Still Clueless on Water
March 31, 2016
By: Keith C. Burris, Toledo Blade
March 31, 2016
A few weeks back, Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson accompanied Rep. Marcy Kaptur to Flint, Mich., as a show of solidarity.
It was an admirable gesture of sympathy and solidarity. Yes. And Miss Kaptur was on to the water and the farm issues before almost everyone in America.
But we need a whole lot more than sympathy, or even prophetic voices, now.
We need action.
An action plan.
For Toledo’s water problems are grave and, still, pressing.
As former council member and mayoral candidate Mike Ferner says, we can see disaster heading toward us. Use whatever analogy you want — hurricane, tornado, snowstorm. When a big hit is coming, you don’t engage in sympathy or analysis. You prepare.
One must applaud Mr. Ferner for having an idea about what we do next. The ONLY real idea out there.
He is keeping the pressure on city officials to demand that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency designate Lake Erie an “impaired watershed.” This would force the feds to intervene — first with an official inventory of pollutants and then with a mandatory remediation plan.
The Ohio EPA will not write, and the city cannot write, that plan. True, the governor has made a commitment to reduce farm runoff. But, to date, he has not revealed a strategy for how to get there. The city, as Mr. Ferner points out, has no authority in this area.
Only the federal EPA can issue a definitive diagnosis and then assign responsibilities and remedies.
The arguments against the impaired watershed designation request are:
? The feds might ignore us.
That’s no reason not to try.
? It is not a panacea.
No it’s not. That no reason not to begin.
? It could hurt our reputation and adversely affect tourism and fishing.
Not as much as shutting down the lake or the water supply would hurt.
? The governor should step up first. He made a commitment.
He did, but by summer he will either be licking his wounds or running for national office, and in neither case can we expect much action from him or his EPA director.
? What if the federal EPA makes the city spend more on our water treatment plant?
Well, then we ought to thank it for protecting public health and spend the money.
In a letter to the mayor’s chief of staff, Mr. Ferner says, in effect, that for the city to seek anything less than the impaired watershed designation is just paralytic posturing.
He also writes:
“State and federal legislators have allowed a situation whereby 146 CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in our watershed actually receive subsidies to legally pump 700,000,000 gallons of untreated animal waste onto farm fields. And Toledo’s water customers further subsidize this practice by paying millions every year for additional treatment to try and eliminate the poisons once they're in the water. This is insane.”
Indeed it is.
Recently, I talked to a wise old farmer in Fulton County named Richard Bernath. For many years, he raised cattle and now limits himself to farming grain. He is gearing down. His is a small farm. “There used to be a lot of us,” he said. “Farmers with 30 or 40 or 50 cows. Almost all are gone now. The megafarms have come.” What they do is not farming as we used to know it, but industry.
He told me point blank: A farm with 9,000 cows — there is one near him — simply does not belong in the Maumee watershed. “Cows produce a lot of waste,” he said. Per cow. There is simply no way to get rid of that much waste without compromising the water supply. He is worried about E. coli and nitrates ruining the artesian wells in his neck of the woods. And he reminded me of a stark cautionary Ohio tale — Grand Lake St. Marys. A dead lake.
Mr. Ferner’s group, Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie — which held its first meeting Tuesday night — and others concerned with this issue — Lake Erie Waterkeeper, Toledo Rotary, Toledo’s ministers — need to work together on this issue. Don’t duplicate and replicate. Broaden and deepen the coalition. Write 2,000 letters to the mayor, the council, and Miss Kaptur. March on Government Center, then Columbus, then Washington, if you must.
Action, action, action.
BEFORE the algae hits the fan and the storm blows us all down.