‘We are not seeing any changes’ at Grand Lake
Millions of dollars poured into fixing problem; critics assert poor manure practices have fueled algae outbreaks.
— Five years ST. MARYS, OHIO after a massive algae bloom at Grand Lake St. Marys made swimmers sick and killed three dogs, toxin levels in the massive lake are so high it’s not easy to see what has been accomplished by the millions in taxpayer dollars that have been poured into fixing the problems.
“It’s going to take many, many years before we start to see decreases in what’s getting into the lake ... probably decades is what I’m thinking,” said research scientist Laura Johnson, who works for Heidelberg University’s National Center forWater Quality Research.
Since 2008 Heidelberg has
taken water samples daily from major Grand Lake tributaries — measurements that raise alarm bells about toxin levels in the shallow landmark in Mercer and Auglaize counties.
“Phosphorus and nitrogen levels have been consistently high the whole time we’ve been measuring,” Johnson said. “We are not seeing any changes.”
Critics say the continued problems at Grand Lake St. Marys, Lake Erie and other Ohio lakes reflect years of neglect and a reluctance to confront an obvious culprit: the farmers and their practice of spreading manure on fields — sometimes during winter months when it can easily run off frozen dirt. There are other sources that pollute water, including sewage overflows in cities and failing septic tanks, but some say Ohio’s waters will never recover unless a serious attempt is made to limit the waste allowed near distressed watersheds.
“The distressed watershed does not have any kind of accountability and source reduction targets required under the Clean Water Act,” said Sandy Bihn, executive director of Lake ErieWaterkeeper. “Instead, in both the Grand Lake St. Marys and western Lake Erie watersheds, millions of dollars go to best management practices with no accountability and no plan for reductions.
“Not only do we have an existing problem, but that problem is growing because Ohio is so lax on their rules on how manure has to be managed.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL, report for the Grand Lake watershed in 2007. Such reports identify and evaluate water quality problems in impaired waters and propose solutions.
“The TMDL, in a way, is a plan,” EPA spokesperson Dina Pierce said. “We do a study to identify sources of impairment and then work with the local community with ways to address them.”
The Ohio EPA monitors conditions in the watershed and is scheduled to conduct a new study in 2018.
Joe Cornely, spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau, said a major shift has occurred in “awareness by farmers” since the highly publicized problems with Ohio’s lakes. But he is frustrated most of the finger-pointing is aimed in one place.
“Farmers are feeling beat up,” Cornely said. “There is that narrative that says ‘this is a farm problem.’ The farmers Nochange Reduced application rate Hauled manure tomore distant fields More effort to incorporate manure (into soil) Two ormore of the above aren’t saying they can’t fix this. They’re saying they can’t fix this alone. There are other contributors to the issue.”
Learning curve
The dangerously high microcystin readings that have resulted in health advisories at Grand Lake St. Marys are disheartening to those who use the lake or depend on it for their livelihood. But there may be at least one positive effect: Farmers are no longer denying responsibility.
That was evident last week when a record 200plus farmers attended an annual symposium at Union City, Ohio, not far from Grand Lake St. Marys.
In response to the question, “Is farm phosphorus loss a significant problem to Ohio’s waters?” 84 percent of respondents replied “yes.”
“The words ‘dissolved reactive phosphorus’ four or five years ago, I don’t think one-half of 1 percent of us had ever heard that, including myself,” said Ohio State University Extension field specialist Glen Arnold, one of the speakers. “Now that the research is starting to come out, I think farmers will be very quick to embrace change.”
Heidelberg’s Johnson said there is no denying where the problem originates: runoff from farms in the Grand Lake St. Marys watershed.
Manure and phosphorus wash into the lake — especially during heavy rains — and feed the algae, some of which can produce toxins.
“The soil has just been hammered year after year,” said Kevin King of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
All agree on something else: There is no quick fix.
“We’ve spent a century getting to this point,” said Kevin Mescher, an agricultural engineer who works for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and also raises livestock in the watershed. “It’s going to take time to start to turn that boat around. Exactly how we’re going to fix the lake is yet to be determined.”
Another illness
The most recent tests for the toxin microcystin revealed a level of 103.6 parts per billion at Main Beach East, which is near a marina and the entrance to a state park.
A recreational public health advisory kicks in when levels reach 6 ppb. Levels of the toxin, which can affect the liver, haven’t been at safe levels since early April.
In early June, a woman who was boating and swimming became ill.
“She had symptoms that are common with coming into contact with an algae bloom — rash, vomiting, weakness, dizziness,” said Melanie Amato, spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Health.
That illness led the Department of Health to instruct ODNR to post new signs warning that swimming and wading “are not recommended.”
In 2007, a National Lakes Assessment found Grand Lake St. Marys had the third-highest level of microcystins in the country. Results of the study were made public in 2009.
Heidelberg began monitoring Chickasaw Creek south of the lake in 2008 and Johnson said at the time that “our lab staff had to add a new, higher standard because it was higher than anything else we were measuring.”
New rules
Senate Bill 1 went into effect this summer and regulates manure/fertilizer applications in the watershed of the western basin of Lake Erie. It won’t affect Grand Lake St. Marys because strict rules addressing manure already were put in place after it was declared a distressed watershed in 2011.
Among the restrictions: No manure can be applied from Dec. 15 to March 1 unless special permission is granted by the state.
Mescher, who has worked for ODNR since 2000, helps implement watershed distress rules and has played a role in developing more than 150 nutrient management plans.
Every livestock or agricultural producer that generates or uses at least 350,000 tons of manure or 100,000 gallons of liquid manure a year has to have a plan, which is to be updated every three years. One positive step Mescher has seen is farmers taking manure out of the watershed.
“We’ve got hog producers hauling their manure 14, 15 miles one way, taking it completely out of the watershed,” Mescher said. “When I started down this road in 2010, I never thought that would happen. I have been startled by the cooperation we’ve gotten from the landowners and the livestock and agricultural producers.”
The sheer amount of waste is breathtaking in scope.
Ohio State’s Arnold estimated the state has 270,000 dairy cows. Ohio also produces millions of pigs each year and is close to overtaking Iowa as the country’s top egg-layer. According to the Ohio EPA, the Grand Lake watershed alone has 295,400 “animal units.”
All told, Ohio produces more than 2 billion gallons of dairy manure/ wastewater each year and close to a billion gallons of liquid swine manure, Arnold said.
At the manure symposium last week Mescher, who grewup inMaria Stein, showed farmers photos of winter manure runoff, including brown liquid pouring out of a drain tile outlet at a farm field.
He acknowledged that the toxic algae blooms have led to “changing public expectations.”
“The huge majority of farmers get this,” said Dwight Cherry, who made the drive to Union City on Wednesday from his farm nearWillard.
“It’s a big concern for us, to do everything we can to get it right.”
Saturated watershed
Undoing the damage done to the lake from a century or more of agricultural practices will take money, science and patience, according to Milt Miller, manager of the Grand Lake St. Marys Restoration Commission.
“What we didn’t know back then is if your crops didn’t uptake those nutrients 100 percent, they accumulated year over year,” he said. “So in time we had a very saturated watershed.”
Miller and a group of “passionate volunteers” raised more than $600,000. “With that we bought science,” he said.
Miller said three recommendations that were enacted could help turn around the lake: aeration to add dissolved oxygen, dredging to remove phosphorus-laden silt, and the construction of “treatment trains,” a series of man-made pools that mimic the ability of natural wetlands to cleanse water of nutrients.
Before residential development and before farmers began draining low-lying land with tile lines, the 13,500-acre lake had about 3,000 acres of natural wetlands beyond its southern shore, Miller said.
“They’re all gone, so basically we’re reintroducing constructed wetlands to intercept that water and take out the phosphorus — or at least bring it down,” he said. “That gives our farming community time to improve their stewardship using management practices.”
A pilot “treatment train” on Prairie Creek is a proven success, Miller said. Samples taken throughout 2011 showed that by the time the creek’s water moves through a series of five deep pools with flats of biofiltering vegetation, nutrients dropped across the board and its clarity improved, he said.
Water entering the lake after passing through the treatment train had 77 percent less phosphorus attached to the soil, 36 percent less dissolved reactive phosphorus, and 41 percent less nitrogen.
“We call them ‘body blockers’ between the watershed and the lake,” Miller said.
Construction will begin this fall on two more treatment trains — one along Coldwater Creek and another on Beaver Creek.
Long-term plans call for installing the filtering system on each of the lake’s seven southern tributaries.
Farmers helping
Darke County turkey farmer Darren Rismiller knows runoff from his fields doesn’t affect just Grand Lake St. Marys. It flows down the Stillwater River, joins the Great Miami River in Dayton, flushes into the Ohio and then it’s on to the Mississippi River and, ultimately, the Gulf of Mexico.
Rismiller, who says he doesn’t spread his poultry litter in the Grand Lake watershed, was one of the farmers investigating new manure technologies on display last week near Union City.
He knelt to the earth to see how well a subsurface applicator injected poultry litter inches into soil — much the way a planter drills seed corn into the ground.
“Whatever’s coming off your farm is going somewhere,” Rismiller explained. “So it’s best to keep it on your farm.”