Cayuga Lake / Lake Source Cooling
Pollution Patrol
The southern shelf of Cayuga Lake is polluted. It has been polluted for decades.
Swimming has been forbidden at Stewart Park since 1962, when a child drowned because he could not be found when he went under in the silt-laden water. The Cornell Lake Source Cooling project has been in operation since 2000. Local environmentalists have identified the LSC project as a significant contributor to the pollution of the south end of Cayuga Lake, and they want the project either shut down or modified to eliminate or ameliorate its purported effects.
DEC: Lake Source Cooling may hurt Cayuga
Cornell questions validity of state analysis
ITHACA - Lake Source Cooling may be negatively impacting water quality in southern Cayuga Lake, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a letter to Cornell University this week.
DEC orders Cornell to submit more analyses for Lake Source Cooling permit
ITHACA — Cornell University will be required to include a controversial analysis of the impact of their lake source cooling project in order to renew their discharge permit with the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
DEC spokeswoman Lori O'Connell said Wednesday that the DEC has decided to require Cornell to evaluate site 7, which sits south of and closest to Cornell's lake source cooling discharge, against site 4, a control site at roughly the same location on the other side of the lake.
DEC wants more data on Lake Source Cooling at CU
ITHACA — Cornell University's report on the effects of Lake Source Cooling does not provide sufficient information for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to determine whether Cornell's permit should be renewed, and the DEC will conduct its own full technical review of lake impacts before renewing the permit.
Aid to Environment, Or Threat to Lake?; Cornell Pursues Pumping Plan, But Critics Fear Fouled Water
It seems an environmentalist's dream: a system that can cool 10 million square feet of Cornell University dormitories, laboratories and computer rooms simply by pumping frigid water from the depths of a nearby lake. No more chlorofluorocarbons, the refrigerants that can destroy protective ozone in the atmosphere. An electric bill 80 percent smaller than for conventional air conditioners. To top it off, nothing goes back into the lake, except water that came from the lake in the first place.
