allgie

[Bryan]

This weekends windy conditions appeared to have blown the algea out of here. The water looked much nicer today when I was up flying, this is Catawba Island point and you can see Kellys in the background.

[troy1976]

I work in the fertilizer industry directly with Farmers. I can say that over the last 10 years the usage of phosphate based fertilizers has dropped every year. Phosphourous bonds very tightly to the soil particles in the ground. The only way for it to run off is for the dirt to run off. In the spring of the year with heavy rains this is typically a problem...look at the satelite images in april and may. By June, the rains are sporadic enough that there is very little runoff out of the fields. When you look at the tile drains in ditches during june july august rains they predominantly run fairly clear. Exceptions are the abnormally heavy rains we have had this past september. Also in the last 10 years the amount of acres that have had drainage done to them has shot through the roof. This fact is contributing more to the issues with the Lake Erie watershed than any other single factor. Farmers see immediate economic benefits from tiling, and right now farming is a very profitable business and most are doing whatever they need to increase the productivity of their ground.
I am not saying that other areas cause all the problems with the lake, but Farmers are not needlessly overapplying fertilizers. Commercial phosphate fetilizer has become increasingly costly and trust me the farmers watch their pennies and spend their money in areas of their operations that benefit them the most. Drainage is the number one area of a farm that will make money for a farmer.
I didn't mean to stir up a hornet nest here, but wanted to put an opinion in from the ag industry. Trust me I love to fish way more than I like to work....so I am for protecting the lake in practical manners.

[Snook]

Troy--You kept mentioning phoshpates--what about Nitrogen in terms of either Ammonia or Ureas or UAN. And explain drainage a tad more?? Are you saying farmers have spent money to get rain water off their farms and into nearby creeks which flow into rivers which flow into Lake Erie?? We all know Corn uses a ton of nirtorgen, more than any other crop and soybeans makes it's own nitrogen so little used by soybean farmers??

[Fishin Crazy]

This lake drains into the St. Marys River and ends up in Lake Erie, how much gets added along the way? Lake St. Marys was just like Lake Erie years ago a good place to fish and when I first noticed it I didn't think to much about it. But now when I see what has happened to Lake St. Marys I fear what is happening on Erie.


Kudos to our Watershed Hero's
Editorial: Grand Lake Saint Marys is text book mess
By the Dayton Daily News | Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 05:09 PM

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.......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