It’s triathlon season at Tempe Town Lake, and enthusiastic Valley triathletes hope they won’t be thwarted by the lake’s borderline water quality. “We sign a waiver,” said Andrew Cope, a member of the Arizona Triathlon Club who competed in last week’s Splash and Dash swim-run event.
The swimming stage, planned for the lake, was moved to a pool because pH levels were too high. The latest pH levels were deemed acceptable, and Sunday’s Timex Triathlon should continue as planned.
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“I enjoyed doing the race anyway,” Cope said of the Splash and Dash, “but I would much rather have swum in the lake than in the pool, despite the water quality.”
The city requires Town Lake to have a pH level of 9 or lower before swimming is allowed, a precaution against skin and eye irritation. The lake checked in at 9.2 last week before the Splash and Dash was modified.
Algae has caused the unsafe pH levels, according to Basil Boyd, a water resources hydrologist with the Tempe Water Department. Boyd said sunlight and water nutrients foster algae growth, which causes high pH readings.
“It’s just a fact that if you live in Arizona, there’s a lot of sunlight,” he said.
At Town Lake, Boyd said nutrients come from heavy rain and runoff that enters the lake. He said a water basin north of Loop 202 has been a problem since the winter of 2005, when heavy rain filled the basin and seeped into the ground there. He said that basin has a high algae content.
“Algae in itself is not a health hazard,” said Will Humble, head of Public Health Preparedness at the Arizona Department of Health Services. He said the bacteria level is the primary health risk for people in open bodies of water.
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Increased bacteria levels associated with pH of slightly over 9 can cause eye irritation, skin irritation and infections in open wounds.
Humble said the most serious health concerns associated with bacteria, however, center on fecal contamination.
Boyd said that rumors of sewage in Tempe Town Lake are false. He said that although a sewage pipeline runs parallel to the lake, “there is no evidence of any seepage” and the pipe is not leaking.
The average pH level in the lake has topped 9 during 18 of the last 20 weeks. Boyd said hydrologists test the water at four locations along the two-mile lake to determine the average pH level. The most recent reading, taken on Monday, was 9.3. But Boyd said the water where the triathletes will compete tested at 9 and has been deemed safe.
This means that the first Timex Triathlon likely will continue as planned this weekend, even in light of last weekend’s swimming cancellation.
Boyd said the city will treat the water to reduce algae once more this week before Sunday’s races.
But this won’t prevent untreated water from entering the lake from the basin north of Loop 202. Boyd said the water in that basin has had pH levels about 9.5.
“That’s where we have a problem with the treatment,” Boyd said.
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The 9 pH standard is a threshold that local officials chose. John Power, head of environmental services at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health, said the county does not oversee Tempe Town Lake, and he was unfamiliar with the 9 pH standard.
Triathletes are crossing their fingers, hoping this fall’s races will go on as planned. More than 1,000 athletes are expected to compete this weekend in the Timex Triathlon. Several other triathlons are scheduled at Tempe Town Lake in October.
Jeff Banas, head of the Arizona Triathlon Club, plans to compete in this weekend’s Olympic-distance triathlon. He said that he and most of the club’s athletes don’t have a problem with Tempe Town Lake’s water quality.
“I’ve been swimming in that lake for years,” Banas said. “There’s always algae out there. You just try not to swallow the water.”
Banas said he’d rather the lake be clean and the pH levels be right, but he doesn’t worry about it too much.
“No one I train with has ever gotten sick,” Banas said, adding that he’s swum in much worse. In Canyon Lake, where the Arizona Triathlon Club trains, swimmers have passed a dead rat, a dead deer and a live snake in the water.
Anne Wilson of Camelback Coaching in Scottsdale, who has coached triathletes for seven years and competed for 18, agreed that Tempe Town Lake is “not the worst by any stretch of the imagination.”
“Every athlete’s wish is for Tempe Town Lake to be open for swimming,” Wilson said.
Source: https://t-tees.com
Category: WHY
