Lake Erie’s problems are now Gov. Mike Dewine’s to tackle

Here’s hoping Gov. Mike Dewine quickly follows through on a promise to make the health of Lake Erie his “top environmental priority.” He can do so by directing his administration to come up with a plan for reducing the excessive phosphorus runoff that feeds algae blooms and backing legislation to put the plan into action.

It won’t be easy, because a powerful big-agriculture lobby in Ohio has kept state regulations toothless even as evidence builds that phosphorus from chemical fertilizers and manure, washing off of farm fields and into streams that feed the lake, is largely responsible for the annual assault on Ohio lakes.

Perhaps a lawsuit filed against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by the Environmental Law and Policy Center will spur some action. The Chicago-based organization with chapters around the Midwest is asking the court to rule that the U.S. EPA violated the law by allowing Ohio to shirk its duties under the Clean Water Act.

The suit says that a 2018 report by the Ohio EPA offers no effective plan for reducing phosphorus pollution as required by the federal Clean Water Act. They’re right, for the most part; Ohio lawmakers have been willing to consider only voluntary guidelines for farmers which, if followed, would result in less pollution.

Those haven’t worked, and Ohio has made little progress on a goal of a 40 percent drop in the amount of phosphorus in the western Lake Erie basin by 2025.

The environmental group already won one round in this effort to make the U.S. EPA hold its Ohio counterpart accountable. In 2017, when the Ohio agency in its annual report asserted that the waters of western Lake Erie are not “impaired” and the federal agency accepted that assertion, ELPC sued and a court agreed, ruling that the western basin is “impaired” according to the Clean Water Act.

That triggered the pollution limits that the feds and state are declining to enforce.

Former Gov. John Kasich, coming somewhat belatedly to the issue, tried at the end of his term last year to push through a rule change that would require farmers to be more careful in applying fertilizer and manure in distressed watersheds. For the rule to be of any help to Lake Erie, the Ohio Soil and Water Conservation Commission must declare the watershed to be distressed.

Kasich asked the commission to do so for eight northwestern Ohio watersheds. He even fired his agriculture director at the time for encouraging the commission to sideline the request by assigning it to a task force for further study. The commission is expected to take up the question again soon, and we hope they will make official what already is obvious: The rivers and lakes of northwestern Ohio are under assault by phosphorus.

Whether it comes via Kasich’s rule or the ELPC lawsuit, action to curb the pollution flowing into western Lake Erie is overdue.

The size and severity of algae blooms varies each year according to weather conditions, but they aren’t going away until the excess phosphorus does. Other actions besides fertilizer reduction — such as restoring wetlands and slowing drainage off of fields — should play a role.

But the simplest step — adjusting how much phosphorus is allowed into the equation — should be the first.