CLEVELAND \u2014 Mike Ferner lives off Lake Erie in Toledo, and he can count on a harmful algae bloom to appear every summer.<\/p>\n
He still remembers in 2014 when Toledo\u2019s municipal water supply became overrun with blue-green algae and made the drinking water unusable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was one thing for restaurants to have to use paper plates, but hospitals had to have emergency water on hand, or they wouldn\u2019t have anything. It was terrible, terrible,\u201d Ferner recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To understand the problem, it helps to know what causes algae blooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarmful algae blooms are composed of blue-green algae or, more accurately, cyanobacteria,\u201d explained Dr. Jeff Rueter.<\/p>\n
Reutter is the former director of the Ohio Sea Grant, a program that studies Lake Erie. He worked as the director from 1987 to 2015 and spent 47 years working at the Stone Lab in the western basin of Lake Erie.<\/p>\n
He says these blooms can release toxins that are damaging to wildlife and cause \u2018dead zones\u2019 in Lake Erie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery summer, the cold bottom layer loses all its oxygen and becomes anoxic, and things that need oxygen, like fish, can\u2019t live there,\u201d Reutter explained.<\/p>\n
He remembers being part of the team of scientists that fought the blooms back in the 1960s and 1970s<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already knew that phosphorous was the limiting nutrient, or the nutrient in Lake Erie that could control algae blooms, and we had very bad algae blooms in the 1970s, 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phosphorus fuels the algae blooms. At that time, sewage treatment plants were the primary source of phosphorous entering the lake, so Reutter said they made a goal to reduce phosphorous entering the lake by 60%.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Clean Water Act allowed us to regulate point sources, and sewage is considered a point source. So we can put in regulations that reduce the load by more that 60%.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said they hit their reduction goal in 1981.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lake responded and became the walleye capital of the world,\u201d the doctor said.<\/p>\n
But the blooms didn\u2019t stay away for long, with the phosphorus again causing blooms in the late 90s and early 2000s. This time the source was agricultural runoff.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAgricultural runoff is considered a non-point source load. You can\u2019t go to a particular pipe and see it coming out, you know, and say that\u2019s the point of inflow. And the Clean Water Act doesn\u2019t allow us to regulate non-point sources,\u201d said Reutter.<\/p>\n
The runoff is mainly manure, which is rich in phosphorus. Manure is spread on the fields and runs off into nearby waterways, ending up in Lake Erie. Reutter said action to curb this runoff has so far been ineffective.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to reduce it with voluntary programs, education and with some incentives, but only carrots, no sticks,\u201d Reutter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Reutter says without stricter regulations, harmful algae blooms are here to stay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2014 Mike Ferner lives off Lake Erie in Toledo, and he can count on a harmful algae…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[292,76,54541,54539,136,138,137,139,293,54540,295],"class_list":["post-214100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-app-top-stories","tag-cleveland","tag-corey-oleary","tag-ctv","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-news","tag-ohio","tag-ohio-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214100","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=214100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}