City Launches: Standby to Watch Massive Fish Kill Campaign

At the July 14 Meeting of the City Council of Lake Elsinore the City’s Public Relations Staffer, Nicole Dailey, rolled-out a campaign called “Lake Watch 2015” (see weblink below).

http://www.lake-elsinore.org/index.aspx?page=26&recordid=1158&returnURL=%2findex.aspx

The City’s presentation prophesied that the poor ecological condition of the Lake will result in 100-million dead Threadfin Shad minnows on the shores of Lake Elsinore.

While I appreciate the City’s candor to inform citizens of a fish kill of biblical proportions, I deplore the public relations aspect to dumb-down & preempt public expectations and to scapegoat by repeatedly inferring that severe algae blooms and massive fish kills are “natural”. The City’s PR snow-job would have its citizens believe that a massive fish kill is really a good thing, as nature intended, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The California Regional Water Quality Control Board declared in 2004 that Lake Elsinore is impaired by excessive nutrient pollution (phosphorus & nitrogen), which bio-stimulates excess algae growth and leads to low dissolved oxygen levels that result in suffocation of fish (fish kills). The algae concentration on Lake Elsinore is approximately 8-times higher than natural background conditions.

Last year Mayor Natasha Johnson made a similar prophecy about a massive fish kill, fortunately it never happened in 2014. I think it’s wise for the City to prepare to cleanup a fish kill as soon as possible. However, I think it’s just plain stupid for the City to publicly promote the prophecy of a massive fish kill that hurts tourism, economic development and leads to newspaper articles on a fish kill that hasn’t even happened yet. See Press Enterprise news article below.

LAKE ELSINORE: Imminent fish die-off feared

http://www.pe.com/articles/lake-773238-elsinore-norton.html

In my opinion, City Manager Grant Yates has done nothing to advance Lake Restoration and has actually taken the City in the wrong direction. What citizens should be asking is what is being done to prevent future fish kills? Why have the negotiations with watershed stakeholders failed to deliver a credible program to rehabilitate Lake Elsinore?

Let’s see if City Manager Grant Yates will volunteer on his day off to pick-up dead fish along the shores of Lake Elsinore for longer than a photo op.

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