Algae in lake part of wider problem

Associated Press

CELINA, Ohio

The toxic blue-green algae choking Ohio’s largest inland lake is part of a much wider farm-pollution problem that a state official says must be addressed.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Sunday that nitrogen and phosphorous in manure and commercial fertilizers wash off farmland and into streams and lakes including Grand Lake St. Mary’s and Lake Erie.

Researchers say the fertilizers feed large blooms of toxic algae in western Lake Erie, The Dispatch reported in the first segment of a three-part series.

The poisonous algae has led state officials to warn people to avoid direct contact with the water in the 13,500-acre Grand Lake St. Marys in western Ohio.

Farm pollution, including manure, herbicides and pesticides, affects waterways from Lake Erie to the Ohio River and nationwide from the Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the newspaper said.

“It’s a problem we can no longer ignore,” said Robert Boggs, director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture. “We have to be very aggressive and assertive in our way of handling it.”

No state or federal laws limit how much manure, fertilizers or pesticides can wash off Ohio farms during storms, the newspaper said.