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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 20
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Editorial: Grand Lake St. Marys is textbook mess
The ecological and economic tragedy at Grand Lake St. Marys is stunning.
Think of Ohio’s largest inland lake like a bathtub. If runoff loaded with phosphorous from manure and fertilizer keeps flowing into the tub, eventually the water is going to turn so foul, you won’t want to get in it. And anything good in it will die. Cyanobacteria feeds on the phosphorous, which sucks the oxygen — and the life — out of the water.
Grand Lake St. Marys is an especially sensitive lake. Water flows slowly through the 13,000-acre reservoir, meaning it only gets “flushed” every 18 months. In addition, the lake doesn’t have a lot of islands or channels, which prevent erosion and filter out bad stuff.
Most significant, the state’s largest concentration of animal farms are nearby. Manure-tainted runoff is poison to the lake, and it has been building up over decades.
With government now telling people not to go near the water, Grand Lake St. Marys’ tourism business is dead. That’s as much as a $200-million-a-year industry. That business, however, pales in comparison to the local agricultural industry, which is estimated at $675 million. Needless to say, agri-business has intense clout.
In a way, Grand Lake St. Marys is Ohio’s BP disaster. The damage isn’t nearly as extensive, but the cleanup will take years. Moreover, people are feeling their way because no one has a formula for fixing something that’s been so violated.
Unlike the oil spill in the Gulf, however, Grand Lake St. Marys didn’t get fouled in an instant because a specific piece of equipment failed. It happened because multitudes of people failed — over years. The algae blooms have become more frequent, and even as efforts have been made to limit pollution, there was no sense that time could run out.
Some people are comparing Grand Lake St. Marys to Indian Lake. Indian Lake is also shallow and man-made, vulnerable to similar threats. Even setting aside the differences — that Indian Lake recharges more quickly, that it has more shoreline, that row crops are more prevalent in that region than manure-producing animal farms — it, too, could be on life-support today.
But locals came together years ago — the agricultural community and people who valued the lake — and figured out what had to be done differently. One observer notes that both communities live under the same laws, but, in one case, something was preserved; in the other, something was allowed to be destroyed.
It’s hard not to see the different results as statements about local leadership.
At this point, experts are still trying to get their arms around the extent of the problem, whether there’s a way to clean up the lake, and how much it might cost.
If alum is poured on the water, if dredging equipment is brought in, the fix will be expensive, running into the millions. That money won’t come from the local community, but from the federal and state governments. (Just on Tuesday, the federal government kicked in $1 million.)
Whatever is done, all of us will be paying for the fact that the Grand Lake St. Marys community couldn’t come together on how to protect a resource, and neither the federal or state environmental protection agencies knocked heads when people decided to do too little.
Is anybody better off because the agricultural community didn’t voluntarily change its practices years ago if the result today is that Grand Lake St. Marys becomes a poster child for why agri-business has to be strictly regulated? (This debacle will become an example in public debate and environmental circles throughout Ohio, maybe even beyond, about why the ag industry can’t be counted on.)
Are the politicians rushing to the rescue now going to have an easier job mediating between scared farmers and furious property owners than they would have years ago?
The one sure thing is that everyone will have a long time to work out differences. No amount of money can fix Grand Lake St. Marys quickly.
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