This problem is larger than the City of Clearlake. I wish them well and hope they can spur Lake County and the State of California into doing something positive.

The number 1 thing that everyone along the lakeshore can do to stem the problem is to plant tule everywhere. Although the blue-green algae has always been in the lake (for the past 500,000 years) and will always be in the lake, before the 1940's there was almost a continuous shoreline growth of tule that served a dual purpose.

1) the tule filtered all waters flowing into the lake thereby trapping the nitrates and sediment and containing them to the immediate shorline areas.

2) the tules created a safe nursery area for fish, enhancing the fish populations.

Fish and Game Biologist Larry Weeks studied the problem of the shrinking tule stands around Clear Lake and discovered that shoreline landowners had replaced the natural tule stands with concrete and rip-rap for development purposes. His analysis of historical aerial photos indicated that at least 1/2 of the Lake's tule stands had been destroyed by 1970.

Propagating tule along your waterfront costs nothing and will give back to the lake its natural filtration system.

Dr. John Parker

And how do I plant it? It sounds like an excellent idea but I don't know where to start.

Tule can be found anywhere around the lake. Get in your boat, head for a stand with a shovel and break off a small clump (1 foot or 2 feet square). Transport to your part of the shoreline and tie it to a piling in shallow water, or to anything along the shore.

As the water level rises, the boyant tule roots will break loose from the lake bottom and float to a new shoreline location and take root. During low water periods, the wave action along the shore will undercut the tule roots and the tule will naturally drop down to the newly created shoreline. Once established, the tule will take care of itself.

Dr. John

Algae is keeping tourists away? Really? Not the economy? Not the fact that the City of Clearlake looks like a third-world country? Not that we have a crazy district attorney who will charge innocent boaters with murder rather than the DRUNK DEPUTY who actually KILLED A WOMAN by speeding through the night in is speedboat WHILE DRUNK?

Yeah, it's the algae.

Ah Man, Dusty

Braito wrote about it last week, they can use the barge owned by Lake County to harvest the algae. It will work in most of the lake, for some of the areas, it will need minor modifications to keep from "dredging" the lake, but can be successful if tackled quickly. Wait, "Lake County" and "quickly" hardly belong in the same sentence, so maybe tule will work faster. Between both of those plans, something CAN be done, but WILL it ever happen?

It's been 2 or 3 months now since the newRite-Aid opened in Clearlake, and yet the traffic lights at Olympic and Old 53 are still dark. Why? Oh, no good reason other than complete and utter stupidity. We are a city run by clones of Sarah Palin- out to line their pockets with YOUR hard-earned taxes! They are thieves and liars.

Republicans are stupid, narrow-minded morons who don't understand what the word 'Democracy' means- they are fascist, illiterate, socially retarded sociopaths whose only desire is to see a world where people suffer for the Republicans own amusement.

Yep. It's true. Lake County made itself a joke. Thanks to our idiot district attorney, our stupidity is national news!

Jesus weeps.