Save Lake Erie: Set limits on chemical fertilizer

Want to know how bad Ohio’s Lake Erie algae problem is? It’s bad enough that the administration of Gov. John Kasich wants to restrict farmers’ use of phosphorus-based fertilizer, the largest cause of the bright-green growth that appears late each summer.

That’s significant because the agribusiness industry is powerful at the Statehouse and has long kept farm regulation to a minimum. Indeed, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Director Craig Butler hasn’t found a single Republican legislator willing to introduce a bill to define excess chemical fertilizer as an agricultural pollutant and impose limits on how it is applied.

But more regulation is appropriate, even overdue. Years of asking farmers to voluntarily curb their fertilizer use plus billions of dollars spent improving wastewatertreatment plants and regulating manure use have made barely a dent in the problem.

Under the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada, Ohio pledged to reduce the amount of phosphorus going into the lake to 860 metric tons per year. In 2017, we reached that mark by early May and then exceeded it.

Three recent reports highlight the problem:

• In March in a waterquality report required by the federal government each year, Ohio for the first time included the western Lake Erie basin among the waters designated “impaired.”

• A report in early April showed continued high levels of phosphorus contamination in 2017.

• On April 15, a state EPA report looking at the different sources of phosphorus and nitrogen in the Lake Erie watershed found that the vast majority — between 87 and 94 percent, depending on the stream — comes from farms.

Facts like that make clear that excess commercial fertilizer should be treated as a pollutant, no matter how much the agribusiness industry objects. Currently, only manure runoff is classified that way.

By setting that definition and declaring parts of the Lake Erie watershed to be “in distress,” the state could require farmers to have nutrient-management plans. Such plans would be based on soil types of each individual farm and would help farmers know what types to apply where and in what concentration to minimize runoff.

Using less fertilizer more effectively would have a double benefit: reducing algae-causing phosphorus and saving farmers money.

It’s important to acknowledge that Lake Erie’s algae problem can’t be solved solely by changing fertilizer use. Other actions should be considered, such as managing field drain tiles so that they release water from big storms more gradually and restoring some wetlands — nature’s kidneys — that have been almost entirely drained in Ohio.

The Nature Conservancy, which has worked with the state, universities and farmers on voluntary solutions to phosphorus pollution, estimates that reestablishing just 1 percent of Ohio’s original wetlands in the right places could filter out 10 to 20 percent of the current phosphorus runoff.

But for now, trying to better manage what goes on the fields is a good first step.

With their control of the General Assembly, majority Republican lawmakers bear responsibility for acting in the state’s best interest, and in this case that means imposing reasonable limits on farmers to preserve one of Ohio’s greatest natural and commercial assets.

If no Republican will take the short-term political heat to do that, it is an Eriesized failure of leadership.