Grand Lake St. Marys -- Ohio's largest inland body of water and a treasured recreational area -- is dying. And if you barbecued some supermarket pork over the holiday weekend, you helped contribute to this disaster, however indirectly.
The lake's 13,000 acres of water surrounded by parkland, cabins and campgrounds, is one of the leading summertime attractions in the area, which brings in some $216 million in tourist spending each year, $160 million directly from the lake, (not to mention 2,600 jobs). Now, many visitors are shunning the place like an oil-stained Alabama beach. Swimming and waterskiing are discouraged, and even boating might be a health risk.
The main problem is phosporous and other nutrients, mostly from farms, including the 15 or so animal factory farms in the lake's watershed, and nutrients from the megatons of fertilizer applied on taxpayer-subsidized corn and soybean fields. Those products then become cheap feed that keeps the factory farms humming, Big Box prices low, and summertime barbequers happy.
Factory farms, in addition to their insatiable demand for subsidized feed, also generate thousands of tons of animal waste each year, far more than the surrounding land can absorb. The manure -- in this part of Ohio, most factory farms are either pork, or "layer" (egg) operations -- is sometimes liquefied and sprayed from giant sprinklers that spew brownish-yellow water onto cropland which -- too often -- runs off into streams and ditches that feed into rivers and lakes, including Grand Lake St. Marys.
The Ohio Farm Bureau insists that most of the farms in the area are "family farms," which is true -- the majority of farms in the area not factory farms, and do no generate anywhere near the amount of nutrients that industrialized operations create. And besides, even massive factory farms (officially known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs) are usually owned by families, although they don't typically own the animals. They contract out to large corporations, sharecropper style, to raise them. The contractor is left with the problem of disposing of so much manure, not the company.
For years, nutrient levels in Grand Lake St. Marys have been rising. But only in the last three years have they gotten dangerously high, fueling algae blooms that strangulate fish, smother the water in a putrid green-and-turquoise foam, clog boat engines, foul the air with rancid odors, and emit toxins that can cause permanent health problems in people.
"We have a crisis situation," Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) said in a letter Friday to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and, tellingly, USDA Secretary Tom Vislack. "The economic viability of this region is ultimately linked to the health of this natural resource. We have reached a tipping point where the degraded nature of the lake is causing significant loss to local businesses and the total livelihood of the region."
In April 2009, levels of a toxin called microcystin were found to be extremely elevated, and the state issued a warning for people to "minimize contact" and avoid ingestion of the lake water.
And just two weeks ago, "the lake water turned a dark green color and became covered in a thick blue green scum," Strickland said, adding that state testing has also detected the presence of harmful bacteria and their associated toxins, one that attacks the liver and another that causes nerve damage.
Strickland asked the Feds for immediate environmental and economic assistance and, given the EPA's aggressive stance against farm runoff since Obama took office, his SOS will likely get some attention.
It is not logical to blame most of this mess on smaller, more sustainably run farms where animals are not packed in by the hundreds or thousands, and where there's enough land to adequately absorb the waste, thus reducing the chance of nutrient runoff.
Besides, small farms have graced this area for generations on end, and the lake did not become a Petri dish for liver toxins until now. Something has changed, and that something -- in my opinion -- is factory farming and its excess manure. And local people know it.
Local residents "say stricter regulations are needed on large farms," the Associated Press reported, "limiting when they can apply manure to their fields and how close they can plant to streams."
When I was researching my book Animal Factory - The Looming Threat of Industrial Pig, Dairy and Poultry Farms to Humans and the Environment - I came across this same situation wherever CAFOs had invaded: the tidewater area of North Carolina, the mega-dairy region of Yakima Valley, WA, or the "poultry belt" of Arkansas (whose big chicken growers like Tyson have been sued by the Oklahoma Attorney General for allowing nutrients from poultry waste to cross the border and pollute lakes and rivers).
In each case, once pristine waters had been spoiled after the CAFOs showed up.
I also spent time in western and northwestern Ohio, where property and small business owners are growing increasingly alarmed by the number of CAFOs that have been moving into the area. And I witnessed the Maumee River, choked with agricultural nutrients, which empties into Lake Erie, site of a massive and growing "dead zone."
The lake was the color of cappuccino, and there were warning signs about dangerous bacteria in the water. And yet, families with small children were still splashing around in the murky, foamy liquid.
I wondered if they knew that factory farming upriver was contributing to this slow death of a great lake, and if they knew that their barbequed chicken, egg salad sandwiches and pork sausages were likely produced at factory farms that leach nutrients into waterways that belong to the public.
We all contribute to factory farming every time we reach for the cheapest meat, milk and eggs at the supermarket. That bacon you had for breakfast might have come from a CAFO in the Lake St. Marys area -- or else fed on discount corn grown within the watershed.
Even if you are a strict vegan, your tax dollars still go to sustain this unsustainable system. So unless you are out there actively lobbying to kill taxpayer subsidies in the Farm Bill, don't think you get completely off the hook, either.
Which brings us back to the devastated economy of Grand Lake St. Marys - already buffeted by post-industrial job losses - and its desperate and rightfully angry people.
I know this question will not make me popular around the lake, but I do wonder how many residents there enjoyed some nice, juicy, barbequed pork ribs on the Fourth of July that were on special down at the discount center.
Like I said, we are all responsible for factory farm pollution, even those who suffer most from its excesses.
David Kirby is author of "Animal Factory - The Looming Threat of Industrial Pork, Dairy and Poultry Operations to Humans and the Environment" (St. Martin's Press).
Victoria Moran: Veg and the City: My Journey to Ethical Veganism
This situation is absolutely shameful. Where is OEPA? Are they going to wait until Lake Erie gets this bad before they intervene? Where is ODNR? What do I pay my hunting and fishing license fees for? This is ridiculous. Farming practices have changed radically and that fact has to be a substantial part of the problem...there's no ducking that.
How long has the algal toxin been in Grand Lake St. Marys?
The algal species that has the potential to produce toxins has likely been present in the lake for
a long time. Ohio EPA does not know how long algal toxins have been present.
How long has Ohio known algal toxins were present?
To assist U.S. EPA with a national study of inland lake water quality, Ohio EPA sampled several Ohio lakes. It took samples from Grand Lake St. Marys on Aug. 30, 2007, as part of the National Lake Survey.
Samples were delivered to a U.S. EPA-approved lab and results were sent by the lab to U.S. EPA.
U.S. EPA anticipates releasing a report of the national study in late 2009. However, Ohio EPA requested
and on April 27, 2009, received microcystin data from the 2007 sampling effort. One sample from Grand Lake St. Marys contained 78 ppb of microcystin, which prompted Ohio EPA to begin additional analysis.
So the algal has been there for a long time. So what? 10, 20, 50 years?
And they just started testing in 2007 for the toxins? Since 2007. So the toxins and the alge may have been there for a long time.
Thank you for drawing attention to the issues on Grand Lake St. Marys. As
you so aptly noted, everyone in the Grand Lake St. Marys watershed bears
some responsibility for problems that have led to the growth of human
toxin-producing cyanobacteria in the lake: From producers and
mega-producers to legislators, enforcement agencies and consumers.
As Vice President of Grand Lake's Lake Improvement Association, I am pleased to
see that this issue has received national attention via your blog on The
Huffington Post. Even more encouraging is the fact that the issue is
finally being recognized and those who have the power to effect change are
beginning to give Ohio's Other Great Lake the attention those who depend on
it deserve. We all contribute to the problem; therefore, we must all work
together to solve it.
I personally invite you and all of your readers to visit the official Save
Grand Lake St. Marys website, www.savegrandlake.com, to learn more about the
current efforts to restore Grand Lake and to join the cause. It is our hope
that we will not only be able to return Grand Lake St. Marys to glory as a
vital economic booster, wildlife habitat, and recreational hub; but to also
be able to develop a model which can be followed to clean and restore
similar watersheds nationwide.
Thank you,
Mark Piening
VP, Lake Improvement Association, Grand Lake St. Marys
www.savegrandlake.com
While I would agree that the spillway seems poorly designed (due to no "off" switch), I don't believe that it has as much to do with the problem as the inch of manure that is spread on each field right before a rain. You link to the spillway is weak at best. The influx of our regulation avoiding "family factory farms" has much more to do with the problem than fertilizers on lawns or the spillway. If these "family farms" were forced to combine the land that each family member owns, they would no longer be considered "family farms."
Seeing the conditions most chickens live in now is heart breaking. Buying strictly grass-fed animals is the way to go. Or better yet, raise your own. Most people don't have the courage to cull their animals and get someone else to do it... But it's better than continuing to support the current CAFO system.
75 million bison once dominated the Great Plains. The Great Plains watershed eventually empties into the Mississippi River. If ALL ruminant (and other animal) life that poops contributes to the destruction of waterways, there shouldn't have been any life left in the Gulf of Mexico by the time Europeans settled in North America.
Ruminants and grass get along great. The grass feeds the cow, and the cow helps aerate the grass by stepping on it, and the cow also fertilizes the grass with its manure, which by the way does not give off methane like waste lagoons do.
There's too much riding on human health to make grand sweeping statements about the virtues of vegan diets, which are new in the human evolutionary experience and, according at least to anecdotal data, do not have good health outcomes in the long run. The author of this piece did not go there but I know at least some of the commenters did (won't read them, I don't need the blood pressure spike this afternoon).
One good thing if we ban CAFO operations and encourage pastured production is that it will REQUIRE the breaking up of huge agribusiness operations. Win-win all around.
This is yet another reason to aggressively lobby to end this unsustainable system.
Organic methods require more tilling, which causes more erosion and run-off. All that tilling requires diesel fuel, which makes the carbon footprint larger for organic operations. The heavy use of manure fertilizers increases water pollution.
Organic farming is not the reason Grand Lake is a mess. However, organic farming would make the problem worse, not better. Consumers need to understand that organic methods do a great job of producing high-quality foods for upscale consumers. Environmentally, it is a disaster.
Where did you get such a strange notion? It's hard to imagine how someone could accidentally pick up an idea as false as this.