Algae- Whats the truth

[wakina]

Is it ironic that the current algae problems really began to show itself at the same time that nw ohio lost 10s of thousands of acres of crp ground. And is it ironic that we over the last decade have seen thounds of additional acres of farm ground tiled. And is it ironic that over the same time period we have seen countless tree lines removed and wood lots cleared and converted over to farm ground. All this has been happening at the same time that the phosphorus load running into our water ways from municipal sources has been significantly reduced, as was mandated by the epa. I don't want to point fingers at anybody but writing is on the wall.

Interesting post! I do have a couple of questions about your information. 1. Could you provide a link to the information "that nw ohio lost 10s of thousands of acres of crp ground"? 2. What replaced the crop ground? Edit~~ I think that you meant soil erosion and that went over my head sorry for those 2 questions! 3. Could you also provide a link that shows "the phosphorus load running into our water ways from municipal sources has been significantly reduced, as was mandated by the epa." ? Toledo's sewage upgrades are only 68% finished so that leaves 32% uncontrolled.

Here is a link to a thread on this site that shows what the flow rate of the Maumee river was during the time frame of the thread. As You can see the Maumee River was running at very fast rate and the city of Toledo supplied the Maumee river with 377,000,000 gallons of raw sewage. There is also a colored graph in this thread that shows the amount of rainfall for the month of June. That Chart indicates that approximately 1/3 of the normal annual precipitation of 35 to 38 inches fell in the time frame shown on that chart. Since that time there has probably been an additional 6 to 7 inches of precipitation in the first 14 days of July, bringing the total precipitation for just that 45 day time span close to being 1/2 the normal annual precipitation. It is not the Farmers fault that mother nature produced more precipitation than would be normally anticipated over a 45 day period!

http://community.walleye.com/showthread.php?9328-Sewage

The top contributors to high phosphorous would be surface runoff from Farm's, lawns, golf courses ect and the untreated(raw) sewage contributed to the watershed from all of the villages, towns and cities as well as those foreign owned factory farms that allow manure to accumulate and get washed into the nearby steams to eventually end up in the lake.

The addition of tile to farmland has cut down the flow of phosphates considerably due to the water being filtered thru the soil covering the tile. The amount of water that can be diverted to the tile and out as drainage has not changed, but the amount of water that needed to get away was considerably more than what the tile could remove so the excess water that was not trapped in the soil became phosphorous rich surface runoff into the creeks and ditches and finally the rivers feeding the Maumee and then to Lake Erie.