GREAT OUTDOORS: Ohio's livestock manure pollution rules hurting Lake Erie

The Lake Erie Waterkeepers hosted a conference Wednesday at Lakeside where national experts and affected neighbors spoke for the desperate need to stop the degradation of our surface water by factory-scale livestock facilities. State agencies in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan continue to give immunity to thousands of unpermitted operators that discharge untreated poultry, hog and cattle manure into Lake Erie's tributary streams. These factory farms prevent any chances of reaching the 40% reduction in dissolved reactive phosphorous by 2025 pledged over 10 years ago by then-Gov. John Kasich, a figure calculated to be necessary to reduce the size of the annual Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) in the Western Basin of Lake Erie. Cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae, has sickened people using the lake to swim, boat and fish. It has killed pets that drank the scummy green water and creates a massive, low dissolved oxygen "dead zone." The H2Ohio Program enrolls row crop farmers in nutrient management practices, improves wastewater facilities and constructs/restores wetlands. However, the millions of dollars spent on these efforts have failed to reduce HABs because factory livestock farms have proliferated exponentially and pollute unfettered. At the conference, Fish Creek, formerly a stream hosting a wide diversity of aquatic life, notably fish and clams, was singled out as a tragic casualty of factory farms. Some are listed as endangered species, including one clam found nowhere else on Earth. It originates in Indiana before coursing through northwestern Ohio, then empties into the St. Joseph River, which combines with the St. Marys River to form the Maumee River. Through environmental abandonment, this stream is being destroyed by unregulated livestock manure discharges — namely from tens of thousands of beef cattle being raised under the supervision of Brazilian-owned JBS Beef. In addition to fueling toxic algal blooms, E-coli bacterial contamination robs aquatic life of dissolved oxygen when the creek is low and biological activity is elevated from high water temperatures. Despite complaints from neighbors who have reported blatant manure mismanagement violations, the state agencies that should be enforcing already permissive laws continue to allow the abuses. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) apologists say livestock numbers are similar to those of 50 years ago. However, smaller livestock herds were spaced farther apart on family farm pastures and individual streams were not dramatically impacted. Because algal blooms proliferate in high-nutrient concentrations — when thousands of animals are raised in barns as is done by corporate-run factory farms — their liquified manure is repeatedly dumped over the same fields, forming algal blooms in ditches, streams and rivers before reaching Lake Erie. Cathy Martin, who reviews CAFO permit applications in dozens of states nationwide, says that Ohio is at the bottom of the pile when it comes to public-friendly transparency, obfuscating details about planned animal factory construction. Speakers at the conference reported that Seneca Poultry, a 130,000-head chicken operation near Tiffin, was hastily constructed above the ODNR's state-designated scenic Sandusky River (used for Tiffin's drinking water), drilled a well too close to a former landfill through suspected Karst geography, impacted neighbors wells and used an approved permit that was backdated, leading to accusations of political tampering. In Maryland, tough rules for manure management see much of it trucked out of state, away from the now-recovering Chesapeake Bay. Lake Erie will never recover without ending the practice of allowing unrestricted dumping of untreated animal waste into our waters. As one speaker succinctly noted, "Nothing will change if nothing changes." Another conference participant commented, "Maryland's CAFO program makes Ohio look as Neanderthals." Hageman wins writing awards At the recent Outdoor Writers of Ohio annual conference in Cambridge, Great Outdoors columnist John Hageman swept the "Environmental Writing" category for three of his articles published in 2025 in the Weekender. They included: First place for "Avian flu a threat to bald eagles;" second place for "Migrations underway for birds, butterflies;" and third place for "Low dissolved oxygen levels detected in Lake Erie." His column, "Great Outdoors" placed second in the "Best Column" category and he won first place in the "Travel Feature" category for his article entitled, "Put-in-Bay: What to know about this ice fishing destination," published in the 2024-25 issue of the 360 Media Annual Ice Fishing Magazine.