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Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Environment - "We don't need Ohio's environmental problems"

That is the heading to an editorial today in the Muncie Star-Press. Some quotes:

East Central Indiana is about to be the final destination of a nasty import from our friends in Ohio: hog manure.

We're already receiving the waste from hog operations in the Buckeye state. But manure-hauling trucks could become more abundant on our roads because Ohio officials want to ship their "product" to Indiana in order to protect Grand Lake St. Marys from poisonous blue-green algae.

What creates problems in Ohio is likely to create problems for Hoosiers, and the state needs to step in to protect our waterways from potential harm.

As detailed in Monday's Star Press article by Seth Slabaugh, Ohio's largest inland lake is being choked by algae. The lake covers 13,500 acres but it's shallow, averaging about 5-7 feet in depth. It's like a huge bird bath of warm water that's ideal for collecting nutrients and growing a toxic brew of algae. The blue-green stuff is poisonous to humans and animals if they come in contact with it. Runoff from Ohio farms that have applied hog manure as a fertilizer is being blamed for causing the algal growth. So Ohio's solution is to ship manure to Indiana, where we will be forced to accept it in the name of interstate commerce.

But Indiana needs to step up the regulations and oversight when it comes to how often and under what conditions manure can be applied to fields. Randolph County earlier suffered a fish kill when hog manure from Ohio was improperly applied, and another fish kill in that county this summer is under investigation by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Nevertheless, East Central Indiana seems to have an abundance of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that supply plenty of fertilizer. How much more can ECI safely accept?

We might be close to the saturation level now, at least in terms of our waterways.

Also be sure to see this August 29th opinion piece by Stacey Stumpf of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, headed "Death of a lake: Toxic algae closes Grand Lake St. Marys." Some quotes:
The sandy beaches at Grand Lake St. Marys should be crowded with sunbathers and swimmers soaking in the last rays of summer. Instead, the shoreline on a perfect summer day last week was packed with dead fish, dead ducks and fat carrion birds feasting on the rotting corpses. Ominous warning signs posted every few yards explain why the Ohio state park, which should be packed with visitors, is an eerie ghost town.

“This lake is dying,” said Sean Logan, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the agency responsible for the lake and the state park that surrounds much of Grand Lake St. Marys. * * *

Algae blooms are to blame. They are caused by too much phosphorus in the water, and a leading culprit for the source is uncontrolled agricultural fertilizer runoff. What overtook the lake were large blooms of cynobacteria, or blue-green algae. It’s the type of algae that produce neurotoxins, which affect the nervous system, and hepatoxins, which affect the liver. * * *

The lake – the source of the St. Marys River – and state park should be recreational treasures. * * *

The loss of a nearby recreational oasis is not the only reason residents across the state line should care about the algae infestation. Grand Lake St. Marys, built between 1837 and 1845 to feed the Miami-Erie Canal, is the largest inland lake in Ohio. The 13,500-acre lake was the largest man-made lake in the world when it was built. It is also the headwaters for two very important Indiana rivers: the St. Marys and Wabash rivers. * * *

Hoosiers should, however, be concerned by plans concocted by Ohio officials to clean up the unholy mess because the plan involves Indiana. A plan released July 30 by the Ohio departments of health, environmental management, natural resources and agriculture proposes hauling manure to Indiana for disposal. The cleanup proposal also calls for a ban on manure-spreading between December and March to reduce phosphorus runoff from feeding the algae. But the ban won’t kick in until March 2012, so Ohio residents will likely have to wait years before seeing improvement.

Bruno Pigott, assistant commissioner for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, said he was not aware of Ohio’s cleanup plan.

“We have deep concerns,” said Barbara Sha Cox, of Indiana CAFO Watch. “I think IDEM should be very proactive and testing should be done on a regular basis of those tributaries. If Ohio has a problem, the solution is not bringing it (manure) into Indiana watersheds. The citizens of Indiana should be putting pressure on IDEM to test and make the results known to the public.”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on August 31, 2010 12:51 PM
Posted to Environment