Ohio House Takes Step to Prevent More Toxic Algae Crises on Lake Erie

The Ohio House has approved legislation intended to curb the spread of algae in Lake Erie. The move comes in the aftermath of a toxin that contaminated the drinking water of more than 400,000 people in the Toledo-southeast Michigan area last summer.

The legislation would prohibit farmers in designated parts of northwest Ohio from spreading manure on top of frozen or saturated fields, according to an article in Saturday’s Columbus Dispatch.. In addition, new rules would control the dumping of dredged sediment in the lake.

Scientists have attributed both factors as contributing to toxin-producing algae blooms. However, it remains uncertain how much the proposed changes – providing the bill is passed in the Ohio Senate and gets signed by the governor – would help address the algae threat.

According to the Dispatch article, pressure has been building on state and federal officials to address factors that likely conspired to create the algae crisis last August. During the algae bloom, many residents in the Toledo area and southeast Michigan went without usable tap water for two days.

“We need to start doing something,” state Rep. Mike Sheehy, a Toledo area Democrat, said in the Dispatch article. He reportedly had called for a ban on the spread of manure on frozen ground well before Toledo’s water crisis.

“It’s not something that all of a sudden somebody just thought up,” he said in the article. “There’s some pretty good science that suggest those are major contributors.”

On the other hand, other factors may be playing a bigger role in the algae crisis on the lake, including the widespread use of commercial fertilizer on big farming operations near waterways that drain into Lake Erie.

The Ohio General Assembly passed a law last spring mandating training and certification in using commercial fertilizers for most farmers, though the law has yet to be put into effect.