{"id":177465,"date":"2026-04-27T18:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177465\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T18:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T18:42:17","slug":"in-northwest-ohio-new-tanks-are-filtering-phosphorus-from-farm-runoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/177465\/","title":{"rendered":"In northwest Ohio, new tanks are filtering phosphorus from farm runoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

As rainy spring weather washes phosphorus off farmfields, a series of new filters<\/a> in northwest Ohio\u2019s Defiance County are working to catch the nutrient \u2014 before it gets into the streams and waterways that feed Lake Erie.<\/p>\n

The project is part of a broader effort to prevent harmful algal blooms there.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

An algal bloom in the western basin of Lake Erie as seen in a satellite image in September 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can just get to, say, 20% of the high phosphorus fields, that will be a big success and will have a big impact on removing the phosphorus that gets into Lake Erie,\u201d said Matt Fisher, vice president of the Lake Erie Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit has installed five filters in the past couple of months and is monitoring their effectiveness.<\/p>\n

How do the filters work?<\/p>\n

The phosphorus filters work like giant sieves, Fisher said.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re about 20 by 30 feet wide and around 12 feet deep, depending on the size of the area they serve.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Matt Fisher and the Lake Erie Foundation<\/p>\n

A worker helps install a phosphorus filter in northwest Ohio’s Defiance County. A small fraction of farm fields in the region are disproportionately responsible for a lot of phosphorus pollution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fields drain into those filters on one side, flow through a series of pipes and media, and exit with what has turned out so far to be very clean water,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n

About a month in, he says the filters are removing nearly all of the dissolved reactive phosphorus from the farm runoff they\u2019re collecting.<\/p>\n

What makes the filters a useful tool?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been a big push in recent years to teach farmers about nutrient application and employ practices like cover crops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those are helpful strategies, Fisher says, but these new phosphorus filters are useful for capturing phosphorus in \u201clegacy fields\u201d where the nutrient has been accumulating over many decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 9% of the fields are responsible for 35%-plus of what runs off into the Maumee,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cSo we want to find as many of those 9% as we can, and try to work with leaders of the agriculture community to put filters in those places to try to catch as much dissolved reactive phosphorus as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n

The filters are expensive: Fisher says each one costs about $10,000.<\/p>\n

But because they should last for about a decade and cover large areas, Fisher finds the solution encouraging.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s hopeful more will be added across the region, and that they\u2019ll work to help keep Lake Erie clean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As rainy spring weather washes phosphorus off farmfields, a series of new filters in northwest Ohio\u2019s Defiance County…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[136,138,137],"class_list":["post-177465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}