As cyanobacteria crash the Venetian Festival, the Conservancy issues a plea: no more phosphorus.

By mid-August, the only thing thicker than the humidity in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, was the sludge lining the city beach. What should have been a postcard weekend festival crowds, bobbing boats, summer sun turned into a fetid spectacle of floating algae and dead fish. The culprit: a perfect cocktail of fertilizer runoff, stagnant winds, record-breaking heat, and decades of lawn-worshipping denial. As waterfront homeowners chase greener grass, the lake turns greener too and not in a good way. Enter the Geneva Lake Conservancy with a polite but pointed message: stop feeding the weeds, and Keep It Blue.

Geneva Lake Wisconsin water quality continues to deteriorate. Last summer for the first time the public beach in downtown Lake Geneva had to be closed due to a concentration of blue green algae. Algae blooms, especially cyanobacterial blooms, can release a variety of toxins. The most common ones are Microcystis, which can affect the liver, and then there are others like anatoxins that affect the nervous system.

The summer of 2024 in Lake Geneva brought perfect environmental conditions for a bloom. First, spring had a lot of rainfall from May till the beginning of July it rained almost every other day, and because of all the rain there was a large amount of runoff from the land. Almost 90% of the water feeding the lake comes from rain and runoff from the towns and villages on the lake. But an even greater source of water runoff comes from the lake shore homes. Most of these homes fertilize the frack out for their lawns some even four times a year trying to have the “perfect” lawn.

Due to all this runoff the algae in the lake thrived last summer. The plants reached the surface which they rarely do and were then “mowed” down by-passing power boats which resulted in masses of chopped up algae. The second environmental factor that came into play was the wind stopped blowing at the beginning of July resulting in large masses of algae drifting around the lake. Usually, a strong wind will blow the weeds onto the shoreline, and it will dry out, but not last summer. Add to the mix of climate change, the summer 2024 was the hottest on record. So, by time Lake Geneva had their annual pagan Venetian festival in mid-August all the algae and dead fish concentrated on the city’s beach and in front of Library Park resulted in a rather odorous affair. Right after the festival was over the beaches were closed due to a cyanobacterial bloom.

The Geneva Lake Conservancy is asking lake shore property owners to pledge to reduce phosphorus and other nutrient levels with a “Keep it Blue” program.

• Kick the fertilizer and lawn chemical habits.
• Prevent leaves, and lawn clipping from entering the lake. The city of Lake Geneva should stop requiring leaves to be placed into the street before pickup in the fall. In the city of Madison, Wisconsin they require all leaves to be placed on the terrace and NOT in the gutter.
• Stop soil erosion by installing native plants along the shoreline. With a 15-to-30-foot buffer strip to capture the phosphorus.
• Have construction sites use silt fencing to prevent sediment from running off into the lake.
• Call or text the Wisconsin DNR tipline at 1-800-847-9367 for violations.

“It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

Lake Geneva,Wisconsin and world is having another record braking hot summer but a least the spring of 2025 so far was dry in Lake Geneva, so the lake “weeds” are not nearly as abundant as last year.

The Republicans in the United States along with Wisconsin representatives Ron Johnson and Bryan Steil passed a budget busting legislation reorienting the county away from clean energy to fossil fuels. Dinosaurs voting for dinosaurs. As the richest man in the world put it. “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Eion Musk wrote on X on Saturday ahead of a procedural Senate vote to open debate on the nearly 1,000-page bill. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”