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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 > Entry
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.
Permalink | Comments (31) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Ellen Belcher, Rural Communities
Comments
By rj
July 20, 2010 7:57 PM | Link to this
Now just where is this profound “wisdom” on the dying of Dayton?
By Mike R
July 20, 2010 10:16 PM | Link to this
Hmmm…a bit of potential irony in the third from last paragraph, Ellen. Just think, if the Kool-Aid drinking lame media doesn’t voluntarily change their way they might become strictly regulated and have to report fair and balanced in future years. You too will be a text book case.
By Richard
July 20, 2010 10:46 PM | Link to this
I first started going to Grand lake in the eary 50’s. We owned a cottage there through the 80’s. It was a great place to go for the weekend with friends. It was a safe, clean, fun place. We loved Celina and St. Mary’s. The whole deal makes me sick. It doesn’t have to be the way it is. Ohio is losing a great resource, and if we could clean up Lake Erie, we can clean up Grand lake. And for the idiots who post comments not about the specific problem, but to complain about other things, get a life or listen to Rush and Chris and let the adults diuscuss the matter at hand.
By Mike R
July 20, 2010 10:47 PM | Link to this
It appears there’s only a couple of options. 1) Restore the lake to its orginal condition…farm land. 2) Dredge the damn lake; make it and the channels supplying the St. Mary’s and the Wabash rivers deeper. Much deeper. Then build small-hydro dams capapble of producing 10-20 Megawatts. Use the proceeds from the now GREEN energy to pay off the cost of restoring the lake.
By Mike R
July 20, 2010 10:52 PM | Link to this
Sorry, Richard. I can’t speak for rj, but I didn’t mean to interfere with your weeping.
By Truthdoctor
July 21, 2010 8:41 AM | Link to this
Fixing GLSM should not cost taxpayers $. Keep your farm on your farm! Stop applying manure in the winter time when no crops are growing. Take soil samples and don’t apply nutrients if not needed. Put a plug in your field tiles. Don’t spread manure before a rain. Let mother nature take over after you stop the crap from entering.
By JS
July 21, 2010 10:20 AM | Link to this
Mike, you’re still on that kick? News media has no responsibility to be fair and balanced and the irony is you expose a bias just by referring to the ‘Kool-aid drinking lame media’ shows your own unbalanced bias. The hypocrisy is delicious. Truly tasty. Would it be fair if you agreed with everything the paper said? Would you be happier if every news outlet said the same thing and that it all agreed with your perspective? That’s not fair or balanced. AND if DDN’s slant doesn’t expand their readership, then that’s jut bad management, isn’t it? This is a Quixotic mission and can’t bear fruit.
By JS
July 21, 2010 10:24 AM | Link to this
It’s especially hilarious, Mike, that you insist on pushing for neutrality on an editorial BLOG. The concept of ‘editorial’ is espcially bent toward OPINION. Blogs, too, are pointedly opinionated works. This is not an article of journalism. You can disagree with the conclusions and viewpoints all you like; that’s you’re right and this particular blog is allowing all comments and dissenting viewpoints, so you’re allowed to post. If you want ‘fair and balanced’ journalism, actual reporting, you’re actually in the wrong period of time in the wrong country.
By Mike R
July 21, 2010 12:48 PM | Link to this
Yes, JS, opinion pieces and editorial pages are exactly what they say they are—and should be. By the way, good word—quixotic! Perhaps my phraseology of “Kool-Aid” and “Lame” in conjunction with “media” show a bent towards “right,” but everything is relative…Right of Left is Center. What I would like to see, JS, are additional opinions and editorials—not the same old “fit the round peg into the square hole” mentality continuously espoused in this section. Let’s take a look from a different perspective, thought-provoking and mind-expanding approaches rather than viewing the topic from the same backward looking prism shard by all writers at the DDN. What Ellen editorialized could’ve been written by a Jr. in High School—Bash Agri-Business, blame the local communities in Mercer County, and write that it’ll cost money to clean up. That’s it in a nutshell. The Country, State, and Miami Valley has serious issues we need to address—Let’s start reading some suggestions for fixing our problems instead of rehashing with an ideological slant what we already know…the problems. All that being said, maybe Ellen can now focus shooting holes into my Hydro-Dams solution!
By JS
July 21, 2010 2:33 PM | Link to this
I’ll shoot the holes.. No river there is big enough. To make a damn big enough, you have to destroy.. all the AGRICULTURE. Do you think that interest group will go for it? The problems of the past, Mike, are the problems of the present. Those lethargic local politicians who dealt with short-term and didn’t consider long-term, those agriculture interests, who, again, are concerned only with their lowest overhead possible, are the same problems they were two decades ago. And, again, the DDN has made a managerial decision NOT to do what you ask and they have no responsibility to do so. You have other choices, you know. We all do. Free market, right? Which begs the question; if you’re in such disagreement with how this paper does business, why do you read it?
By davidss2
July 21, 2010 3:32 PM | Link to this
To the person who said the lake was nice in the 60s, it sure wasn’t. I thought the water was nasty on the few occasions I was in it on both north and south sides. All that sewage from Celina and St. Marys. The lake was not built to be a pristine blue water lake. It’s a pond that was meant to supply water for the canal system. The flow through rate is not great enough to keep a clean lake. The local people have ruined what little they did have with building all those new homes in the area for wealthy Ohioans to retire to and produce sewage to foul their lake. Their big commercial farmers and the little farmers felt they had little to do to preserve any fresh lake. Now the Obama Fed will step in and spend more money on the lake. The lake is stagnant. Too much people and animal sewage and too little water flowing through. Fill in 2/3rds of it and you might have a viable pond.
By Mike R
July 21, 2010 4:01 PM | Link to this
I read it for the Obituaries. Maybe one day I’ll read where a long-lost Aunt has passed away and bequeathed me her accumulated fortunes. JS, I’m not talking TVA-like hydro dams. We put a man on the moon 40+ years ago. It’s time we accelerate our development of small hydro turbines. It can be done within the current boundries of the lake. However, the lake needs to be dredged…to make it deeper—for more water volume (which by the way is part of the solution to the algae). It needs to be deep enough by the dam for a 12’ head. Obviously, the further water drops the faster the turbine will spin. From what I’ve read 12’ is the minimum to work…20’ is better and I bet doable in that lake. The big question is, what is the natural flow rate out of the lake? Would turbines be able to operate on a consistent basis, or would it be sporadic and not econmical (I’m speaking strictly the installment and operations of the turbine(s), not the dredging cost)?
By JS
July 21, 2010 4:06 PM | Link to this
David actually points out the first question that should be asked; is this lake worth preserving as-is, despite people losing property value, or should we adjust our goals on what this lake CAN be, and within that, SHOULD be? Mike, I’ll re-frame my argument a different way; I’m not really worried about fair-and-balanced reporting.. For every DDN, there’s an NY Post. For every Obermeyer, there’s a Beck, and so on. The REASON you’re barking up the wrong tree is the construction of the market. Media doesn’t do fair and balanced because we keep consuming the crap they keep shoveling. Politicians are the way they are because we keep electing them, and companies do the crap they do because we keep rewarding them for it. It’s our OWN damn fault stuff gets messed up, and we have shown no ability or willpower to shape our society as we see it. We whine, we complain, but we don’t do jack.
By Stuart
July 21, 2010 9:41 PM | Link to this
For the last time, Celina & St. Marys’ wastewater treatment plants discharge DOWNSTREAM of the lake. “Grand Lake St. Marys community couldn’t come together on how to protect a resource,” BS. With the current Ag laws, there are no regulations to stop greedy farmers from dumping tons of manure and over-applying fertilizer to the point of ruining, no poisoning, a lake. We all need protection as these polluters are in all of our backyards. There are barely any filter strips or grassy swales in Mercer County, but many at Indian Lake. Write your legislators and tell them we need legislation instead of paying, now $3-4 million dollars, for squat from these polluters. Follow the money and you will find the guilty criminals.
By Mike R
July 22, 2010 12:23 AM | Link to this
Somebody needs to explain the disconnect here. If the premise is that the guilty farmers are “greedy” why then are they over-applying expensive fertilizer??
By Stuart
July 22, 2010 7:01 AM | Link to this
“The majority of nutrient loading from farmland occurs from fertilization with commercial and manure fertilizers (USEPA 2003). In heavily fertilized areas, soil phosphorus content has increased significantly over natural levels, and this is apparent in the Grand Lake St. Marys watershed.” This is from the Tetra Tech report. The greed part comes from my opinion that at Indian Lake there are filter and buffer strips that keep the silt and crap on the fields and out of the streams and ditches, and here there are few. Keep your silt, etc. on your own land.
By lakerat
July 22, 2010 8:00 AM | Link to this
If the good Mercer County Municipal Court judge (JS) would have clamped down on those farmers who were cited into his court for polluting streams with manure things would have been different. He looked the “other way” while imposing court costs only on the polluters who plead no contest. Because of this, wildlife officers gave up trying to cite polluters so run-off of manure continued unabated.
By Truthdoctor
July 22, 2010 8:00 AM | Link to this
Only poultry manure is considered fertilizer by farmers in GLSM. 77% of the nutrient(manure) loading occurs between Christmas and May every year. There are no crops growing so farmers are using their property as a landfill when ground is frozen. This data is scientifically generated from a monitoring station 2 miles south of the lake. This pretty much eliminates all sources of winter time manure loading to farmers.Manure is valuable to all but those in the watershed.
By RLD
July 22, 2010 6:17 PM | Link to this
It makes me sick that the people that take the time to respond are too busy putting each other down, and NOT focusing on the matter at hand. We poured thousands into our property at the lake and now we have swampland that we can’t sell or use. We were never told, don’t buy here, you won’t be able to spend your retirement at the lake. We need to stop arguing and get it fixed, whatever that is.Stop pointing fingers and stand up and do what it takes. This is the greatest nation isn’t it? Time to act like it.For those of us that love the lake and want to be there, we will stand tall and be counted, tell me what I can do, it will be done. We aren’t the government and we aren’t in the politics there, we are just people that love the lake.
By Mark S
July 22, 2010 7:25 PM | Link to this
What I really don’t understand, aside from the grotesque ineptitude of the local governance (ie; Mr. Laffin - 30 yr+ county commissioner)is why the media continues to portray the mega million annual agric. business vs. the pissy mega million tourist business. It would seem painfully obvious to even the aforementioned elected officials that a tiny fraction of the annual agri. business would be taken out of production to achieve Indian Lake type results. The loss of this predictable amount of speculative agri. income most likely pales in the face of the gleefully anticipated costs. Who actually is fomenting this this ‘either or nothing’ notion? Kind of weird….Where’s the profit?
By Eric
July 22, 2010 7:26 PM | Link to this
What I really don’t understand, aside from the grotesque ineptitude of the local governance (ie; Mr. Laffin - 30 yr+ county commissioner)is why the media continues to portray the mega million annual agric. business vs. the pissy mega million tourist business. It would seem painfully obvious to even the aforementioned elected officials that a tiny fraction of the annual agri. business would be taken out of production to achieve Indian Lake type results. The loss of this predictable amount of speculative agri. income most likely pales in the face of the gleefully anticipated costs. Who actually is fomenting this this ‘either or nothing’ notion? Kind of weird….Where’s the profit?
By Stuart
July 22, 2010 10:04 PM | Link to this
To RLD, Alot of us are in the same boat as you. We have been told to cooperate and not point fingers and then we find out that only 23 percent of the farmland has been in the programs. It is looking obvious that unless the farmers are paid for using best management practices, and our money keeps flowing in, there will be no decrease in the external loading problems. I just hope to convince more people to write and call the state officials and ask for legislation to at least ban winter manure spreading in our watershed. That would be a good start. EAT FRUIT.
By Liza
July 23, 2010 12:17 PM | Link to this
As a resident of the area in question and someone who grew up in St. Marys, I can say for certain that the author of this article shows a total lack of knowledge regarding the geography surrounding Grand Lake St. Marys. First of all, most of GLSM lies in Mercer County, not Auglaize county (where SM is located). Secondly, where the city of SM comes into contact with the lake is a state park. Lastly, the remaining property adjacent to GLSM in Auglaize county is a housing development; not agricultural land. All the ag land that comes into contact with the lake is in Mercer county. Blaming local officials from SM for agricultural run-off in GLSM is disingenuous. Auglaize county officials and SM officials have nothing to do with it. It doesn’t help that funding made available to farmers to NOT plant near the lake is less than what the farmer can make if they DO plant near the lake. As for the particular pollutants involved, several years ago, a product was made available to local farmers from a now defunct ethanol processing plant in Lima, OH. The farmers put this product on the fields believing that it was a safe nutrient to put into the soil since it was derived from the processing of corn. Many locals believe that it is the above mentioned product that has caused this new algae bloom. So much for clean energy.
By Elvin
July 23, 2010 4:33 PM | Link to this
I’ve heard alot over the argument of what has caused this disaster to the GLSM.But unfortunately no one wants to take the blame for their own waste being the problem. what I mean by that is look at the concern for years of people that were dumping human waste into the lake and nothing was done about that until later in the century, then the people living around the lake had to put in septic systems. Now for how many years have our own people been dumping their waste into the lake but now it’s just easier to blame the farmers and the cows. Whose going to make the people that have been doing this around the lake pay for their irresponsabile actions.
By Richard Kellermeyer
July 23, 2010 9:01 PM | Link to this
@Mike R. — You make some valid points, but get your facts straight … Grand Lake St. Marys was NEVER farmland … It was swamp and black marsh … Please arm yourself with the correct info before you decide to rant about something. I’m a local resident, so I know .. Just giving you a head’s up.
By davidss2
July 24, 2010 2:35 PM | Link to this
Kellerman makes our point for us. This is a very shallow marshland turned into a holding pond: IT IS NOT A LAKE, it has no depth. Ponds stagnate. The people who bought retirement homes and condos in the area should expect to pay if they want to convert the POND into a LAKE. Don’t expect the rest of us poor taxpayers of the US and of Ohio to pay taxes for the wealthy folk buying second homes in Mercer County on Grand Lake Saint Marys. We can’t subsidize the rich; don’t you listen to your Obama?
By davidss2
July 24, 2010 2:35 PM | Link to this
Kellerman makes our point for us. This is a very shallow marshland turned into a holding pond: IT IS NOT A LAKE, it has no depth. Ponds stagnate. The people who bought retirement homes and condos in the area should expect to pay if they want to convert the POND into a LAKE. Don’t expect the rest of us poor taxpayers of the US and of Ohio to pay taxes for the wealthy folk buying second homes in Mercer County on Grand Lake Saint Marys. We can’t subsidize the rich; don’t you listen to your Obama?
By Stuar
July 24, 2010 5:08 PM | Link to this
To Davidss2: This lake is a natural resource that is to be protected from pollution. The lake is a source of water for Celina and is very near the wells for St. Marys. What is happening in the lake is a sign of ag-pollution that is occuring all over the country. Sorry bud, but your taxes are going to the farmers responsible for the manure……see: The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) announced a cooperative plan to help curb the excessive nutrient load that has contributed to declining water quality at Grand Lake St. Marys. The plan encourages partnerships between the area residents and other private and public entities, including Mercer and Auglaize Soil and Water Conservation Districts and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, to minimize pollution sources within the watershed. “The challenges here are representative of what we face everywhere in Ohio as we seek to balance wise use with conservation,” said ODNR Director Sean Logan. “Our economic health cannot be long separated from the health of our air, water and soil. For all the right reasons, we need to implement the conservation practices outlined in this plan, and restore the health of this great resource.”
By Long time area resident
July 25, 2010 4:23 PM | Link to this
I’ve lived here for 50+ yrs.so I remember how the lake USED to be.Yes there is plenty of blame to go around.In the editorial it states the lake gets “flushed” every 18 months.No one mentions the building of a new spillway 10 years ago.With the “old “spillway the state would drain the lake level at the end of most summer boating seasons,not done anymore with the present one.That would allow the snow & ice to refill the lake by spring with some fresh water.If you keep taking a bath in the same bath water it gets pretty gross too,same theory.I’m sure this will draw comments,just something to add to the mix.
By Dave
July 25, 2010 8:48 PM | Link to this
I have owned a mobile home at grand lake for several years, and I am sick and tired of the state dragging their feet, over the clean up. It is time to act, the only two ways to solve the promblem, is to dredge the lake, or drain, clean the bottom and refill it . Everything else is a short term fix, and a waste of money.
By JWN
July 26, 2010 12:04 PM | Link to this
Grand Lake Saint Mary’s is an excellent example of one being a victim on one’s own success. I have watched for 35 years here in Ohio as city wastewater plants became cleaner and cleaner, while the farm community managed to keep every environmental regulation “off their backs.” This success made the farmer compete with all the other farmers on the lowest environmental rung of the ladder. To keep up with the neighbors, they “had to” farm to the very edge, put loads of fertilizer on everything, and use pesticides galore. I have attended many watershed basin meetings up at Indian Lake over the last 15 years, and have heard farmer after farmer say (in confidence to his fellow farmer) “I had no idea the crop yield impact would be so low, if I tried” this or that good environmental practice. But to get him to try this or that, he had to be bribed with government bucks. Yes, environmental regulations put lots of industry out of business, unfortunately, but it kept them all clean and all playing with the same rules. Farmers do need regulations; it couldn’t be more obvious.