OPINION: NOAA’s Grants Miss The Mark; Toledo Demands Action Now!
Published: Tuesday, November 12, 2019
By: Norm Schultz
In early October 2019, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration announced it will grant $10.2 million to fund 12 new research projects around the country to better understand and predict harmful algal blooms (HABs), but does that amount to another delay in taking obvious actions to reduce the problem now?
HABs research is important, no argument, to at least better quantify their sources, impact, and mitigation. But specifically, NOAA will allocate about $8.4 million to cover the first year of new three- to five-year projects, while the remaining $1.78 million will go to three-year projects already in process. Really, three to five years of study?
NOAA must be stealing a page from the Congressional Handbook of Inaction written by the lawyers at Dilly, Dally & Delay! In three to five years, hundreds of lakes and rivers around the nation will be swimming in green slime. Moreover, they’re likely to have dead zones similar to the one identified in central Lake Erie or the now iconic and ever growing 8,000 square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
The funded projects will begin in Alaska, California, Chesapeake Bay, Florida, the Great Lakes, New England, and the Pacific Northwest. That, at least, acknowledges HABs are everywhere. Grant recipients will conduct research for years to identify conditions that increase bloom toxicity; model toxin movement from the water into shellfish, fish, and marine mammals; and improve toxin monitoring and forecasts. Meanwhile, of course, people are supposed to live with possible contaminated drinking water, fisheries destruction and closures, and a disruptive impact to tourism, quality of life, and important recreational activities, especially boating!
Toledo Demands More
It’s reaching a boiling point in northwest Ohio where the Maumee River that enters Lake Erie at Toledo accounts for just five percent of the water flowing into the lake, but contributes a whopping 45 percent of the HABs-causing phosphorus.
According to reports in the Toledo Blade, officials in the “Glass City” area have launched a new attack in their ongoing battle against large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), well-known big contributors to Lake Erie’s HABs. They’re demanding the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) require all manure from such facilities get treated to the standards of human-made sewage before it’s spread on fields as fertilizer.
CAFOs confine and raise thousands of animals inside a building rather than allowing them to roam in pastures. Such facilities typically hold hundreds of cows, pigs, chickens, and other livestock under one roof. Manure from these operations is usually liquefied, stored in lagoons, and then spread on fields. There are currently 56 big CAFOs impacting the Lake’s western basin, according to Ohio’s Lake Erie Commission.
Kudos to the Environmental Law and Policy Center and Lucas County officials who are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the agency has failed to enforce the Clean Water Act by not requiring Ohio to adopt a program with mandatory controls on CAFOs and other major sources of pollution runoff. They have found 775 hog, cattle, dairy, and poultry operations in the broader Maumee River watershed of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Moreover, there’s been a 40 percent increase in CAFOs since 2005.
To top it off, there are currently four applications filed to build new CAFOs within the basin that, if granted, will allow up to 28,800 more swine, producing millions more gallons of liquid manure that will annually be spread as farm fertilizer. The increased runoff, with its phosphorus and nitrogen, will end up in Lake Erie!
Finally, during a recent 2019 hearing, a federal judge said he couldn’t see how Ohio can meet its pledge under a 2016 pact with Ontario and Michigan to reduce phosphorus by 40 percent by 2025. The state is nowhere near meeting an interim goal of 20 percent by 2020!
So the quest to end turning our waterways into pea soup mats of scum continues.
Reprinted with permission from Soundings Trade Only
tags: Environmental Impact, Lake Erie, Law & Politics, Opinion
