This much has become clear on the one-year anniversary of the Toledo water crisis: Perception can be stronger than reality when weighing the risks of western Lake Erie algae.
And — whether or not another crisis occurs — failing to stop the lake’s chief algal toxin, microcystin, from coming back on a yearly basis could devastate Toledo’s attempt to rebrand itself as a forward-thinking, 21st century place to live, work, and play.
Has summertime panic over drinking water become the new norm?
People were wondering that last week as they cleared bottled water off supermarket shelves in preparation for this summer’s bloom, which — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says — is likely to gain strength and become the second largest on record when it peaks in late summer or early fall.
Whether it is smart thinking or panic, people are stockpiling.
NOAA forecasts have caused a ripple effect in bottled-water sales since May, but the real trigger has been a hastily called news conference Monday night by Toledo Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson.
She essentially was trying to put the region on notice that the forming bloom is now starting to produce microcystin.
Never mind that the levels to date have been almost meaningless, far below anything that would overwhelm area water-treatment plant operators.
It was off to the races in search of bottled water again.
Events over the past week rekindled memories of a crisis that began at 2 a.m. on Aug. 2, 2014, when Toledo announced on Facebook that tap water coming out of faucets used by nearly 500,000 metro-area water customers was too poisonous to drink or touch.
After nearly three days, the water was deemed safe again.
But the damage was done.
Toledo was suddenly a hot story for the wrong reasons.
An image problem
Photos of an opaque, pea-green glop of algae, as thick as latex paint, spread like wildfire across the Internet and appeared in thousands of news publications, some as large and well-circulated as the New York Times and National Geographic.
State Sen. Randy Gardner (R., Bowling Green) got an email from a constituent in Africa, asking him if western Lake Erie algae was as bad as was being reported there.
Since then, Toledo has been a poster child for water-quality problems in speeches delivered across the country by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.
It has been mentioned in the same breath as Charleston, W.Va., where a chemical spill into the Elk River fouled water for 300,000 residents in 2014, and Milwaukee, where a 1993 outbreak of the parasite cryptosporidium killed 69 people and sickened more than 400,000.
People are starting to wonder what will happen to Toledo in the long run if it has to sweat it out as it did Aug. 2-4, 2014, when the Ohio National Guard hauled in water for relief efforts and innumerable restaurants and businesses closed until the crisis subsided.
There’s a difference for Toledo’s branding efforts if it has to contend with only the 2014 crisis when promoting itself or if it has to deal with a chronic situation, experts say.
“Clearly, any kind of environmental issue becomes a public-relations problem,” said Mark Luetke, president of the Toledo public relations and marketing firm FLS Group and a media-advertising consultant for Mayor Hicks-Hudson’s campaign.
“It clearly presents an image problem for northwest Ohio,” Mr. Luetke said. “It really is a challenge. We can’t simply expect this will go away over time without some proactive effort to fix the picture.”
Mr. Luetke and others, including Mike Hart, president and chief executive officer of Hart Inc. of Maumee, say the city — despite a few missteps — is generally moving in the right direction by trying to be more forthcoming.
It is important the city builds on that to regain the public’s confidence, they said.
“They want to be proactive and let the community know they’re on top of things,” Mr. Hart said, explaining what the city’s communication strategy should be. “It’s not an easy position.”
Communication experts said city leaders need to keep putting themselves out there as advocates for a solution while also drawing more attention to some of the region’s underrated attributes, such as the regional park system operated by Metroparks of the Toledo Area.
“From a brand perspective, it’s a very complicated scenario,” said Matt Fischer, president and chief creative officer of Curiosity Advertising in Cincinnati. “If this recurs year after year after year, it’s going to be a tough challenge for the city of Toledo to deal with just for reputation.”
He and others compared Toledo’s challenge to that of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities after BP’s historic 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Toledo has “an opportunity to take the mantle and be a voice for the state to clean up the water,” Mr. Fischer said.
“If the city is leading that discussion, that is a good place to be from a public perception,” he said. “Consumers want to know somebody’s taking charge. I don’t think people expect things to be changed overnight, but they expect leaders to have a plan.”
David Meeker, a former adjunct public relations faculty member in Kent State University’s journalism department who specialized in crisis communication and branding, said Toledo might be better off outsourcing communications to a professional firm.
The city did that for its $521 million Toledo Waterways Initiative project, the massive overhaul and expansion of its sewage-treatment system. But that program is more predictable, with scheduled construction projects along the way. It began about a dozen years ago and has a fixed point of time for completion in 2020.
“I think it’s essential to have high-powered expertise outside of the city family, if you will,” said Mr. Meeker, a longtime executive with the Cleveland public relations firm Edward Howard & Co.
He also is a former chairman of the Public Relations Society of America’s environmental section.
“You can drive on bumpy roads, but you can’t drink polluted water. The public has to know mothers won’t have polluted water for their children.”
Need for a fix
This fall, the Environmental Law and Policy Center in Chicago expects to release a study in which consultants will quantify in detail the economic toll on Toledo during the 2014 water crisis.
The advocacy group that specializes in environmental law hopes to show what’s at stake economically if more isn’t done to prevent recurrences.
Howard Learner, the group’s president and executive director, said it’s plausible that Toledo could be facing a chronic problem if more efforts aren’t made for a fix, given how climate change is expected to bring more frequent and intense storms similar to those that have come this summer.
“It is totally unsatisfactory that 500,000 people should be at risk of their drinking water being poisoned each summer in a modern, civilized world,” Mr. Learner said. “No modern city ought to be threatened with its drinking water being poisoned summer after summer after summer.”
Science has identified agriculture as the primary cause.
“We know the solutions and we need to have our political leaders step up and act. This is no longer a choice. This is a necessity,” Mr. Learner said. “We are not insensitive to farmers, but we also have to look at the other side of the equation.”
That other side goes way beyond Toledo’s branding efforts and even those of northwest Ohio.
Larry Fletcher, executive director Lake Erie Shores & Islands, a group that promotes lake tourism in Ottawa and Erie counties, said the Toledo water crisis is really a Lake Erie issue.
And that, he said, makes it an issue for all of Ohio and the Great Lakes region.
Perceptions about Lake Erie will affect the $12.9 billion in annual tourism revenue for Ohio’s eight counties along the Lake Erie shoreline. That’s a third of the state’s tourism revenue, Mr. Fletcher said.
Billions of dollars of additional revenue are at stake in other parts of Lake Erie, including Ontario, and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York, he said.
Many people don’t know the modern era of Lake Erie algae problem actually began 20 years ago, in 1995 and has recurred almost annually since.
It has been anchored in the warmest, shallowest, and most nutrient-enriched area, the western basin between Monroe and Sandusky.
Yet Melinda Huntley, the Ohio Travel Association’s executive director, said she has received many calls over the years from potential visitors in other parts of America who think the whole lake is smothered in algae.
That perception has driven away Ohio business from shoreline areas, such as Ashtabula, where Lake Erie water is likely too cold and too deep for algae to form, Ms. Huntley said.
A long-term solution is important for tourism, but also for “the psyche and economy of the region,” said Mike Shriberg, director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office in Ann Arbor.
“If Toledo becomes associated with dirty water, there are consequences from a psychological perspective, an economic perspective, and — of course — an ecological perspective,” Mr. Shriberg said. “One of the things we’ve seen is the anxiety. Safe drinking water is a human right. It’s a human need. When you’re talking about something that gets down to the roots of our very existence, you’re talking about deep issues.”
Turning a corner?
Adam Rissien, Ohio Environmental Council agricultural and water policy director, said the response to the 2014 Toledo water crisis needs to remain strong and continue to draw parallels to how public officials focused on Lake Erie following the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire.
There were actually several times that river caught fire. At least three others — the Chicago, Buffalo, and Rouge rivers — were so polluted they also caught fire.
But months before the first Earth Day in 1970, America had enough and used the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire as a symbol to galvanize support for Lake Erie.
“I think we’ve definitely turned a corner in that we’re looking at options we never did before. We’re taking incremental steps,” Mr. Rissien said. “We have to see if that’s working or if we have to do something more bold.”
Mr. Rissien was referring to best-management practices for agriculture, including more cover crops, buffer strips, and drainage structures but also the big-picture debate over how much of the improvements should come from voluntary, incentive-driven programs or government regulations.
The agriculture industry has resisted government regulations for decades.
But Senate Bill 1, signed into law this year by Gov. John Kasich — who’s now running for president — bans winter application of manure on farm fields, something scientists have said should have been made into law years ago. Another piece of legislation, House Bill 150, set up a program for fertilizer applicators to undergo special training and become state certified.
The intent of that is to discourage farmers from doing business with those who aren’t certified.
Bill Myers, Lucas County Farm Bureau Federation president, said people need to realize that agriculture is stepping up to help reduce algae. But even under the best-case scenario, it will take years for benefits to be realized, he said.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) on Friday released a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that calls on the federal government to develop a comprehensive strategy for better water quality in the western Lake Erie basin, including more money for cover crops.
“We recognize that reducing the frequency and magnitude of harmful algal blooms is a long-term problem that requires a long-term solution, but that does not reduce the urgency of taking aggressive action in the near-term,” according to the letter, signed by Mr. Brown, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) and U.S. Sen. Joe Donnelly (D., Ind.).
Those senators have worked with area congressmen, including Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), to bring millions of dollars to the western Lake Erie region for better farming practices in response to the water crisis.
While experts agree chronic algae hurts Toledo and the Great Lakes region from a branding standpoint, they also say all is not lost.
The algae problem lingers at a time Toledo is enjoying its largest investment downtown in more than a generation, from the upcoming Hensville project to more restaurants and occupied apartments.
Jeff Schaaf, Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce brand manager, said the 2014 water crisis is not as devastating as many people believe because of high-profile water problems in other parts of the country, such as the deep California drought. There also are problems with Louisiana water, including the recent discovery of a brain-eating amoeba in the St. Bernard Parish water system.
“It’s not an issue that’s unique to us,” Mr. Schaaf said. “We’re dealing with it and we’re moving forward.”
Toledo could emerge from the crisis better off if it can succeed in shutting down Lake Erie algae and using its experience to rebrand the city in a more positive way, Mr. Luetke said.
“The only thing the media and the public likes better than a crisis story is a turnaround story. Toledo could choose to become a turnaround city,” Mr. Luetke said. “Someone once said you should never let a good crisis go to waste. This should be a catalyst for action. When we begin showing the region is innovative and thoughtful is when we’ll start getting positive recognition.”
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published August 2, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
