Farms in Six Southeast Michigan Counties Are Major Sources of Lake Erie Toxic Blooms

The federal government spends millions each year on farmland conservation programs intended to reduce harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie. These voluntary ‘best management practices’ (BMPs) don’t work, environmentalists and researchers say. In some cases, the programs make the problem worse. 

One of those environmentalists is Pam Taylor, a Lenawee County native who knows more about water pollution in Lake Erie than almost anybody else in Michigan. An active member of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, Taylor manages one of the country's largest citizen-led water monitoring programs. She says underperforming government programs and ineffective conservation investments are to blame for harmful algal blooms that have inundated the lake's waters since 2003. 

Could a fresh approach and renewed funding fix some of the country’s worst water pollution? Taylor and other activists aren’t holding their breath. Computer-generated data estimates new programs have prevented thousands of pounds of phosphorus runoff. But water samples from grassroots groups continue to show persistently high concentrations of dissolved phosphorus, which many don’t see going away anytime soon. 

The second of six reports in Circle of Blue’s penetrating assessment of the causes and cures to harmful algal blooms explores BMPs, why they don’t work, and where we go from here.

In A Year of Water Quality Reckoning, National Imperative is Impeded

Tom Van Wagner has a vision for what’s possible in Lenawee County for choking off phosphorus discharges from farm fields. His message? Row crop farmers can substantially reduce phosphorus fertilizer use by applying liquid manure much more carefully, and at times, not at all. 

It’s a tough sell. Production is a top priority. Van Wagner, a respected farm specialist with so many allies that he was named chairman of the Lenawee County Farm Bureau, knows that just as important is the storied independence of farmers, their suspicion of new messages and outsiders, their intransigence. Most farmers have not climbed aboard simply because they don’t have to. Federal and state laws give farmers and their wastes special treatment, and ask little more than that producers voluntarily take responsibility for the sharp increases in the level of nutrients pouring off of farm fields. 

But even if farmers do cut applications, it doesn’t necessarily mean less phosphorus is draining into water. Decades of fertilizer over application has left legacy phosphorus in soil. Like pouring water on a saturated sponge, phosphorus not taken up by plants or absorbed in soil dissolves into reactive phosphorus, the form favored by cyanobacteria that produce toxic blooms. 

Farmers who have invested in the technology and practices Van Wagner advocates for know that applying less phosphorus saves money and doesn’t necessarily lower yields or harvests. But his projects are encountering an impediment that is endemic to all farm conservation programs in Michigan and the Great Lakes states. Not enough farmers want to participate. He estimates that less than 10 percent of Lenawee County’s farmers even embrace best management practices.

The third report in Circle of Blue’s six-part series, “Danger Looms Where Toxic Algae Blooms,” explores the loopholes in the 1972 Clean Water Act, and the exponential growth of the agricultural industry that have caused a resurgence in toxic algae blooms across the Great Lakes Region.

Dry: A Weekly Western Drought Digest — September 13, 2022
 

More than 114 million people live in areas experiencing moderate drought or worse. Here's what you need to know:

• As of September, nearly 37 percent of the U.S. and Puerto Rico are in drought, down five percentage points in the last month. 
• Reclamation announces Utah’s Flaming Gorge Reservoir stores enough water for only two more emergency releases.
• Queen Creek, Arizona, will buy water from farmers on the Colorado River. 
• Drought conditions slow agricultural production for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

A man wades through waist-high water in Sindh province of Pakistan. Photo © UNICEF/Asad Zaidi

HotSpots H2O: As Floods Subside, Pakistan’s Economy Is on a Knife-Edge

Months after Pakistan baked under a record-setting heat wave, relentless monsoon rains are the latest threat to a climate-vulnerable country that is reeling from disaster after disaster. 

Abounding rainfall in recent weeks is only one part of the peril. With damages exceeding tens of billions of dollars, flooding has affected one in seven Pakistanis. Some 630,000 people have been displaced, and 1,300 have died — hundreds of them children.

Aid groups say all signs point to food shortages. A U.N. humanitarian agency estimates that at least 3.6 million acres of crops and orchards across the country have been affected by floodwaters. In the hard-hit agricultural province of Sindh, this season’s cotton production is down by 45 percent, dates by 85 percent, and rice by 31 percent.

Recovery from relentless monsoon rains in Pakistan will cost anywhere from $10 billion to $30 billion, a price tag that will strain the country’s economic recovery during a politically unsettled period.

Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
 

What’s Up With Water—September 13, 2022

Tune into What's Up With Water for your need to know news of the world's water on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and SoundCloud.

Featured coverage from this week's episode of What's Up With Water looks at:

• In less than two months, world leaders will convene in Egypt for the latest round of international climate talks. Diplomats are already outlining the agenda for COP27, which is expected to go beyond traditional deliberations about ways to limit heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions.
• In the United States, new research reveals the inseparable bond between water and energy production in the fossil fuel industry. A state-sponsored study found that oil and gas extraction in the Permian basin of West Texas is expected to produce about 588 million gallons of wastewater each day for nearly four decades.
• n Jackson, Mississippi, the troubled O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant is operating once again, but city residents are still being advised to boil their water before drinking it. In late August, the treatment plant failed during heavy rains, leaving more than 150,000 people in the capital city without running water.

Consolidation of Livestock Farms Creates a Big Manure—and Nutrient–Challenge

The midpoint U.S. dairy herd in 1982 had 80 cows, while in 2007 it had 570 cows. In 1987, the number of hogs moving through a typical commercial farm each year was 1,200. By 2007, that number rose to 30,000.

In southeastern Michigan’s Lenawee County, a rise in CAFOs — there are 13 in the county in 2014, though several are not currently operating — has driven some local residents to environmental activism. Many of the CAFOs are within the River Raisin watershed, which flows into Lake Erie at Monroe, Mich., and is currently listed as a federal Area of Concern (AOC) due in part to nutrient pollution.