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Two anglers enjoy a late summer day at Onondaga Lake Park last September. A new report says most of the lake is clean enough for swimming.

(David Lassman | dlassman @syracuse.com)

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Onondaga Lake is clean enough to swim in, says a team of researchers commissioned by Onondaga County.

A new report by the Upstate Freshwater Institute says Onondaga Lake, once among the most polluted lakes in America, is clean enough to open for a public beach.

"Water quality conditions in the northern two-thirds of the lake are now suitable for swimming," said the report, issued today by Onondaga County's Department of Water Environmental Protection.

The report said the lake now meets two critical standards for swimming: low bacteria counts and high water clarity. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said the same thing in a separate report last October.

"Public bathing and other recreation use are fully supported," the DEC said, "although currently there are no designated public beaches on the lake."

The DEC said test results from 2002 to 2012 show that coliform bacteria -- the kind that come from the guts of animals, including humans -- are low enough to support swimming.

DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens said last July he would swim in the lake.

Swimming has been banned on the lake since 1940 because of industrial pollution and sewage. With hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Onondaga County's water treatment plant over the past two decades, the amount of sewage spilling into the lake has dropped dramatically. Algal blooms, which decrease the clarity of the water, have all but disappeared in the past decade.

Swimming is still banned from shore because there is no public beach on the lake. To open a beach, a public entity such as the county or a town would have to receive approval from the state health department.

Martens predicted last summer that the state would receive applications for swimming after Honeywell finished dredging the lake bottom. That happened in November.

The county's long-term development plan calls for a beach at Onondaga Lake, but there are no immediate plans to apply for a permit, said Marty Skahen, spokesman for Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney.

The county's five-year capital improvement plan says this about a possible beach: "As Onondaga Lake continues to recover from its industrial past, Willow Bay is viewed as a potential area for a public swimming beach. These improvements will help to advance that long-term objective by ensuring that the trails, pavilions and parking facilities are up to modern standards for a public bathing beach."

The southern end of the lake is still too polluted for swimming, both the DEC and Upstate Freshwater Institute reports say. Bacteria counts are too high because of flow from the treatment plant and Onondaga Creek.

Fishing is still restricted in the entire lake because of high levels of mercury and PCBs in some fish, particularly long-living predator species such as walleye.

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