The General Assembly is sending Gov. John Kasich an encouragingly strong bill that will start to clean up toxic pollution in Lake Erie. The measure will not, by itself, remove the threat to public health from the kind of harmful lake algae that poisoned Toledo’s water supply last year. But it will improve the state’s ability to respond to such crises and, more important, to help prevent them.
That’s good news for northwest Ohio, where 500,000 people lost their usual source of drinking water for nearly three days last August because of a toxin generated by an algae bloom near Toledo’s water intake. But the legislation is also important to everyone in Ohio who relies on Lake Erie for the fishing and tourism industries and jobs it supports, for the farming and manufacturing it sustains, and for the wildlife habitat it provides.
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Experts estimate that two-thirds of the algae pollution in the western Lake Erie basin is caused by runoff of manure and chemical fertilizers from farms into the lake’s tributaries. The phosphorus-laden runoff promotes algae growth. The new bill generally prohibits farmers in the basin from spreading manure and commercial fertilizer on ground that is frozen, snow-covered, or water-saturated, or when heavy rain is forecast.
The penalties for violating the ban include state-imposed fines of as much as $10,000 a day and separate citations for each daily offense. These penalties are tough enough to provide meaningful enforcement, but not so onerous that they will oppress anyone.
Farmers who are cited for violating the ban will get as long as two years to carry out a good-faith compliance plan. That’s plenty of time.
The bill closes a loophole in state regulation by requiring certification and training for people who acquire and apply manure from the factory farms known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Much manure from CAFOs is now exempt from regulation once it is sold or transferred.
The new measure also calls on the federal government to work with the state to ban, by 2020, the dumping of most dredged sediment from the Toledo Shipping Channel and other ports and harbors into open waters of Lake Erie. Such material is a big source of algae-feeding phosphorus.
The bill requires wastewater treatment plants, in Toledo and elsewhere along Lake Erie, to monitor and report phosphorus levels each month. It includes new rules for state and local management of, and responses to, harmful algae blooms. It defines an expanded role for the Healthy Lake Erie Fund in curbing pollution of the western basin.
These are all vital provisions, but the new bill almost didn’t happen. Agricultural interest groups prevailed on the state House to weaken the initial version of the bill passed by the Senate. The House measure watered down the penalties against violators of the manure and fertilizer ban so much as to make them effectively meaningless.
As lawmakers in both houses negotiated a compromise, Governor Kasich reportedly conveyed hard truths to Statehouse lobbyists and their House helpers about what he wanted to see in the bill before he would sign it. State Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) also worked to ensure that the final version kept its teeth.
Much more work remains to be done — in Columbus, Washington, and communities along Lake Erie — to defeat the algae menace. Ohio can’t do it alone; officials in all states and Canadian provinces along Lake Erie must work together, with a sense of urgency, to reduce phosphorus levels in the lake by the 40 percent that scientists agree is necessary.
Ohio regulators need to gather more information on sales and application of manure from CAFOs. They also could work more closely with farmers to discourage unnecessary or excessive use of manure and fertilizer.
For now, though, the bill heading to Mr. Kasich’s desk makes real progress on cleansing Lake Erie. The officials who are responsible for that deserve credit.
First Published March 26, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
