Bloomington is tapping the brakes on another round of algaecide treatments at Lake Bloomington, choosing instead to pour time and money into water plant upgrades and tighter monitoring. Residents are still calling in about funky flavors at the faucet, with complaints that the water tastes "moldy" or "like dirt," and city leaders say they would rather chase a long-term solution than keep leaning on quick-hit chemicals in the lakes. Officials continue to stress that the treated drinking water is safe while crews keep a close eye on conditions.
Council Shelves $112,572 Lake Treatment
At its Nov. 10, 2025 meeting, the City Council pulled a $112,572 resolution for an algaecide contract off the agenda, effectively putting any second round of lake dosing on ice, according to WGLT. City Manager Jeff Jurgens told the council that the timing and likely effectiveness of a winter treatment were big reasons for the pause. Evergreen Lake did get treated late in 2025, and for now the city says it will stick with monitoring instead of greenlighting immediate follow-up treatments.
Tests And Treatments Show Low Toxin Levels
Earlier in the year, Bloomington treated parts of Lake Bloomington and Evergreen Lake in March 2025 after testing picked up an uptick in microcystin. City staff told reporters the algaecide was Cutrine Plus, as detailed by CU-CitizenAccess. Scott Joyce, the city's water purification superintendent, told CU the highest microcystin level detected in source water while the city was monitoring was 0.9 parts per billion, and that finished-water tests came back as non-detects. For context, the U.S. EPA's recreational guidance uses 8 micrograms per liter as the microcystin threshold for swimming advisories, and EPA materials explain why consistent sampling matters. That guidance is available from the U.S. EPA.
Statewide Blooms Are Cropping Up
The Illinois EPA's Algal Bloom Dashboard shows dozens of confirmed blooms across Illinois since May 2022 and roughly 80 to 84 affected waterbodies. The agency says it routinely samples about 27 sites as part of its 2026 monitoring program, per the Illinois EPA dashboard and related program pages. Nutrient runoff, low reservoir levels and warmer water are the main culprits managers point to for the recent surge in blooms. The problem even grabbed national headlines this month after crews worked to clear algae from the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, as reported by Reuters.
City Leans Into Treatment Upgrades
Instead of repeatedly dosing the reservoirs, Bloomington has signed off on about $2.55 million in water treatment upgrades, including powdered activated carbon systems and related contracts to attack taste and odor compounds at the plant, WGLT reported. Roughly $1.7 million of that work is covered by a PFAS-related settlement, according to CU-CitizenAccess. City officials say these upgrades are designed to strip out geosmin and MIB, the compounds that make tap water smell and taste earthy, instead of chasing those problems with short-term chemicals in the lakes.
What Residents Should Know
The Illinois EPA and the U.S. EPA both advise steering clear of water that looks discolored, has surface scum or otherwise seems off, and keeping pets out of suspicious water too. The state asks the public to report suspected blooms using its Illinois EPA Bloom Report Form. The EPA's recreational cyanotoxin guidance lays out the microcystin and cylindrospermopsin benchmarks that inform advisories. If you notice sudden taste or odor issues at the tap, city officials want customers to call City of Bloomington Utilities and keep an eye on official updates.
For now, Bloomington plans to keep tracking lake conditions and treatment plant results and will only return to in-lake treatments if readings climb. City leaders say the decision to focus on the plant is a calculated bet that tackling finished-water quality at the source will prove more effective and less expensive over time than serial treatments out on the reservoirs.
