Youngstown Daily Legal News

Bond issue proposed to attack toxic algae blooms

KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: May 24, 2018

A pair of state lawmakers whose districts abut Lake Erie recently proposed a solution to the dangerous algae blooms that take over swaths of the state's Great Lake each summer.

A statewide bond issue is the prominent feature of the Clean Lake 2020 Plan, championed by Reps. John Patterson, D-Jefferson, and Steve Arndt, R-Port Clinton.

The duo told fellow members of the Ohio House of Representatives seated for the Finance Committee that the bill, filed as House Bill 643, would raise $1 billion through a Clean Water Ohio bond issue.

An additional $36 million would be spent almost immediately to counter harmful algae blooms through conservation practices and other means, the lawmakers said.

"All of us who live, work and play in Ohio have a vested interest in clean water - and it is vital that we confront our challenges to provide each and every person with that life-giving resource," Patterson said in a prepared statement. "This bipartisan effort offers help for communities to rebuild their water and sewage systems, our agricultural families to enhance conservation practices and our ports to effectively dispose of dredging material that can clog our harbors.

"On so many levels this initiative is the right idea at the right time."

The lion's share of the immediate funding - up to $20 million - would go toward targeted phosphorous reduction.

The Ohio Department of Agriculture, in consultation with the Lake Erie Commission and the Ohio Soil & Water Commission, would establish programs to reduce total phosphorus and dissolved reactive phosphorus in sub-watersheds of the Western Lake Erie Basin.

Such programs may include capital funds for purchasing of equipment for subsurface placement of nutrients into the soil, equipment for nutrient placement based on GIS soil testing and variable rate technology, water management efforts, manure conversion technologies, tributary monitoring, and edge-of-field drainage structures, a press release detailed.

Another $10 million would be directed to the Healthy Lake Erie Initiative, investment to support projects to reduce open lake disposal of dredged materials into Lake Erie by 2020, as Ohio law requires.

The remaining funds of the immediate funding would be plugged into:

• Ohio State Sea Grant/Stone Lab: Capital funds of $2.65 million for research lab space and in-lake monitoring equipment consisting of real-time buoys and water-treatment plant monitoring devices; and

• Soil & Water Conservation Support Fund: Funding of $3.5 million to support county soil and water conservation districts in the Western Lake Erie Basin for staffing and to assist in soil testing, nutrient management plan development, enhanced filter strips and water management and other conservation support.

"There is an urgent need for legislation that would help clean up Lake Erie," Arndt said during sponsor testimony. "Already this calendar year, a number of actions have taken place that require us to work together to update our strategies to reduce phosphorus loading in the Western Lake Erie Basin.

Measures include the state's agreement to a phosphorous reduction of 40 percent by 2025.

In addition, the Clean Lake 2020 Plan also includes provisions for wastewater and water treatment plant support, water quality research and water resource management.

Since Toledo's water crisis in 2014, the Department of Higher Education has funded collaborative algae research at Ohio colleges and universities in an effort to reduce the effects of harmful algae blooms.

In addition, the state has implemented better tributary monitoring, projects to reduce open lake dumping of dredged materials, fertilizer applicator certification mandates and passage of the Clean Lake Erie Act in 2015.

Despite these efforts, lawmakers said more must be done to fully address the issues facing Lake Erie and area residents.

A second hearing of HB 643, which has cosponsorship support of seven fellow House members, had not been scheduled at time of publication.

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