Demand the US EPA declare Lake Erie an Impaired Watershed NOW!

  • by: mary pagels
  • recipient: Governor Kasich, Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson, Senators Portman and Kaptur, City of Toledo Councilman

The administration of Gov. John Kasich should overcome its resistance to defining western Lake Erie as “impaired” under the federal Clean Water Act. That designation would, among other things, allow state and federal regulators to impose and oversee a maximum daily load of phosphorus into the watershed.

The proposals also call for stricter limits on agricultural phosphorus pollution than the new state law requires. They include more soil testing to ensure that farmers don’t apply manure and fertilizer excessively or carelessly.

The state needs to do more to inspect and regulate concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. These factory farms generate huge amounts of manure — from hogs, chickens, cattle, and other livestock — that often are applied, sold, and transferred with scant management.

Mr. Riessen notes that as much as 20 percent of phosphorus in the Maumee watershed comes from livestock manure. We don’t know for sure how many CAFOs there are in northwest Ohio, how much waste they produce, how it’s used, or where it ends up. That has to change.

The regional customers of the City of Toledo Water Treatment Plant must quit their complacency and demand their right to fix our broken watershed.  The huge loads of phosphorus coming from this damaged watershed has created a new danger for the customers of the City of Toledo Water Treatment Plant.  The water fed into this plant has such high levels of microsystin that obscene levels of chlorine must be used to rid the drinking water of this toxin created by the large amounts of algae in the plant's source of water - Lake Erie.  Now, since the water treatment plant will not pay for more expensive and effective chemicals, the large load of chlorine is creating toxic levels of trihalomethanes to creep into our water supply.  Officials tried to hide this problem from its customers until the EPA wrote them up twice last summer 2015.

The time for studies and stalling tactics are over.

CLEAN UP THE SOURCE OF THE TAINTED WATER SUPPLY IN TOLEDO NOW!!!  Declare Lake Erie as a damaged watershed and rid our water of microsystin and trihalomethanes.  It is a basic human right to have access to clean water.  Flint, MI is not the only area where a Governor is refusing to act.  Make Governor Kasich quit campaigning and do what is right for his state NOW!

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