Michigan and Ohio Take Action To Battle Algae Blooms

Michigan has set up new water quality monitors in five sub-watersheds in the southeast corner of the state that either feed directly into Lake Erie or one of its tributaries. In Ohio, another group is seeking to become a defendant in a landmark Lake Erie algae case before the courts.

The Michigan move is aimed at stepping up efforts to document and analyze flows of bloom-inducing phosphorus, the No. 1 problem being fed into western Lake Erie. Michigan shares the big lake with Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Canada.

Three of four watersheds — Stony Creek, the Saline River and Nile Ditch — flow toward the River Raisin, which pours into Lake Erie south of Detroit. The Lime Creek watershed takes farm runoff south across the border into Ohio and its Maumee River basin, which begins in Indiana and flows across northwest Ohio before emptying into Erie at Toledo.

“We can’t applaud these new efforts enough,” says Nicki Polan, executive director of the Michigan Boating Industries Association. “Western Lake Erie is a major cruising and fishing area for our boaters, and seeing a reduction in the annual algae blooms that plague these waters each summer is a priority for all our impacted member dealers and their customers.”

The Maumee River at Toledo is known to be the primary contributor to an annual algal bloom from excessive phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the warm lake waters, creating a green scum that’s unsightly and potentially toxic. It’s dubbed “slime time.”

Michigan and Ohio are committed to a 40% reduction in total phosphorus inputs into Lake Erie by 2025. But it’s not going happen. They are on record as not expecting to come close to the goal.

“Voluntary efforts to have farmers curtail nutrient runoff from their fields have not been successful in either state in addressing the algal bloom problem,” says Tom Zimnicki, agriculture and restoration policy director with the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “Clearly, a more holistic approach is needed. It’s hard to see a path forward with purely voluntary approaches.

“This new increased monitoring of upstream waters in southeastern Michigan should help provide more data that can be used to forge a more effective way to deal with the nutrient runoff,” Zimnicki adds.

Meanwhile in Ohio, the battle against algae blooms is gaining more players, though not necessarily with the same objectives. A newly formed nonprofit association of local governments and industries is the latest group seeking addition as a defendant in a landmark Lake Erie TMDL (total maximum daily limit) case now before senior U.S. District Judge James Carr in Toledo.

According to outdoor journalist Tom Henry at the Toledo Blade, the group is called Maumee Coalition II Association, and is being represented by Frost Brown Todd, a national law firm with roots in Cincinnati. The firm claims in its motion before Judge Carr that the coalition represents local governments and industries holding wastewater discharge permits issued by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

Their motion to be added as a defendant comes on the heels of similar requests filed last month by a coalition of 11 state and national agricultural groups and the Ohio EPA. The agricultural coalition, known as Agricultural Associations, consists of the Ohio Pork Council, the Ohio Dairy Producers Association, the Ohio Cattlemen’s Association, the Ohio Poultry Association, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, the Ohio Soybean Association, the Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Corn Growers Association, and United Egg Producers.

Agricultural Associations claims it has an obvious interest in the case because their members raise livestock or grow crops within the Maumee Watershed and thus have a significant interest in any new limits and restrictions on the amount of phosphorus that may enter the Maumee River and, ultimately, the Western Lake Erie Basin. They also claim they are hoping to intervene on behalf of “their citizens, employees and customers” who would have to pay for potentially more stringent phosphorus limits imposed in a modification of any existing or future permits.

So the hope that burns eternal for dealers and customers of seeing diminished blooms in Lake Erie and other waterways continues to be a battle royal. “We will never be daunted in our quest to enjoy clean waters in Lake Erie and everywhere else,” says Michelle Burke, president of the Ohio Marine Trades Association, which like MBIA has been steadfast in its call for appropriate regulatory actions.