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Commentary: Change in law needed to fix Grand Lake St. Marys cesspool

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By Jim Morris, Staff Writer 10:15 PM Saturday, June 6, 2009

Grand Lake St. Marys has been in the news recently, but not the way the local convention and visitors bureau would like.

The problems at Grand Lake have been going on now for years. Each year the water gets greener and more polluted and each year there is a new study, a new group and plenty of meetings by existing groups to figure out what to do to turn around a very real problem.

Over the past year, there has been some hope. Plans have moved forward for stopping the erosion of soil into the lake, which is part of the problem. There was even some new rip-rap put on some bank areas, paid for with money the state had been sitting on for a couple of years.

Unfortunately, it’s going to take a great deal more rip-rap to finish covering all of the banks of Ohio’s largest inland lake. Even if every inch of bank of the 13,500-acre lake were covered, that wouldn’t even come close to solving the lake’s woeful water quality problems.

Everyone knows the real problem. You know it. I know it. The visitors bureau knows it. The EPA knows it. And the politicians who make the laws know it. The politicians won’t say it because it might cost them votes, but they know the only way to clean up the lake is to stop the flow of animal waste into the lake.

It’s simple: Stop putting in manure. Period.

Farmers spread manure over their land because they don’t have any place else to put it. If they have it trucked away, it’s expensive. When their lagoons get full, they spread the slurry on their acres of land.

If that’s where it stayed, there would be no harm, no foul. But once it starts raining, the manure starts to flow, first into ditches, then into streams and finally into the nearest lake.

While the EPA does regulate manure handling, it doesn’t cover small farms, just the big operations. That’s a regulation that should be changed.

If you drive the roads of Mercer, Auglaize and other counties in the Grand Lake St. Marys watershed, you will be hard pressed to find land protected from erosion by filter strips. You will see plenty of freshly plowed farms in the spring, most ready to donate layers of soil to Grand Lake St. Marys because if there are any filter strips out there, it’s hard to find them.

Maybe it’s the government’s fault for not offering enough incentive, or maybe it’s a matter of these hard-working farmers not wanting the government or anyone else telling them how to run their farms.

To be fair, not all farmers are stream polluters. Some do care and have begun to take measures that will help the lake. But there obviously aren’t enough.

There is no question, Ohio needs its agricultural industry. And in that corner of Ohio, livestock is particularly important.

But so is Grand Lake. Who wants to spend their dollars to visit a lake that has had warnings from the EPA against swimming, water skiing or jet-skiing? And now there is concern that fish in the lake contain some of the algae-produced toxins humans have been warned against ingesting.

One can only hope the people who make the laws will wake up and do something about the sad situation at Grand Lake St. Marys. I used to think money was the answer, but it’s much more than that. There must be changes in laws to promote agricultural practices that will stop polluting the lake. The farm community has known about this growing pollution for years and has not self-corrected the problem. It’s sad to say, but now it is time for the government to step in.

I don’t like that idea any more than they do. But it’s time.

Having once owned property in the area, I always looked forward to the time I spent there. The people, the towns, the amenities are first-class. But the lake, the biggest draw of all, has turned into a cesspool.

What a tragedy.

Contact this reporter at  (937) 225-2409 or jmorris @DaytonDailyNews.com.

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