Michigan and Ohio are both struggling to reduce the fertilizer runoff getting into Lake Erie which feeds cyanobacterial blooms, also called harmful algal blooms. Those toxic blooms can be hazardous to people and animals.

Both states are working toward a 40% reduction goal set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Canada is working toward that same amount of reduction. So far, the efforts are not meeting the goals.

Michigan cautious but steady

Michigan is spending a lot of effort on determining where the greater sources of phosphorus and nitrogen are getting into streams in the watersheds that ultimately flow into the western basin of Lake Erie.

Last January, the state used some American Rescue Plan Act money to conserve, acquire or restore some small wetland areas in targeted regions in an effort administered by Ducks Unlimited.

The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy have tried to determine where there are hydrogeological choke points where it would make sense to prevent or filter nutrient pollution.

One of those sites is in Lenawee County, not far from the Ohio border. Michigan is in the process of restoring one 300-acre wetland as a pilot project.

Michigan also offers incentives to farmers at those choke points to encourage grass buffer zones, small constructed wetlands, and other approaches to prevent nutrients from getting into streams. The state often goes through third-party partners such as local conservation districts. That’s because some farmers are suspicious of federal and state government agents and embrace Ronald Reagan’s quote, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

The Michigan approach presumes it’s more cost effective to be selective about incentives for farmers, choosing sites that could be the most beneficial.

Ohio goes deep and wide

Ohio’s approach has been to offer incentives to all farmers who are willing to use conservation methods that could reduce nutrient pollution.

Beyond that, through its H2Ohio program, the state has 183 wetland projects underway, encompassing 16,000 acres of wetlands and associated habitats. Ohio has invested more than $147 million in that effort.

As explained later in this article, Ohio has spent a lot and done a lot, but it is not yet certain whether it has had successful results in reducing the nitrogen and phosphorus pollution that causes the expansive growth of cyanobacterial blooms over a large part of the western basin of Lake Erie.

It will take several years to determine because so many factors go into each season of harmful algal growth in the lake.

The State of Ohio has launched a decade-long project to monitor those wetlands to see how well they’re working to filter out agricultural nutrient pollution. It will make adjustments as it goes.

Michigan’s data gathering plan

The watersheds in Michigan that drain into Lake Erie are not as large as those in Ohio, but they still contribute a substantial amount of agricultural runoff. There are other sources, such as wastewater treatment plants which release nutrients, but those are easier to identify and rectify.

So far, tackling farm field nutrient runoff has been expensive in both Michigan and Ohio and has been ineffective in reducing the pollution in Lake Erie.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes proposed that Michigan gather more information so that the state can take action that will make a difference without over-spending taxpayer dollars.

The goal is first identifying what creeks and rivers are carrying the biggest loads of nutrients to Lake Erie and what conditions cause those releases.

Recently, a few researchers, politicians, and government workers gathered on a small bridge over the Saline River, where it is little more than a channeled creek. The group had to move to the side of the bridge to allow farm equipment and pickup trucks traveling the gravel road to cross. They were there to learn about a data collection plan.

“This project is a really important kind of first step in getting better information and better data on water quality in the headwaters of the western basin of Lake Erie for hopefully the ability to make kind of different and improved decisions on how to manage that issue,” said Tom Zimnicki, Agriculture and Restoration Policy Director at the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Zimnicki invited the group to see some of the monitoring equipment that’s being used to track precipitation, water flow, soil moisture, and other factors that affect nutrient runoff. The equipment samples and analyzes right on the site, and the data can be observed online in real time. Fifty sites are being monitored, paid for by about $5.5 million in grants. ($600 thousand from the Erb Family Foundation and $4.86 million from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development).

Tim Boring is the Director of MDARD. He said the agency needs to better understand how, when, and where nutrients are washing off the land and into ditches, creeks, and rivers, such as the Saline River site.

“I think a piece of getting on track with that and having a better path on how we’re prioritizing investments is having a more complete picture of exactly where losses are coming from and being able to correlate that back to the management practices on the land,” Boring said.

And that starts at monitoring stations placed in those streams running through farmland, taking samples and analyzing them on-site in real time.

“We’re prioritizing, making sure that we’ve got more monitoring in streams so that we can understand and apply this not only on a specific, smaller watershed level like we’re standing in here today, but how do we relate that across a few different watersheds and scale that up, so we’ve got just a more complete understanding across the entire basin,” he said.

Among the handful of people who came to learn about the project was a legislator from the area, Democratic Senator Sue Shink. She said the approach of suggesting to farmers they might be able to do more to reduce nutrient runoff doesn’t mean much if there’s no information to back it up.

“I know that there’s a lot of sophisticated equipment in terms of farming and how people apply fertilizer. This equipment is sophisticated, (and it) is going to tell farmers how much is coming off of the field. And that’s really important information for everybody,” Senator Shink said.

Shink believes that once farmers understand they’re losing nutrients, which means losing money, they might take a second look at their farming methods.

“And that information is going to give farmers the information they need to change their practices to keep the nutrients and the soil on their fields,” she noted.

Ed Verhamme is with the consulting group LimnoTech and the President of a subsidiary Freeboard Technology which built the monitoring stations. Michigan State University’s Institute of Water Research is also providing technical assistance.

Verhamme is working with both Michigan and Ohio. He said Ohio’s wetlands monitoring program is much larger and twice as expensive. But that more expensive monitoring project is a pittance compared to the money Ohio has already spent on wetland restoration.

“They’ve chosen a large investment in wetlands and they want to understand the performance of those wetlands. So, a lot of instrumentation and lessons learned, we’ve applied to wetlands in Ohio and now agricultural streams here in Michigan,” Verhamme said.

He added, the immediacy of the data gives Michigan an advantage in its efforts to plan and invest in the nutrient pollution reduction effort.

“I think the project is going to generate data that we can see what’s happening right now. For scientists and researchers, there is usually a one-to-two year delay in gathering, analyzing, and publishing results,” he said, adding that this system will be much faster because of that on-site and real time sampling.

Ohio’s data gathering plan

Under the state’s H2Ohio program, the main strategy is restoring or constructing wetlands to filter out the nutrients from fertilizer used on farm fields. Plants and the soil in wetlands can absorb some of the nitrogen and phosphorus that gets into streams headed for Lake Erie.

Lauren Kinsman-Costello, Associate Professor at Kent State University, is the Research Team Lead of the H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program. She said in themselves, nitrogen and phosphorus are not bad.

“Every living thing needs these nutrients, but it’s too much of a good thing, especially in places like the western basin of Lake Erie. It leads to an overabundance of growth of photosynthetic organisms like algae and cyanobacteria. It produces a toxin called microcystin that’s harmful to people’s health and is really costly to treat for drinking water purposes.”

More wetlands should help filter out the nutrients before they get into the lake. At least, that’s the expectation. But, like a lot of things in nature, it’s more complicated than that. 

Kinsman-Costello said teams around the state from several universities are studying how well that’s actually working. They’re finding every wetland is different. Some of them might be doing very little when it comes to keeping nutrients out of Lake Erie.

“Are there even nutrients coming in to this wetland? For the wetland to prevent nutrients from going downstream, it has to have some nutrients going into it in the first place. So, things like that have been some of the early lessons that we’ve been able to communicate because we work with them (Ohio Department of Natural Resources) really closely,” Kinsman-Costello said.

That agency has only recently shifted its thinking about wetlands.

“For a very long time, wetlands or restorations were conducted in a way to focus on biological health, which is really important,” said Janice Kerns with ODNR. She oversees the Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program for the state.

Now, when Kerns says restorations for “biological health,” she basically means human-made wetlands that were designed to attract ducks and geese for hunters.

“But focusing now on nutrients and water quality is a little bit of a change from a restoration manager designing a restoration project,” she said.

Is this working?

At a wetland that was restored near Lorain, Ohio, Kinsman-Costello and a small team are taking samples and measurements.

Connor Gluck is a Field and Lab Research Technician. He monitors several wetlands in one region of the state.

“You can build a wetland and just be like, ‘Okay, cool, we’re filtering nutrients,’ but that’s just assuming that it’s working. You don’t know that it’s working until you’re going out here and routinely collecting these samples,” he said.

He’s checking wetlands every month to see if they’re doing the job or not. If they’re not, researchers need to learn why so they can recommend changes for future constructed or restored wetlands.

Helping Gluck take samples and measurements, Daiyanera Kelsey, a graduate student at Kent State University, said in the past, she’s studied how road salt flows into wetlands, but it doesn’t flow out. She said wetlands are “really cool systems” and this research is reinforcing that for her.

I’m learning how to look at soil phosphorus storage capacity, which is basically like how much phosphorus can a soil hold? And I want to see if a wetland is going to release it or if it’s going to basically hold on to this.”

The H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program is planned to be a ten-year long effort, assuming the Ohio legislature continues to fund it. At a total projected cost of ten million dollars, it’s relatively cheap compared to restoring or constructing future wetlands.

Janice Kerns at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources said the program will eventually have enough information to make solid recommendations. Understanding what works and what does not work could really help the state in the future.

“So, now we can either go back to the restorations we’ve already done to maybe tweak them to make them even better or how we plan moving forward in terms of project selection and how we engineer those projects,” Kerns said.

If the existing wetlands that need it can be redesigned to do a better job of filtering out nutrients, Ohio could go a long way in reducing the phosphorus getting into Lake Erie by the 40 percent the U-S Environmental Protection Agency wants.

There are pros and cons to the different approaches Ohio and Michigan are taking. But, their options are limited by law. Unlike so-called point source polluters such as factories with pipes releasing gunk into a stream, there are no laws to regulate non-point sources of pollution such as farms, except in cases where there are direct effects such as fish kills that can be traced back to a specific site. It’s impossible to show cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Erie are caused by a particular farm.