Long-Term Trends in the Water Quality of Killarney Lake (Gazette‪)‬

In July 1882, John Rigby wrote from his home in the new prairie town of Killarney. About the lake that lay beside the town, he enthused: Today, Killarney residents perceive that their lake is no longer the way that Rigby described. They believe that lake water quality has deteriorated markedly. For at least fifty years, they have worked vigorously to improve the situation, by adding chemicals to kill the massive growth of algae (called "blooms") that appear in its waters most summers. Besides the obvious impacts of algae blooms on lake aesthetics and the willingness of people to swim at the public beach, the blooms make it harder to treat lake water as a potable source for the town, they can produce toxins that jeopardize the health of humans and animals consuming lake water, and the inevitable collapse of the blooms consumes oxygen, causing fish to die. It is claimed that algae blooms are the cause of declining numbers of fish caught by sport fishers at Killarney Lake.