5 Yrs After Toxic Algae Cut Toledo Water Supply, No Real Changes As NOAA Warns City

[hatrack]

When we all went three scary days without drinkable water in Toledo back in 2014, most people probably thought that crisis was alarming enough to prompt a speedy solution to the Lake Erie algae problem.

Five years later scientists are warning that a rainy spring this year does not bode well for this summer’s algae threat. The season’s first forecast is that the algae blooms will likely be more severe than last year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts a bloom that will register greater than 5 on its 10-point scale of severity. The prediction is a yearly practice that began after the 2014 crisis, during which algae toxin fouled the city’s water supply.

And what have we accomplished, since 2014, to address the threat of those algae blooms? What have we done to prevent another water crisis? Not much, unless you count the annual algae forecasting. We don’t have pollution limits on agricultural runoff that flows from the Maumee River watershed into the lake, feeding the algae blooms.

We have made no measurable progress toward cutting the amount of phosphorus pouring out into the lake, despite the fact that Ohio signed on to a multistate goal of reducing the levels by 20 percent by next year and 40 percent by 2025. We haven’t made plans to build a second water intake in the lake. Toledo still has just one intake. If another toxic bloom, even a very small one, parks itself over that intake, as it did in 2014, Toledo’s water system does not have another intake through which to draw lake water to serve its half-million customers.

EDIT

https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2019/05/17/weve-been-warned-about-lake-erie-algae-toledo-drinking-water/stories/20190515156

[bronxiteforever]

1. Kick and recommend for visibility

[blueinredohio]

2. Nothing is getting done because back my way

along the Maumee are LOTS of farmers who vote republican. So no one wants to rock the boat.

[c-rational]

3. We truly are poor stewards for the natural resources we have been given. My parents had a house

in Suffolk County, Long island. We had well water back in the 60's and I recall a ban on phosphate based detergents. People were upset and tried to work around the rule. I also recall visiting Aunt Edna and Uncle Charlie on their boat on Lake Erie and noting the number of dead fish floating then. I became a civil environmental engineer because of my love of water and worked for many years at Water Pollution Control Plants. It seems we have learned little in decades. To solve problems take leadership. Solutions which are needed are often seen as taking away from individual freedoms. What people often fail to recognize it that true freedom is borne of discipline. We now as a society drink bottled water. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at an all time high. Things do not bode well for the human species.