Onondaga Lake

Onondaga Lake
	View over the lake with Syracuse in the background
Geographical location	New York (USA)
Drain	Seneca River
Places on the shore	Syracuse (New York)
	Data
Coordinates	43 ° 5 '20 " N , 76 ° 12' 30" W Coordinates: 43 ° 5 '20 " N , 76 ° 12' 30" W.
Altitude above sea level	110 m
surface	12 km²
length	7.6 km
width	2 km
volume	0.131 km³
Maximum depth	19.5 m
Middle deep	10.9 m
Catchment area	642 km²
	Catchment area

The Onondaga Lake is a lake in the north of the State of New York , which at times than the polluted lake most of the United States was. On its southeast bank is the city of Syracuse .

geography

The lake is 7.6 km long along its axis, up to 2 km wide and has a surface of 12 km ² . Its maximum depth is 19.5 m with an average depth of 10.9 m. It has a northern and a southern basin, each of which reaches a depth of over 18 m and is separated by a light saddle with a depth of about 15 m. Its volume is 131 million m ³ . The catchment area of Onondaga Lake is 642 km ² , the two most important tributaries are Ninemile Creek (55 km), which drains Otisco Lake, and Onondaga Creek (44 km). Smaller tributaries are Ley Creek, Harbor Brook, Sawmill Creek, and Bloody Brook. The lake itself has a drain at its northeast end that flows directly into the Seneca River above the lake .

history

The area around Onondaga Lake has been in existence since around 8000 BC. Settled by humans. Since 1000 BC By the time the Europeans arrived, a flourishing agricultural culture had developed. In the time immediately before the arrival of the first Europeans, the lake belonged to the settlement area of the Onondaga , a tribe of the Iroquois League .

The French discoverer and later governor of New France Samuel de Champlain was probably the first European to see the lake when he took part in a campaign by the Hurons against the Iroquois in 1615 and in a failed attack on the well-fortified settlement of the lake Onondaga was injured.

The first European to describe the lake and the salt springs near it was the French Jesuit Simon Le Moyne (1604–1665), who visited the Onondaga in the summer of 1654. The Jesuits then established the Mission Sainte Marie de Ganentaa (today Sainte Marie among the Iroquois ) on the lake in 1656 , which they gave up again in 1658 when the relationship with the Iroquois worsened.

The permanent settlement of the lake by Europeans began with Ephraim Webster, who set up a trading post near the mouth of the Onondaga Creek in 1786. The salt springs located on the lake became a major driving force behind the industrial development of the area around the lake. As early as 1794, James Geddes began industrial salt production at Harbor Brook.

The lake was first significantly changed by human influences in 1822, when the water level was lowered by 0.6 m through the construction of a drainage canal, which led to a reduction in the water surface by 20% and drained the swamp areas on the banks. The water level of the lake was thus approximately at the same level as that of the Seneca River.

The salt industry peaked in 1862, at which time it comprised much of the lake's southern shore. Since 1838 Syracuse had a connection to the railway network, which led to an increased growth of industry and population. The years after the civil war (1861–1865) in particular were characterized by strong growth. From 1884 industry for the production of sodium carbonate settled on the west bank of the lake. In the 1870s and 1880s, the north-west bank developed into an excursion destination and recreation area for residents of Syracuse, but this use declined sharply after the end of the First World War (1918), as the advent of the car made other more distant excursion destinations easier to reach Onondaga Lake became unattractive due to increasing environmental problems. Since the turn of the century, a large number of industries have settled in the catchment area of the lake.

During the global economic crisis there were public construction projects on the eastern shore of the lake, which made it accessible again for recreational and leisure purposes, but without bathing facilities. This is how the Salt Museum , the Sainte Marie among the Iroquois (museum with a reconstruction of the former Jesuit mission) and the Onondaga Lake Park came into being.

The condition of the lake began to visibly deteriorate from the end of the 19th century, there were first collapses in the fish stocks and from 1900 the use of the lake for ice making was prohibited for health reasons. In 1940 bathing was banned and in 1970, due to high mercury levels, fishing was also banned. Serious efforts to improve the water quality only began slowly after the Second World War, until then a lot of wastewater from industrial companies but also from the households of the city of Syracuse itself flowed largely untreated into the lake.

literature

Cornelius B. Murphy: Onondaga Lake. In: Jay A. Bloomfield (Ed.): Lakes of New York State: Ecology of the Lakes of Western New York . Elsevier, 1978, ISBN 1-4832-7732-1 , pp. 223-362. ( Excerpt (Google) )
Steven W. Effler: Limnological and Engineering Analysis of a Polluted Urban Lake: Prelude to Environmental Management of Onondaga Lake, New York . Springer, 1996, ISBN 1-4612-2318-0 . ( Excerpt (Google) )

Web links

Commons : Onondaga Lake - collection of images, videos and audio files

Focus on Onondaga Lake Report

Onondaga Lake on savetherain.us (organization for lake restoration)

Onondaga Lake on the Onondaga Nation website

America's 'Most Polluted' Lake Finally Comes Clean - Contribution to NPR (audio)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Steven W. Effler: Limnological and Engineering Analysis of a Polluted Urban Lake. 1996, pp. 1-5 .
↑ America's 'Most Polluted' Lake Finally Comes Clean . NPR, July 31, 2012.
^ A New Sense of Urgency to Clean Onondaga Lake . The New York Times, July 19, 1987 (AP Story)
↑ Peter Greenberg: Don't Go There !: The Travel Detective's Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World . Rodale, 2008, ISBN 9781605299945 , pp. 15-16
^ Onondaga Lake ( Memento December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at www.upstatefreshwater.org
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Steven W. Effler: Limnological and Engineering Analysis of a Polluted Urban Lake. 1996, pp. 5-10 .
↑ It is unclear whether the Iroquois fort was on Onondaga Lake itself or on another smaller lake in the neighborhood, see Marcel Trudel: Champlain, Samuel de . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto / Université Laval, 1966 and 2014 (revision) (accessed December 12, 2015)
↑ Cornelius B. Murphy: Onondaga Lake. 1978, p. 224 .
^ Peter R. Eisenstadt, Laura-Eve Moss (ed.): The Encyclopedia of New York State . Syracuse University Press, 2005, p. 1346 .

[data-1] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Steven W. Effler: Limnological and Engineering Analysis of a Polluted Urban Lake. 1996, pp. 1-5 .

[npr-2] America's 'Most Polluted' Lake Finally Comes Clean . NPR, July 31, 2012.

[nyt-3] A New Sense of Urgency to Clean Onondaga Lake . The New York Times, July 19, 1987 (AP Story)

[pg-4] Peter Greenberg: Don't Go There !: The Travel Detective's Essential Guide to the Must-Miss Places of the World . Rodale, 2008, ISBN 9781605299945 , pp. 15-16

[org-5] Onondaga Lake ( Memento December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at www.upstatefreshwater.org

[history-6] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Steven W. Effler: Limnological and Engineering Analysis of a Polluted Urban Lake. 1996, pp. 5-10 .

[7] It is unclear whether the Iroquois fort was on Onondaga Lake itself or on another smaller lake in the neighborhood, see Marcel Trudel: Champlain, Samuel de . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography. University of Toronto / Université Laval, 1966 and 2014 (revision) (accessed December 12, 2015)

[8] Cornelius B. Murphy: Onondaga Lake. 1978, p. 224 .

[9] Peter R. Eisenstadt, Laura-Eve Moss (ed.): The Encyclopedia of New York State . Syracuse University Press, 2005, p. 1346 .