problems stemming from its long legacy of industrial pollution to more recent problems related to overdevelopment," she said.In addition, New Jersey's status as the most densely populated state in the country only exacerbates the problem."Princeton happens to fall into an area that is being developed faster than any other part of the state," Patel said.Neighboring West Windsor Township has had the highest rate of development in the state in recent years, which can stress local waterways.However, Lake Carnegie's water quality problems are not due to large industrial plants but to other, more local environmental conditions."Lake Carnegie's large mercury and phosphorous load comes mainly from non-point sources such as litter, fertilizers, pesticides and oil and gas from cars," said Peter Jaffe, a civil and environmental engineering professor.