GREAT OUTDOORS: Clean water advocates to mark 10-year anniversary of Toledo water crisis

The Lake Erie Waterkeepers will host elected officials, researchers, agency staff, members of the local press and other invited guests aboard the Jet Express IV ferry boat on August 4. The date marks the 10th anniversary of the 2014 Toledo Water Crisis, when city leaders warned its 400,000 water customers not to drink, nor touch their water after testing determined that toxic cyanobacteria was inadequately removed during treatment. At 3 p.m. next Sunday, the Jet Express IV will depart from the Toledo Yacht Club en route to the Toledo Water Intake, the source of the city's raw water. The group is inviting boaters to join them while monitoring marine channel 68 as they lead a boat parade in a show of support for solving the HAB problem. Once there, they plan to take a water sample to document the presence of the current Harmful Algal Bloom, which will illustrate the lack of progress toward fixing the problem. At approximately 3:45, they will invite participants to simultaneously sound their horns as a show of support for accelerating clean-up efforts. After 10 years and millions of dollars spent, the Lake Erie Waterkeepers are questioning boaters, fishermen and Lake Erie lovers if they are tired yet of wondering whether there will be another harmful algal bloom this summer and where will it be located on any given day. They also ask whether dogs can swim in the lake or drink its water and question the idea of fishing or swimming in green water and whether people can become ill just from breathing air exposed to an HAB. According to figures provided on the H2Ohio Program web site, millions of dollars have been paid to 2,600 farmers for using Voluntary Nutrient Management Plans on 1.8 million acres of farmland; 170 wetlands have been completed or are in-progress; and 65 wastewater treatment and septic system improvements and $3.9 million has been invested in nine critical water and sewer projects. Yet, despite the time, efforts and money invested, annual water quality monitoring shows no reduction in Western Basin HABs. According to several experts who spoke at a recent Lake Erie Waterkeeper conference, the unchecked expansion of factory livestock operations in the Maumee River watershed is largely responsible. Most of the individual animal factories that cumulatively raise hundreds of thousands of dairy cows and beef cattle, and millions of hogs and poultry fall just short of the legal animal count thresholds that require a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations permit from the Ohio Department of Agriculture and manure record-keeping and other formal water quality rules. Instead, millions of tons of untreated animal sewage are annually being washed into western Lake Erie through surface water and field drainage tiles into open ditches and streams leading into the Maumee River and Lake Erie. Downstream communities unfairly bear the additional costs of treating contaminated surface water to make it safe for domestic drinking use. In a less widely publicized but just as serious of a situation, Carroll Township had its own water emergency on September 5, 2013, when raw source water samples showed levels of microcystin levels reaching 12.76 parts per billion (ppb). After treatment, the finished water was still at 3.56 ppb, more than 3.5 times higher than is considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO). Township officials quickly notified residents not to drink their water, gave away pallets of bottled water and switched to Ottawa County's treated water. Over the rest of the month, raw water samples ranged from 4.24 to greater than 50 ppb. Coincidentally, the Toledo water crisis was responsible for my association with the Sandusky Register. When passing through the Arby's drive-thru lane in Huron on my way home from a Conneaut perch fishing trip, I bought a copy of the newspaper splashed with the headline about the Toledo water crisis. I answered a notice inside the sports pages advertising a search for an outdoor columnist. According to my running list, this is my 505th column to date.