A tale of two lakes: Erie (U.S.) & Constance (Germany)

Lake Erie (25,667 km² ) made headlines last week because of toxins in the water and its effects on the drinking water supply of Toledo, Ohio.
Erie is deemed too dirty.

Lake Constance, (536 km²), shared between Germany, Switzerland and Austria made headlines last week because of water quality, too.
Constance is deemed too clean.

The difference in size of the two lakes should not bother you too much, because the scale of the problem as "deemed" are commensurate. Erie gets tremendous amounts of run-off from the adjoining states. Constance gets its share.

The view that Lake Erie is too dirty is being described in this New York Times article, The Wikipedia entry at the beginning of the post helps if you don't want the NYT.

The view that Lake Constance is too clean, however, is not shared by most people yet. It is a subject brought up mostly by some of the local farmers and fishermen.
The fishermen argue that yields of fish have dropped as the lake underwent a massive cleanup effort over the past twenty to thirty years. Lake Constance is fed largely from the Alpine mountains to the south, resulting is a body of water with fewer nutrients, much like Lake Tahoe in California.

The fishermen's friends argue that less agricultural run-off and better sewage treatment starve the algae, hence the plankton, and consequently the fish.

Press coverage of the report on the quality of Lake Constance water shows some startling headlines. Many publications went with "Lake Constance too clean for fish", for example the Austrian paper behind this link.

The German FAZ was moderate saying the lake was as clean as 60 years ago.
The too clean for fish headlines have one disquieting common aspect, they all appeared in newspapers which call themselves conservative or moderately conservative.

All of them give a voice to advocates of relaxing the influx of phosphorous and nitrates to promote growth of the main commercial fish stock. Of course, this is plain geo-engineering but you don't find the term in these articles.

Not a single one of the articles mentions fish species that went extinct in the heyday of uncontrolled pollution, none of them mentions that other fish stock recovered under the cleanup regime.

There is some mention of swimmers no longer bumping into dead fish, but that's about it.

A few extra tons of fish would be appreciated by the 150 or so local fishermen, the prospect of getting rid of a few hundred thousand tons of phosphates and nitrates a year under the guise of helping the fishermen.

In the meantime, microplastics and all the unprocessed anti-depressants the treatment plants cannot eliminate continue to go into the lake.

Next time you sit in one of the fancier restaurants along the esplanades of Lake Constance, with a plate of local fish in front of you, why not pause for a second and marvel at the fish on anti-depressants.

As for Lake Erie, get yourself some anti-depressants.