One of the military clashes between England and the United States was the battle of Lake Erie. On September 10, 1813, nine ships under U.S. Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry bested a nine-ship English fleet in a decisive battle for control of western Lake Erie and surrounding lands. Today, a 352-foot International Peace Memorial on South Bass Island commemorates the longest undefended border in the world, uniting Canada and the U.S.
For more than three decades now, our nations have engaged in a different kind of struggle – to rescue western Lake Erie from a tsunami of toxic algae. No one is winning except the industrial agriculture interests that profit from lax environmental regulation, as untreated factory farm sewage is allowed to pour into Michigan’s formerly pure waters. We need a fundamentally different approach to nutrient pollution.
When detergents in wastewater caused algae blooms in the 1960s, the U.S. and Canada moved quickly to control the culprit – phosphorus – with dramatic improvements in just a few years. The battle was won, but the war wasn’t over. Beginning in the 1990s, annual algae blooms returned to western Lake Erie, growing in severity until, in 2014, Toledo, Ohio had to shut down its drinking water intake and put the entire city on bottled water for days. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on cleanup strategies in the past decade have done little to diminish the threat to Lake Erie and its many tributaries, which used to be swimmable and fishable. Today, they run brown and weedy, choked with ag-sourced sewage.
Nutrient pollution includes nitrogen and phosphorus, both products of agriculture and other human activities. It’s tricky to regulate because nutrients are essential to the food cycle, but too much quickly turns toxic for humans and animals alike. Nutrient pollution causes fish kills and dead zones. It contaminates private wells by leaching through soil. Exposure can cause diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, irritation of the skin, eyes, and throat, allergic reactions, or breathing difficulties. Prolonged exposure can cause cancer.
Wastewater plants were responsible for some of the nutrient pollution, but research quickly identified factory farms as the leading source of the algae resurgence.
The International Joint Commission, which deals with issues affecting waterways along the U.S.-Canada border, called for a 40% reduction in phosphorus in western Lake Erie, but every year we miss that goal by miles, despite an agreement by Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario to reach the 40% goal by 2025. They won’t come close. Western Lake Erie’s target phosphorus load was met only once from 2013 through 2024. Some say there has been virtually no reduction. This year’s bloom was detected on June 24, the earliest date ever, reaching 620 square miles, and was still visible as October began.
Clearly, we need more tools in our toolbox. In other parts of the world, holistic approaches to nutrient pollution show promise. The Netherlands, for example, has implemented “nitrogen accounting,” which makes individual sources of nutrient pollution responsible for tracking their outputs. It’s a flexible approach that allows for creativity and customized practices at the local level, as long as nutrient outputs stay below the required levels.
Nutrient pollution has become a global problem that requires innovative, game-changing thinking and cross-border collaborations. We have no time to lose.
This article fails to mention how much more untreated over applied manure from growing numbers of confined animals is akin to the laundry detergent issue decades ago.
I’ve heard that fact too.
and the article doesn’t address Thermal Pollution from industrial discharges, i.e., the Fermi 2 reactor and the Monroe Coal Plant.