The Big-Ag-Fueled Algae Bloom That Won’t Leave Toledo’s Water Supply Alone

A vast Lake Erie algae bloom returns, captured by a NASA satelite on July 28. <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=86327">NASA</a>/Earth Observatory

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The citizens of Toledo, Ohio, have embarked upon their new summer ritual: stocking up on bottled water. For the second straight year, an enormous algae bloom has settled upon Lake Erie, generating nasty toxins right where the city of 400,000 draws its tap water.

It’s a kind of throwback to Toledo’s postwar heyday, when the Rust Belt’s booming factories deposited phosphorus-laced wastewater into streams that made their way into Lake Erie, feeding algae growths that rival today’s in size. But after the decline of heavy industry and the advent of the Clean Water Act, there’s a new main source of algae-feeding phosphorus into the beleaguered lake: fertilizer runoff from industrial-scale corn and soybean farms. (Background here.) 

As I reported last August, the trouble is that freshwater blooms produce a toxin called microcystin, which can trigger nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, severe headaches, fever, and even liver damage. For three days last year, microcystin in Toledo’s water exceeded federal limits, and the city had to urge residents not only to avoid drinking it, but also to use bottled water to wash dishes and bathe infants.

Toledo has since implemented an early warning system near its water intake for monitoring potential microcystin contamination in Lake Erie—one, it hopes, will prevent a repeat of last year’s don’t-drink-the-water event by giving the city time to run its carbon-filtration system when toxin levels at the source spike. The filtration system does work to push microcystin levels to below the legal limit, said Justin Chaffin, research coordinator for Ohio State University’s Ohio Sea Grant program, which coordinates efforts to monitor the lakes algae blooms. The problem, he said, is that it costs thousands of dollars per day to run.

Not fully reassured after last year’s problems, Toledo residents are clearing retail shelves of bottled water, forcing some stores to limit how much consumers can buy at once.

For the second time in a week, the city placed the water under “watch” status on Saturday. “Microcystin is detected in the intake crib in Lake Erie, but not in the tap water,” a city notice states. “Our water treatment process is effectively removing the microcystin.” Not fully reassured after the shock of last year’s nasty surprise, Toledo residents are clearing retail shelves of bottled water, forcing some stores to limit how much consumers can buy at once.

A spokesperson for the Toledo water utility declined to estimate how much the city has spent to implement and run its early warning system or the carbon-filtration system. In 2014, Toledo newspaper the Blade reported the city “has spent $3 million a year battling algae toxins in recent years,” and $4 million in 2013. Despite the outlays, residents are understandably skittish about Toledo water.

Toledo’s fertilizer-haunted water supply is hardly an isolated case. Similar situations persist throughout the Corn Belt, from Ohio in the east to Nebraska in the west. To grow the great bulk of corn and soybeans that fuel our food system, the Corn Belt uses massive amounts of fertilizer—and it doesn’t stay put. For example, Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources has had to issue 131 advisories since 2006—and 17 so far this year—warning people to keep themselves and their pets out of lakes made toxic by these phosphorus-fed blooms. Ohio has eight such warnings active, apart from the drama in Toledo.

Then there’s the related problem of another chemical fertilizer used on farms, nitrogen. It enters drinking water supplies in the form of nitrate, which can restrict the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and is thus particularly hazardous to infants. Regular low-level exposure to nitrate has been associated with birth defects as well as cancers of the ovaries and thyroid. The waterworks utility of Des Moines, Iowa, claims to have spent $1.5 million since December 2014 keeping nitrate levels below legal limits, and claims it needs to invest as much as $183 million in new filtration equipment to battle the problem going forward. Back in June, Columbus, Ohio, had to warn pregnant women and babies to avoid the tap because nitrate levels had spiked above legal limits. The same thing has forced the Nebraska town of Prosser to warn its residents away from tap water for more than a year—and to raise $84,000 to put a reverse-osmosis filter in every kitchen.

Of course, the Corn Belt’s fertilizer runoff doesn’t just wreak havoc within the region. The great bulk of these pollutants make their way to the Gulf of Mexico through the Mississippi River, where they feed one of the globe’s largest annual fish-killing algae blooms. According to the latest National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projections, this year’s version will be just “average” in size—blotting out sea life in area of some 5,400 square miles, roughly the area of Connecticut.

Earlier this year, fed up with its own mounting filtration bills, the water utility in Des Moines sued three upstream farming districts to force the federal government to regulate their runoff under the Clean Water Act (which exempts most agriculture operations because they’re “non-point” pollution sources). The suit, which won’t be heard in federal court until next year, will be closely watched throughout the Corn Belt. Meanwhile, the Toledo utility spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the city was considering taking similar action.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate