Toledo’s 2014 Drinking Water Crisis: What Has Changed and What Hasn’t

In the summer of 2014, residents of Toledo, Ohio awoke to the news that they should avoid drinking the water that came out of their tap. On August 2, 2014, government officials warned against drinking, cooking, or brushing teeth with the algae-trainted water supplies.

In total, the “do not drink” advisory was given to over 450,000 customers of the Toledo public drinking water supply, including some in Michigan. Flocking to stores to get bottled water, residents emptied shelves of the replacement water for dozens of miles in all directions.

What happened?

An algae bloom had generated toxins in the immediate vicinity of the city’s drinking water intake, a few miles offshore in Lake Erie.

After a little more than two days, officials lifted the advisory and declared the water safe to drink, and promised swift action to prevent such a crisis from happening again. Most of all, they promised to deal with the phosphorus pollution from agriculture and urban sources in the Lake Erie watershed that fed the algae blooms.

If action means spending, it followed – but not by a large enough margin.

If action means a reduction in phosphorus pollution, especially from agriculture, that mostly did not happen.

And algae blooms remain a serious threat in western Lake Erie. Ten years later, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a moderate to above-moderate harmful algal bloom this summer.

“It’s disappointing and frustrating that we’ve seen so little progress in curbing phosphorus pollution in Lake Erie,” says Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW. “Government promises have collided with politics and the public has been ill-served.”

As a Toledo advocate and Executive Director of the Junction Coalition, Alicia Smith observed, “Why is Toledo’s greatest asset—Lake Erie—still jeopardizing public health? Despite having a decade to address water safety, we continue to struggle with ensuring our drinking water is safe and affordable. How does the recurring issue of harmful algal blooms, which occur annually, not constitute a violation of the Clean Water Act? When will the waters of Lake Erie finally become drinkable, swimmable, and fishable for all?”

Michigan is second only to Ohio in the amount of phosphorus contributed to Lake Erie. Along with the Province of Ontario and Ohio, in 2015 Michigan signed a western Lake Erie Agreement that set a goal of work to achieve a recommended 40 percent total load reduction in the amount of total and dissolved reactive phosphorus entering Lake Erie’s Western Basin by the year 2025, with an aspirational interim goal of a 20 percent reduction by 2020. Government officials have admitted the three jurisdictions will fall far short of the 2025 goal.

The biggest challenge to meeting Michigan’s share of the goal is pollution by large factory farms, and Michigan’s director of agriculture readily admits that the agreement isn’t working here. Operators of these farms and the Michigan Farm Bureau have opposed controls on their discharges of phosphorus, while favoring taxpayer subsidies for voluntary experimental techniques to reduce phosphorus. Despite evidence these voluntary techniques will not be successful on the scale needed to clean up western Lake Erie, there is no apparent change in the position of the agriculture sector.

“The question is whether we value safe drinking water or status quo operation of large agricultural pollution sources,” says Liz Kirkwood. “That’s the stark choice.”