Toledo’s status as a riverfront and lakefront community should be a powerful magnet pulling people to the city.
Instead the river carries runoff from manure generated from 73 large livestock feeding facilities into the lake and algal blooms have proliferated since 1995.
It is a triumph of politics over economics to allow physical and financial health of a large city and Ohio’s most precious natural resource to be threatened by concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
It took the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center along with the Lucas County Commissioners to force a plan to combat the algal blooms from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. The U.S. EPA ordered Ohio to produce a total maximum daily load-TMDL pollution diet to settle the lawsuit alleging the federal government violated the Clean Water Act by letting the Ohio EPA operate without a plan to protect the Maumee River and Lake Erie.
The state rolled out H2Ohio, a voluntary program to help farmers curb pollution, but the TMDL Ohio is preparing for submission to the U.S. EPA must have mandatory requirements sufficient to finally solve the annual algal bloom problem. That’s why Blade reporter Tom Henry’s story, “Expert says Ohio’s Lake Erie protection plan doomed to fail,” Mar. 12, is so upsetting.
A Lake Erie expert Ohio long relied upon, Jeff Reutter, told the state EPA, “this TDML is doomed to failure, and we should not even waste money to do it.” Even more disturbing, Mr. Reutter, the retired director of the Ohio State University Stone Laboratory, called a portion of the Ohio EPA plan “deceiving and disingenuous.”
The Ohio EPA says their long-awaited TMDL is based on the best available science but has not been finalized and will take into account all of the input over 18 months before releasing the document.
Given that Lake Erie is the source of drinking water for Greater Toledo, it needs to be stipulated that all input is not equal. Protecting the health of Lake Erie and thereby the health of the people who rely upon the water must be the priority that drives all decisions on the TMDL.
Lucas County Commissioner Tina Skeldon Wozniak is right to observe “We shouldn’t be fooled into settling for half measures and voluntary practices any longer.”
Commissioners are right to hold the U.S. EPA to standards that will protect our drinking water. It took a federal lawsuit to force the federal EPA to hold Ohio accountable for water quality, and if necessary, the commissioners shouldn’t hesitate to go back to court to make the EPA follow the 51-year old Clean Water Act supposed to protect us from dangerous drinking water.
First Published March 19, 2023, 4:00 a.m.