Fertilizer pollution fears bubble up in wake of
Toledo water crisis
(Known contaminates/carcinogens (ALL FERTILIZERS) applied to lawns, gardens, flower beds, golf courses, farms cause NEGATIVE IMPACT to soils, plant/animal/human health, air quality and water both below and open)
Experts say that lax rules for
fertilizer and creeping climate change brought on algae bloom that tainted
city’s taps
August 5, 2014 4:30PM ET
As residents of Toledo, Ohio, and the surrounding region recover from a weekend without access to usable tap
water — the fault of a toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie —
the crisis has set off new calls for stricter rules on the use the fertilizers
that help contribute to the blooms.
The algae bloom set off alarms on Saturday, causing authorities to
impose a ban on the use of the city’s tap water, which comes from Lake Erie,
affecting more than 400,000 people in Toledo and surrounding areas in Ohio and
southeastern Michigan. On Monday morning officials lifted the ban after new
tests came back clean. But before the weekend was over, 69 people visited local
hospitals fearing they had fallen ill, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
The type of algae found in the lake releases a toxin called microcystin,
which can damage the liver and cause diarrhea, vomiting, dizziness and even
nerve damage.
“It’s not good to drink,” said Christine Mayer, a professor of
environmental science at the University of Toledo.
Mayer said these algae blooms have become more common. And the city’s
water treatment plant, she added, wasn’t designed to handle the load. The chief
culprit is fertilizer runoff from farms that flows into the Maumee River, which
empties into Lake Erie.
For now, federal regulators don’t have a standard for acceptable levels
of microcystin. So Toledo officials had to use the World Health Organization’s
rule, which states that levels of the toxin should not exceed a minuscule amount.
“EPA has not established a standard for microcystin in drinking water.
However, the agency has been evaluating this and other contaminants associated
with algal blooms,” said Julia Ortiz, a spokeswoman for the Environmental
Protection Agency, adding that it is “continuing to gather information to
inform a determination whether to regulate these contaminants.”
The problem is relatively new, Mayer said, and it is taking regulators a
while to catch up. “The EPA has not had enough time and experience to put
together specific guidelines,” she said.
She added that Ohio hasn’t ignored the problem and is trying to solve it
in earnest. “These algal blooms in Lake Erie have appeared in the last 10 or 12
years, and they’re kind of trending towards getting worse,” she said. “This is
something the water treatment plants didn’t have to deal with 10 years ago, but
they do now.”
The water crisis that struck Toledo bears some resemblance to the one
that hit Charleston, West Virginia,
in January, when a coal-processing chemical tainted drinking water for 300,000
people in the state’s capital and hard-to-reach places in hollows and valleys
nearby.
Many blamed lax regulation of the state’s chemical industry for that
spill, and some condemned the coal industry as well.
Maya Nye, head of West Virginia–based People Concerned About Chemical
Safety, said the problem Ohio faces reflects the one in her state. “This crisis
happened because we don’t think about the long-term impact of chemical use,”
she said. “Just like in West Virginia, it’s a failure of our government to
properly plan for the consequences of unchecked industry.”
Gary Wilson, a Chicago-based journalist who focuses on issues related to
the Great Lakes, said that corporate opposition to new rules for farmers acts
as a roadblock to reducing fertilizer pollution.
“The key players are going to have to get out of a defensive mode and
get away from entrenched positions. There is clear indication we are going to
have to regulate farmers’ activities,” he said.
Right now, state officials issue suggestions to farmers big and small on
how to fertilize their crops in a way that lessens the risk to lakes, but
Wilson says the recommendations need to be made mandatory.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called for strong action in the wake of the
Toledo water ban, as did other state politicians.
“I think it’s going to make everybody realize we’ve got to do better,”
Brown said, according to the Dispatch. “I would hope that when 500,000 people
lose their drinking water for a couple, three days, that it would have an
impact on public policy not just in Ohio but around the country.”
The problem in Ohio is a particularly difficult one to solve, since the
Maumee River spans hundreds of miles and crosses into Indiana — the largest
watershed that flows into the Great Lakes.
“Since the Clean Water Act was passed in the U.S. in 1972, we have done
a good job of regulating point sources of nutrient pollution,” Mayer said. “But
fertilizer that is applied to farm fields is very diffused. It’s much harder to
deal with.”
Although they have served as a sewer for industry and agriculture for
hundreds of years, the Great Lakes stand as one of the continent’s most
valuable resources. They provide water for as many as 30 million people in the
U.S. and Canada and account for 84 percent of North America’s surface
freshwater.
But the one-two punch of continuing fertilizer use and climate change
has made the potential for dangerous algae blooms even greater. The algae
thrive in warm water. And torrential rain, an increasingly common weather
pattern in the region, can worsen fertilizer runoff.
A record-size bloom appeared in the lake in 2011, and in 2013
a town of 2,000 people, Carroll, just east of Toledo, faced a tap
water ban because of algae pollution.
While climate change likely complicates the problem, the main issue is
farming, said Lana Pollack, U.S. chair of the International Joint
Commission, a group of Canadians and Americans tasked by a
binational agreement with monitoring the water shared by the two countries.
“The primary factor of the most recent bloom is the same as it has been,
and that is too much fertilizer put on the ground for crops but does not get
absorbed,” she said. That ends up as runoff that “feeds the algal blooms in
Lake Erie.”
“It is all avoidable,” said Pollack. “The science is there. We need the
political will to enforce the science.”
With reporting by Ray Suarez
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