Joseph J. Bufalini: More money wasted on Jordan Lake
Regarding the Jan. 7 news article: “Cary, Apex pursue new water quality solution after SolarBees fail”: I have written that aeration of Jordan Lake will not remove pollutants (mostly phosphate, nitrate and sulfate salts). Now Apex and Cary plan to spend $4.1 million on a Redi-Mix aeration system.
According to The N&O, the system will be placed at the lake’s inlets. The claim is that the warm, stirred, aerated water will prevent the salts from dissolving, and without the Redi-mix the salts will go to the cold bottom and dissolve. Chemistry shows us the opposite occurs. Warm, stirred water will in most cases dissolve salts more quickly while cold, unstirred water will dissolve pollutants more slowly. Also the pollutant salts have probably already dissolved in the streams entering the lake.
The state has already wasted $1.7 million on SolarBees and it looks like Apex and Cary are now going to waste $4.1 million on a similar venture.
The money should be spent on preventing the pollutants from entering the lake in the first place!
Joseph J. Bufalini
Cary
This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 9:38 AM with the headline "Joseph J. Bufalini: More money wasted on Jordan Lake."