The place is New York State; the people are a couple with a dream. Fourteen years ago Jody Price and Griffith Jones bought a little cottage on the shores of Cayuga Lake. They wanted to spend their twilight years here, but they’re about to discover that life has certain … surprises … and that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.
A lake, not unlike any other lake, made of water and sediment. But to Jody and Griffith, this lake holds memories not advertised by the office of tourism. For the first five years the couple summered at their cottage, just steps away from the lake’s clear blue waters, everything seemed ideal.
“We’re one of those lucky people where you can see the water from the door of your cottage,” says Jody Price, a teacher whose husband is an avid fisher.
Then, in 2017, Jody and Griffith noticed their shoreline muddled with a greenish hue. It kept spreading. They weren’t sure of the cause, but they had heard of algae that could make people sick. So, to be safe, they called a friend who’s a local water specialist to investigate. After the friend scooped out clumps of green mush only feet away from their cabin and inspected the sample in the jar, their fears were confirmed: It was a harmful algal bloom, and it changed their life on the lake.
Their story is something out of The Twilight Zone. And it got even more upsetting as time went on. When there is a bloom, the couple doesn’t shower or wash dishes with their tap water because it comes from the lake. Instead, they use paper plates and plastic utensils.
And they’re not alone.
A Toxic Lake
Since harmful algal blooms were first recorded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in Cayuga Lake in 2013, they’ve become more frequent and the season, typically between July and September, has gotten longer. The blooms, caused by cyanobacteria that produce toxins, can be potentially harmful to the environment, people, and animals.
Year after year Cayuga Lake has one of the highest numbers of reported harmful algal blooms in New York, according to the state’s DEC, which tracks outbreaks statewide using data collected from the public, agency staff, and trained volunteer groups. The DEC attributes much of this to the agency’s public outreach and online reporting system, which has helped raise harmful algal bloom awareness.
The algal explosion is mainly fueled by nitrogen and phosphorus-rich agricultural fertilizers that wash off farmlands and into the lake’s tea-warm water, where the nutrients feed cyanobacteria. Septic systems and lawn care runoff are also contributors.
Greg Boyer, professor emeritus at State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, says scientists don’t completely understand the causes and frequency of algal blooms, but they know warmer water is key. And Cayuga Lake is warming, thanks in part to human-caused climate change.
Algal blooms are a natural occurrence that happen in all 50 states and around the world. Despite appearances, many of these blooms can be completely harmless, but there are certain species of algae that can be toxic. Even nontoxic algae can cause oxygen-depleted “dead zones” in bodies of water, killing aquatic life or driving it away.
Last summer portions of Cayuga Lake, usually buzzing with swimmers and kayakers, was filled with clouds of green algae in the water, blooming in record-high quantities. The state warned the water was unsafe. One sign reads: “Harmful algal blooms have been seen in this waterbody. Blooms can make you and your pets sick.”
Cayuga Lake’s Future Collides With Climate Change
Scientists and government officials are working together to figure out what triggers the blooms and their effects on public health and local environments and develop strategies to prevent or stop future outbreaks.
Community Science Institute, a nonprofit organization that monitors water quality across the Finger Lakes region, received a record 284 harmful algal bloom reports (not individual blooms) last summer from Jody and Griffith and other volunteers who conduct weekly shoreline surveys and collect samples to test bloom toxicity levels.
The monitoring program started in 2018 after a surge of blooms in Cayuga Lake and the other 10 lakes in the region the previous year.
These once-rare blooms have now been reported in Cayuga Lake for 13 years. Last year all 34 samples collected by CSI volunteers contained the toxin microcystin. Out of these, 88% exceeded the New York State Department of Health’s safe exposure level to the toxin in both drinking water and recreational exposure.
“We haven’t had every lake bloom like we had in 2017, but now what we’re seeing is some lakes are really bad and they really bloom, and other lakes don’t,” says Boyer, who has spent 40 years studying the phenomenon.
Prior to 2000 New York considered harmful algal blooms to be a nonissue, he says, adding that in 2017 that all changed, when harmful algal blooms occurred in all 11 Finger Lakes.
There are challenges in reporting and sampling the blooms because of their ability to form and disperse quickly. Depending on the bacteria, the blooms can range in color (but in Cayuga Lake they’re usually bright green or blue-green because of the cyanobacteria) and have different textures, making it challenging to tell sometimes where one bloom begins and another ends.
“A lot of us, even myself included, will delineate a bloom by what we can see,” says Alyssa Johnson, monitoring program coordinator with CSI and a lifelong resident of the Finger Lakes. “But that’s only when we’re seeing trillions of cyanobacterial cells at one time. So, if there’s anything less than that we’re not seeing it with our naked eye, but it doesn’t mean it’s not there and they’re not producing a toxin.”
From 2018-2024 CSI volunteers collected as many samples as possible from suspected blooms on Cayuga Lake. But over time the ever-increasing number of bloom reports — and the corresponding increase in samples — became logistically unmanageable, Johnson says.
The data collected each year showed that blooms occurred more often in certain parts of the lake. So instead of continuing to sample the lake more broadly, which yielded few new insights, last year volunteers focused on collecting samples from 14 “priority sites” identified by the county health departments that surround the lake. Johnson says this approach enabled more strategic, efficient, and sustained monitoring of high-risk areas. An additional priority site has been added this year.
Once samples are collected, they’re brought back to CSI’s state-certified lab and tested for microcystin, one of several cyanotoxins produced by the blooms and commonly detected on the lake.
“We’re not going to get every single bloom that’s existing on the lake,” Johnson says. “That’s not realistic, but I would like to collect as much data as humanly possible.”
To do that more effectively, CSI is working with New York State Assemblywoman Anna Kelles and Senator Rachel May, who introduced a bill in 2024 that would create a centralized resource for reporting and dealing with harmful algal blooms. Right now there are various volunteer programs throughout the state, similar to CSI’s, that monitor and report blooms to the state’s environmental regulatory agency.
Cayuga Lake Enters ‘The Twilight Zone’
The idyllic image of Cayuga Lake has been clouded by the blooms. For much of last summer, the lake was an electric-green mess. In a region that heavily relies on the waterways for tourism, some residents admitted that wasn’t good for business.
“Tourism, economics, the environmental impacts, agriculture, all of it is affected and wrapped up in this problem,” Johnson says.
To some the modern horror echoes the writings of one of the region’s most famous residents.
Cayuga Lake was a place where Rod Serling, creator and host of The Twilight Zone TV series, could “escape the mayhem and grind of Los Angeles, a place where he slowed down,” wrote his daughter, Anne Serling, in her memoir As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling.
Rod Serling and his family would return every summer to their cottage on the lake’s west bank. But even after they’d left, his thoughts would return to the lake and he would be there in spirit: His production company was named Cayuga Productions.
“Through the generations, everyone just loves it,” says Anne Serling, whose family still owns and visits the cottage. “There’s a draw that I can’t really articulate, but when we’re not here, we just sort of miss it desperately.”
The cottage was where Rod Serling and his wife honeymooned. It was where Anne Serling, as a child, watched her first Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
“I knew that my dad was a writer, but I didn’t know exactly what he was writing, and then I saw that episode with him and I was absolutely terrified,” says Anne Serling. “Although he didn’t write that one, Richard Matheson did, I sort of looked from my father to the TV and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is what you do.’”
Years later she got married on the cottage porch. Today it’s where his grandchildren and great-grandchildren spend some of their summers.
Jody Price can relate. Her family farmed on Cayuga Lake for generations, and she spent a lot of time there as a kid, where she heard stories about Rod Serling from the adults. Later, when she moved to the new cottage, people on her road said they frequently had coffee with him.
“I’m always sorry I didn’t meet him, because I would have loved to have shared his love for the lake,” she says.
The lake’s present-day fate is as strange a story as any of Serling’s famous show, changed by climate change and pollution.
But Price, whose dream to return to Cayuga Lake came true in 2012 when she and her husband bought their cottage, is going to do what she can to protect this unique waterway.
It might have been their seventh summer back at Cayuga Lake. They were sitting out on the dock one night with friends who lived nearby, talking about the harmful algal blooms that were ravaging the water.
“All of us were pretty depressed,” Jody recalls. “It was one of those perfectly calm, beautiful nights with the sun setting, and [a friend] looked out and she said, ‘Are we looking at a dead lake?’ And I said, ‘I’m gonna fight like hell to keep it from becoming a dead lake.’ I said ‘I’m not gonna dream my whole life to get back here to have it covered in algae blooms.’”
Johnson says community volunteers with CSI and other monitoring programs play a crucial role in helping government scientists track and manage water quality. There’s a lot of water to cover — too much for any single agency — and volunteers help fill in the gaps by collecting the data needed to understand the behavior and impacts of harmful algal blooms.
“We all are just so connected to the lake and to the water,” she says. “I don’t think any of us are going to leave, but it’s going to be pretty heartbreaking I think if things get worse.”
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This story was originally published by The Revelator. Reprinted under a Creative Commons license.
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