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7th week of E. coli testing at Lake Newport again yields mixed results
YOUNGSTOWN
Results from this week’s E. coli testing at Lake Newport and Mill Creek are in line with results from recent weeks and again show drastically different bacteria counts depending on the sampling location, according to results released Thursday by the Mahoning County District Board of Health.
Samples drawn near the Lake Newport boathouse on West Newport Drive showed E. coli counts of 3, 2 and 7 colony forming units, respectively, per 100 milliliters of water, which are very low.
Samples collected near the Lake Newport boat launch showed counts of 12, 11 and 16, which also are low.
Samples collected near a footbridge over Mill Creek just north of Shields Road, however, all showed counts above 2,420. A count of 576 is the threshold the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency considers a potential public health risk.
Those results are similar to those from other rounds of the 12-week program, which the county health board initiated after earlier testing found elevated levels of E. coli in the lake. Testing was done in response to a massive fish kill in Lake Newport at the end of June.
The finding prompted Mill Creek MetroParks staff in July to close Lake Newport and all other park waterways to the public.
This week’s results are nearly identical to results from the previous two weeks.
Throughout the testing program, samples collected near the footbridge consistently have been higher than samples collected from the other two sites. Health board officials have indicated the finding likely is due to the fact the location is in shallow water that receives little sunlight.
Health officials have cautioned against drawing conclusions until the testing program is complete.
“The testing of Lake Newport is in its seventh week of sampling with five more weeks to continue. The data will be examined for any correlations as more information is collected over the entire 12 weeks,” Ryan Tekac, environmental health director for the county health board, said in a news release.