Lake Advocate’s Strategic Partners are on board to help us accomplish our mission.  Our Strategic Partners have agreed to assist or be assisted by Lake Advocates to accomplishour mutual missions for scientifically based lake restoration, management and protection.

Lake Advocate’s Strategic Partners, listed here, have endorsed and supported Lake Advocates’ mission and vision as being consistent with and mutually supportive of their mission.  Lake Advocates endorses and supports our Strategic Partners’ mission and seeks opportunities to work in partnership.

Lake Advocates’ Strategic Partners

 

HAB Aquatic Solutions (Website)

HAB Aquatic Solutions specializes exclusively on improving surface water quality using

aluminum-based products (e.g., alum and sodium aluminate). Our research and development efforts improved upon traditional alum application approaches by developing strategies to address the unique challenges of today’s water resource management projects. HAB’s cofounders (Dr. John Holz and Tadd Barrow) are two of only a handful of scientists qualified to provide complete alum treatment services: from dose calculation, to application, to project evaluation. Our fleet of vessels of various sizes is tailored to meet the application needs of small ponds to large lakes and reservoirs.

With over 65 completed lake applications, 8.3 million gallons of alum and sodium aluminate applied and 40+ years of combined experience, our application expertise and experience is unmatched.  We provide the most comprehensive alum services available, including:

• Pre-project water quality monitoring
• Lake sediment core collection and analysis
• Alum dose determination
• Project coordination
• Precise, GPS-guided alum application
• Alum injection systems for the treatment of storm water/stream water
• Post-project water quality monitoring and evaluation
• Lake management outreach and education

 

PhycoTech, Inc. (Website)

PhycoTech is the only commercial lab in North America to utilize a unique proprietarypermanent mounting technique for archiving and

preparing water samples for enumeration. PhycoTech normally processes between 2000-3000 samples per year.  We have processed several state wide surveys all over the Mid-West, Massachusetts and Florida.  PhycoTech also consults with Federal and State Agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency; The United States Geological Survey, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Corps of Engineers on experimental design and QA/QC issues.  We process samples for general water quality, as well as for exotic, toxic and taste/odor producing algae.  Between 2003 and 2017 PhycoTech has analyzed over 1400 samples from the Great Lakes.

PhycoTech is now utilizing its proprietary, custom written data management software, ASA (Aquatic Sample Analysis system). This unique, powerful program tracks samples from receipt to data delivery within the same software program, providing a myriad of diversity and water quality indices (including all of the indices contained within the Rapid Bio assessment Protocol, EPA).  With ASA, we are able to provide the most complete data available commercially.

We have a strong commitment to educational outreach and maintain three educational saltwater reef tanks at Upton Middle School, Brown Elementary School and Saint Joseph High School.  We are also partnering with Upton Middle School sixth grade teachers on the UpStream project, a hands-on stream ecology program with in-class and field modules and a 7^th-8^th grade after-school club, Science Olympiad and Salmon in the Classroom.

PhychoTech’s principal, Ann St. Amand, holds a B.S. in Ecology, Evolutionary and Population Biology from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Aquatic Ecology from the University of  Notre Dame.  She has two years of post-doctoral experience at the University of Notre Dame in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences working on groundwater-surface water interactions in local industrial applications and in remote Montana alpine lakes.  She also served as co-Principal Investigator on an artificial stream project investigating interactions of PCB contamination with periphyton including effects on diversity, energy flow and food web effects.  She has over 30 years of experience identifying and enumerating over 42,000 algal samples from all over North America, using a unique proprietary mounting method.  Her company has completed programming on an extensive data management system containing information on nearly 34,000 different aquatic organisms, and they are bringing a new instrument online in June 2017 which will allow real-time algal analysis for water quality indicators and toxic algae.  She has been involved as an expert witness in Forensic and Ecological Impact investigations and also serves on two committees relating to public health issues surrounding toxic blue-green algae at the state level.  She has been the President and owner of PhycoTech, Inc since 1990.  She is an active reviewer and Associate Editor for the Journal of Lake and Reservoir. She has also received several business and technical awards. She belongs to numerous professional societies emphasizing algal ecology, taxonomy and lake management. She is Part Coordinator for Part 10000 and the Joint Task Group Chair for the Plankton Section, Biological Examination of Standard Methods for the Examination of Water and Wastewater.