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WOLLITZ: Protecting Lake Erie must be done
Pure joy spreads from ear to ear on the faces of anglers preparing for a day on Lake Erie. I know. I have seen it and have worn it myself.
The joy is inspired by high expectations by thousands of Erie anglers every year. They know what’s out there — the world’s greatest walleye reefs and flats, the fabled perch schools, the smallmouth bass bonanza out on the rock ledges and the migration of steelhead trout to Erie’s tributaries every autumn.
Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes are truly valuable resources, not just to anglers, but to all of the citizens of our nation. As awesome and powerful as they appear to be, however, the Great Lakes’ environmental health teeters on a delicate balance between vigorous and vital and fouled and dying.
We must not let the Great Lakes’ health deteriorate. We’ve come too far since the days when the Cuyahoga River burned and lakeshore residents considered it folly to go fishing on the stinky, polluted water.
Clean water initiatives by the federal government, the states with Great Lakes coastlines and Canadian province of Ontario have made Erie and its sisters clean, productive and extremely fishable. It has taken a lot of work. Today, that effort is bolstered by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the $300 million it provides.
Nobody wants to visit the lake only to discover pea-soup green water that smells like a sewer. None of us are keen on fishing waters where polluted dredgings are dumped. All of us have benefited from the investment in cleaning up the Great Lakes.
But a future where algae blooms go unchecked and where Cuyahoga River sediment is dumped off the coast of Cleveland awaits us if certain measures proposed by President Trump are allowed to become policy.
The White House last week proposed a budget that would end the ban on dumping out in Lake Erie sediment dredged from the shipping channel of Cleveland harbor and the Cuyahoga River. The president’s budget also would slash the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding by 90 percent.
The proposal comes during the 50th anniversary year of the last time the Cuyahoga caught fire. A half-century of progress is put to risk by a political play.
We deserve better, and it appears that Ohio’s Congressional delegation agrees as most of our representatives in D.C. have pledged to continue fighting for Erie and the other lakes. Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman work on opposite sides of the aisle, but they recently issued a joint statement that they want to keep Lake Erie clean “and ensure the lake remains a viable resource for generations to come.”
Gov. Mike DeWine also has stepped up for Lake Erie, as he recently asked the state legislature to reserve $900 million for the battle against toxic algae blooms. They have plagued Erie in recent summers and threaten to ruin the world class fishing that we Ohioans have come to appreciate and that helps elevate the reputation of our region.
Also this week, the Ohio EPA declared Cuyahoga River fish safe to eat. That the Burning River now harbors fishable and eatable game and forage species is a remarkable testament to what can be accomplished.
We have come a long way since Lake Erie was judged to be a dead lake, but we cannot ever rest assured that the battle is over. We must remain dedicated to preserving our water quality and encourage our legislators to continue fighting with us for the future of Lake Erie.