Lake Erie water quality worsening

[Spiel]

Lake Erie water quality worsening

 

 

March 13. 2010

Charles Slat / www.monroenews.com

 

 

LaSALLE — Lake Erie was shrouded in fog Friday, but its future waters might be a muddier brown or an eerier bright green due to persistent pollution and climate change, experts suggest.

 

The lake, especially its shallowest western basin bordering Monroe County and northwest Ohio, is suffering from farm-related and other runoff that threatens to return its health to that of the 1970s when it was written off as dead.

 

"We don’t want to be responsible for writing Lake Erie’s obituary again," said Julie Letterhos of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and member of a state phosphorus task force. The group is studying ways to control phosphorus pollution that in recent years has led to bright green toxic algae blooms in the western basin during July and August.

 

Ms. Letterhos is among about 50 environmentalists, watershed groups, government officials, scientists and others attending a public forum this weekend at the North Cape Yacht Club to discuss the challenges facing Lake Erie’s environment.

 

The forum, coordinated for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by the Ohio Environmental Council, ends at noon today and is part of the bi-national Lake Management Plan (LAMP), a collaborative effort to address the waterway’s pressing problems.

 

"Our priority right now deals with issues of nutrient-loading in the western basin," said Daniel O’Riordan, LaMP project manager with EPA. Phosphorus and sediment primarily from farm operations is believed to the biggest contributor to pollution that has produced the algae blooms that turn the lake’s waters into an eerie green during some summer months and can cause skin irritations and sickness for humans and animals who come into contact with it.

 

Dr. Jeffrey Reutter, director of the Ohio Sea Grant and its Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island near Put-in-Bay, said it’s clear that algae blooms are spreading through the lake from the western basin. Toxins in the "microcystis" algae have been found in concentrations in the lake at 60 times the levels recommended by the World Health Organization, he said.

 

"A year ago I said it was primarily a western basin problem," Dr. Reutter said. "That’s wrong. It’s now moved into the central basin."

 

"There’s nothing that we see happening right now that’s going to prevent this from getting worse in the future," he said.

 

The algae form during the warm months due to a combination of phosphorus and sedimentation from runoff that keeps sunlight from killing the blooms.

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Reutter said, climate change probably will mean warmer weather and more frequent and more violent storms, increasing water temperatures, runoff and sedimentation that will cause algae to continue to flourish.

 

Ms. Letterhos said her task force is suggesting that part of the solution should be priority practices for agriculture that will address the amounts, timing, method of application of fertilizer as well as soil testing and better management of runoff. She said it would take innovative approaches to sell the practices to the ag community.

 

Mr. O’Riordan said about $34 million of the $475 million in Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding is planned for educational and alternative practices for agriculture, including strategies such as conservation or buffer strips on farmland to reduce runoff.

 

Dr. Reutter said the lake’s quality has a big economic impact, including effects on the fishing and tourism industries, the cost of water treatment and property values.

 

He said government policies such as open-lake dumping of dredgings, make matters worse. The Army Corps of Engineers has advocated open lake dumping to dispose of dredged spoils from the Toledo harbor.

 

"We have to make some very significant changes," he said. "There’s no doubt the trajectory Lake Erie is on is not a good one."