SWITZERLAND’S LAKES

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26633, 19 January 1952, Page 3

SWITZERLAND’S LAKES

SOME SAID TO BE “DYING ” SCIENTISTS’ WARNING (By a Reuter Correspondent.) GENEVA. Switzerland’s lakes are “sick." Some of them are said to be even “dying,” and scientists are demanding special legislation for their protection. Leading Swiss scientists, known as hydrobiologists, claim that unless something is done to keep their waters clean ana clear, the lakes will vanish and the whole health-giving atmosphere of Switzerland will undergo very marked changes. To the man-in-the-street, the urgency of the scientists’ appeal may not be so apparent, for one is dealing in thousands and tens of thousands of years. From the scientific point of view, however, there is no time to be lost. Most of Switzerland’s lakes are now said to be in their prime. That is to say, they are about 20,000 to 30,000 years old, and just approaching middle age—for lakes have a definite life of between 60.000 to 70,000 years, according to the hydro-biologists. Lakes have many human characteristics. They are born, they live and breathe, they grow old—and then they die. Previously, the Swiss lakes had to combat the maladies brought them by nature. To this must be added today the poison of man-made pollutions. Take, for example, the case of Geneva, which, according to the “lake doctors,” has about another 40.000 years to live if all goes well. Geneva is Switzerland’s largest as well as one of its deepest lakes, but the ever-increas-ing flow of factory waste and drainage from the lakeside towns is poisoning its waters. A lake “breathes” by the oxygen in its waters. Scientists have found that at given periods, though for no apparent reason, the waters on the surface are suddenly drawn down into the depths. This “circulation” of the water keeps the plants and vegetation on the bottom from dying, as well as benefiting the fish. To-day this equilibrium has been upset. Many fish are dying, adding to the impurities in the water. This in turn kills the plants. Filtering Recommended

All this could be stopped, say the scientists, if it were obligatory for all local authorities to filter properly all waste deposited in the lake.

The case of the lake of Bienne, one of the beauty spots in the Swiss Juras, is even more urgent. The scientists give it no more than 6000 years to live. Here, the blame is partly nature’s and partly man’s. A natural change of course of the Aar river deprived the lake of one of its main sources of water, and the man-made Hagneck Canal, which now links lake and river, deposits large quantities of silt brought down from the Bernese Oberland. At the eastern end of the lake, the water is dropping at the rate of about 10 centimetres a year, and the “Island of St. Peter,” opposite the town of Neueville, is no longer an island but a peninsula. The scientists say that this will be the first part of the lake to go dryin about 500 years—but when the tourist comes to Bienne in 7951, the lake will bh gone. Another lake which has attracted the attention of the “lake doctors” is that of Morat, on whose shores the Swiss defeated the powerful Burgundian armies of Charles the Bold in 1476. In 1825. the lake of Morat suddenly began to take on a reddish tinge, which the local inhabitants said was the blood of the Burgundians coming to the surface. But the scientists had other ideas, and analysis of the water revealed the unexplained presence of a particular type of lake fungus, which was changing the colour of the water. To-day, apparently, there is still no adequate answer to the presence of this fungus. Since it first appeared, the scientists say, the waters of the lake have undergone many chemical and biological changes and appears to be “ill.” The “lake doctors” declare that Morat has an "infectious disease” which may have come from or, worse still, will probably creep slowly to, other lakes by means of the underground springs which link many of them. The time has come for action, say the hvdro-biologists. If Switzerland’s lakes are left unattended and without proper care, they will really sicken and die. Something must be done—and done soon.