Photo by herbrm.
Lake Delton, in the Wisconsin Dells, has been looking a little like your mom: hard-used and fungusy. Algae overgrowth gave the lake a greenish cast, and made it appear less-than-healthy to swim in. The solution, according to the company that maintains Lake Delton: Just dump a whole lot of blue dye in there and call it a day.
It cost Aqua Engineering over $30,000 to dye the 267-acre lake, which to be fair is a lot less per square foot than it costs me to dye my hair. But locals are still thinking it might not have been the best use of their tourism dollars, mainly because it doesn’t actually do a damn thing to solve the lake’s algae problem. It’s the aquatic equivalent of spray-on hair in a can from QVC. (Or, perhaps more accurately, of spray-painting your lawn green in a drought.)
At very least, this probably won’t make things worse. Aqua Engineering got permission from Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources for the procedure, and the dye shouldn’t harm the environment or people who swim in the water. Except, presumably, when they get out and are instantly mobbed by Avatar fanboys.
