Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 5, 2006, Winnipeg, Manitoba Winnipeg free press tuesday september 5, 2006 Manitoba a7 Lake Winnipeg Banner weekend for downtown streets ick algae oozes into South Basin hot weather suits blooms just Fine it was a Banner weekend for Winnipeg. The downtown Winnipeg business improvement zone Biz installed 68 banners throughout the gateways to downtown Winnipeg on Friday and saturday. A lot of Winnipeg residents and visitors Arent aware of what is the downtown area said Stephanie voyce downtown Biz project coordinator. People will be going along and then they la say of this is voyce said they have three sets of banners for each location that will be changed at the appropriate times to reflect the time of season. Also banners for each site will have their own specific Colour scheme. So far downtown Biz will have installed banners on the Provencher Bridge main Street Bridge Midtown Bridge main Street and Portage Avenue with a number of locations to be added in the next couple years. At $150 a Banner the project can get pricey said voyce adding that each is an original painting trans feed to a Tough Vinyl Banner that can last in Winnipeg a climate for four years. By Gabrielle Giro Day i t was Skunk swimming this past weekend according to vacationers who said ugly blooms of Blue Green algae continued to spread across portions of Lake Winnipeg. While the algae present earlier this summer near grand Beach and Hecla Grindstone provincial Park were not reported by specialists to have harm fully High toxin Levels cottagers throughout the Southern Basin still said they plugged their noses this weekend before diving in. Of course its Gross said Allen Thompson a Patricia Beach summer resident who said algae this year on the Lake was worse than he a Ever seen it. It almost looked like glowing Green phosphorus in the spots where the algae dried out he said. It seems worse than Ever but what can you do about it Greg Mccullough a University of Manitoba researcher who studies Satel Lite images of surface algae Slick said the algae Bloom on Lake Winnipeg appeared to be getting progressively worse. In september 2005, Mccullough said the Bloom was 50 per cent larger than the satellite images he a studied for the previous 20 years ? a trend echoed in this Summers algae Slick As Well. This is one of the worst years i be seen in Lake Winnipeg a Southern Basin said Mccullough. While the algae Bloom is normally Mas Sive in the Northern Basin of the Lake experts said the Southern Basin usually has More stirred up sediment that pre vents algae from growing. But not this year As Mccullough said extremely wet conditions in 2005 followed by sunny weather in 2006 encouraged algae growth. You see the worst blooms in the hottest Summers he said explaining algae grows faster in Bright Sunshine. Last year it was also a very wet year. The increased flow into Lake Winnipeg brought in More nutrients so the Lake was super charged with nutrients. Everything was adding up to be a very bad year for Manitoba research biologist Hedy Kling said she was still studying algae samples from the lakes but that the species found in the lakes were different from previous years. ;