State senator believes his Lake Erie bill will advance soon

SANDUSKY — State Sen. Randy Gardner, R-Bowling Green, said he's optimistic lawmakers will act soon on his Clean Lake 2020 bill.The bill would spend about $36 million in 2019-2020 to clean up Lake Erie and fight algal blooms.Gardner's bill is supported by a wide array of environmental and farm organizations, although it's been criticized by an activist group based in Toledo.Gardner said on Thursday he's optimistic there will be Senate and House action soon on the measure, Senate Bill 299. State Rep. Steve Arndt, R-Port Clinton, has introduced an identical version of the bill in the House, House Bill 643.The provisions of SB 299 include:• Providing $20 million to the state Agriculture Department for programs to reduce phosphorus runoff in the Western Basin of Lake Erie.• Providing $10 million to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for programs that would help the state end dumping of dredged dirt back into Lake Erie.• Provide an additional $3.5 million to support soil and water conservation districts in the Western Basin of Lake Erie.• Provide $2.65 million of capital funds for Ohio Sea Grant on Gibraltar Island, near Put-in-Bay.Gardner said his bill has been endorsed by groups such as the Ohio Environmental Council, the Nature Conservancy, the Ohio Farm Bureau and the Lake Erie Foundation.Peter Bucher, water resources director for the Ohio Environmental Council, said his organization doesn't see Gardner's bill as a measure that solves all problems. But it provides funding to useful programs and is a good short-term measure, Bucher said.Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie believes Gardner's bill doesn't address pollution caused by Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs, said Mike Ferner, a leader of the group. It also relies too heavily on paying farmers to voluntarily follow better practices, an approach that has produced few results, Ferner said.Ferner said his group believes manure from CAFOs produces at least 50 percent of the excess nutrients that wash into the lake and produce harmful algal blooms. He said the state should impose a moratorium on CAFO licenses for the drainage area of Lake Erie's Western Basin.Laura Johnson, director of the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University, said about 75 percent of the land applications that put nutrients in the Maumee River come from commercial fertilizer, while about 23 percent comes from manure.She said that while CAFO operations are blamed for the harmful algal bloom problem at Grand Lake St. Marys, she hasn't seen evidence yet that manure is driving the problem in the Western Basin."We know that Grand Lake is mostly CAFO-driven, has a lot of problems. We don't want Lake Erie to be like Grand Lake," she said.Ohio has 247 permitted CAFO facilities, with 73 permitted in the Western Basin, although two of the 73 have not been built yet, said Brett Gates, a spokesman for the state Agriculture Department. Statewide, that's up from 171 permitted facilities in 2008. He said there's no 2008 breakdown for CAFOs in the Western Basin.Gardner said his bill is a positive step, or it wouldn't have been endorsed by the Ohio Environmental Council and other environmental groups."Most people take a position on a bill, not because of what's not in a bill, but what a bill actually says," he said.The bill specifically states that some of the money will be used to improve the handling and use of manure, including technology to better work it into the soil and to improve how it is transported, Gardner said.If anyone says the bill doesn't address manure, "they are not reading the bill," Gardner said.Gardner said he understands the position of those who believe there should be more mandates for how farmers apply fertilizer and manure.Two bills to do that have just been introduced into the Ohio Senate.State Sen. Edna Brown, D-Toledo, announced Wednesday she has introduced Senate Bill 303 and Senate Bill 304, both of which deal with nutrients that feed harmful algal blooms.SB 303 requires animal feeding operations to file annual reports on manure applied to their fields and transferred to others, and requires some livestock producers to develop plans to reduce pollution. SB 304 would set application standards for using fertilizer and manure in the Western Basin of Lake Erie.All of the co-sponsors of the two bills so far appear to be Democrats. Democrats are a minority in both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.Bucher said he hasn't had time to analyze the two bills yet, but said passing a bill that isn't bipartisan is a "tall task" in the Ohio General Assembly."Hopefully, at the very least, it drives some discussion," he said,Reach reporter Tom Jackson at jackson@sanduskyregister.com and follow him on Twitter @jacksontom.Members of Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie, a Toledo-based group, at a recent demonstration. The group claims Ohio is not doing enough to deal with the pollution of Lake Erie by livestock. State Sen. Randy Gardner, R-Bowling Green, visits the Register's Market Street Studio for an interview on "Between the Lines" on Monday, Oct. 30, 2017. Waves reach their crest and roll toward the beach at Nickel Plate Beach in Huron on Friday, April 13, 2018.