The thought of algae conjures up an image of slimy green gunk covering water no one would want to touch. Or a pool not properly maintained. Or a putrid smell. However, many fail to recognize the severity of an algae bloom’s impact on human and animal health, the environment, and even a region’s economy. The people of Ohio know full well the damage an algae bloom can wreak because of recent firsthand experience. Lake Erie, especially the western portion, experiences an algal bloom each year and has for decades due to large farming populations and climate change factors.
Since the early 2000s, these blooms have continually increased in size and severity, so much so that the National Weather Service forecasts the blooms each year. In August of 2014, a bloom found its way into the water intake pipe for Toledo, Ohio and its surrounding communities, leaving the population without the ability to consume tap water for several days. Even boiling the water could not eliminate the toxin. Truly preventing future blooms will require a comprehensive approach that continues research, implements legislative regulation, and attacks all causes, including farm runoff as well as climate change.
Not all algae blooms are toxic, but even scientists fail to understand why different forms of algae develop in certain bodies of water. According to Tom Henry, a writer for the The Blade, Lake Erie experiences an algae variation with the existence of the cyanobacterias planktothrix in Sandusky Bay and microcystis dominating the rest of the lake’s western area. Both cyanobacterias produce the toxin microcystin, which affects the liver and is “more potent than arsenic and saxitoxin, a toxin associated with shellfish poisoning that can paralyze and kill humans.”
However, they differ in their responses to phosphorus and environmental conditions, and even their green appearances. Planktothrix commonly plagues the Maumee River, a large tributary in the Toledo area, growing “quite well even under low-phosphorus conditions, as long as it has an abundance of nitrogen to feed off.” This complicates any solution or course of action against the algae. One method has the potential to eliminate one while not impacting or even encouraging the growth of the other cyanobacteria. The two primary variations of algae plaguing northern Ohio’s portion of Lake Erie are not well understood. Algae blooms overall require further research to better prevent toxin exposure and its negative impacts.
Algae blooms have become increasingly common and problematic in fresh and saltwater around the world. Causes of these environmental events include the introduction of nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, warm water temperatures, stagnation, and climate change. Lake Erie’s characteristics and conditions particularly cultivate the blooms. A large farming population borders the lake, and the EPA has found that the stormwater and runoff contains both high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen coming from “animal manure and chemical fertilizers.”
According to The Earth Observatory, Lake Erie cultivates these blooms because it is “the southernmost and shallowest of the Great Lakes.” This allows the water to “warm quickly and the water column [to] stagnate in layers, without much mixing to distribute heat or nutrients.” Additionally, during the more threatening algal blooms, “strong winds can drive blooms at the water’s surface down . . . where water intake pipes can draw contaminated water into systems serving municipalities.” Even with this known information, scientists do not fully understand each of these causes, and therefore the behaviors of planktothrix and microcystis remain mysteries.
All these misunderstood factors and numerous causes matter to northern Ohioans because algae blooms threaten human health, the environment, and the region’s economy. Algae blooms create dead zones in the water by drastically reducing the amount of oxygen available to aquatic life and producing harmful nutrients. Killing wildlife and creating large toxic patches of algae not only has a large impact on the ecological system, it also costs the U.S. almost fifty million dollars a year by impacting the fishing industry, tourism, and public health.
The direct harm on human health appears even more important since a public water supply often affects every person in the surrounding areas, including children and the elderly who are at a much higher risk of experiencing harmful effects. Bathing in toxin-contaminated water, such as Toledo’s municipal water during the 2014 contamination, poses health risks like rashes and irritations. Moreover, the EPA warns that drinking the water can result in more serious complications such as respiratory problems, stomach or liver illness, and even neurological effects. Algae blooms, still shrouded in scientific mystery and misunderstanding, suffocate and poison wildlife, extend deep impacts into the economy, and dangerously affect human health through contamination of water supplies.
Algae blooms have harmful effects that extend well beyond simple lake aesthetics. Toledo and many other communities along the northern edge of Ohio depend on Lake Erie for their water supply, as Figure 1 illustrates.
These populations have no choice but to deal with the algae’s effects on their everyday lives just as any other ‘natural disaster’ requires. Each year, the bloom appears again and again, increasing in size since the 2000s, and in 2014 Toledo residents found themselves in a terrible situation. That year, the wind and currents concentrated the algae in exactly the wrong spot, “surrounding the Toledo municipal water intake” as depicted by Figure 2.
Even though more severe algae blooms have formed in the years since then, that fateful year of 2014 receives special attention due to its “more direct human impact” and “its location in Maumee Bay.” The 2014 bloom in Toledo happened in the right place at the right time with man-made and natural causes to create a perfect storm of human impact, one that could happen again with any future bloom.
There are many possible solutions and strategies for prevention. Thus far. organizations and governing bodies have primarily taken the route of continuous monitoring and research. The Great Lakes Center for Fresh Waters and Human Health “brings together scientists doing research on the Great Lakes with those in biology and human health to study processes that affect millions of people.” Research from such organizations advances prevention efforts through breakthroughs in technology and attention paid to the problem itself.
Due to lack of action legislatively after many years, the people of Toledo took things into their own hands. They recently passed a measure affording Lake Erie “the legal rights that a human being or corporation would have” and Toledo the right to act as a legal guardian. Solution efforts so far have dabbled mostly in research with only talk arising about legislation. This is a start and has the potential to effect real change with continuation and further, more dedicated action.
A few years of research and talk among politicians could never tackle such an enormous problem in an enormous Great Lake. While technology and information has advanced since the 2014 events, experts still have more ground to cover. Resolving such a problem necessitates understanding of the entire situation. This means researchers must continue to study every single cause and effect, the nature of bloom growth, and potential hazards.
According to a study examining nitrogen cycling in Lake Erie’s Sandusky Bay, “a more nuanced understanding of the drivers” of harmful algal blooms “will allow for better prediction and management of blooms in Lake Erie and other ecosystems.” Further research of these algal blooms, mainly the nutrients supporting them and other conditions that cultivate them, will assist in prevention efforts. No one fully understands the processes of the cyanobacterias in Lake Erie, so scientists must be persistent so that authorities will ultimately take the best-known course of action.
Unfortunately, little has been done since 2014 to solve the algae bloom problem. The most action taken arguably consists of Toledo citizens voting to give the lake ‘personhood status,’ only resulting in an uptick in public attention and slightly more funding. When it comes to excessive nutrients in fertilizer speeding up algae growth, universal changes in farming techniques need to be implemented and enforced. It has taken us decades of agricultural development to reach this point, and farmers will need a greater incentive to restrict their fertilizer usage.
The next step in eliminating the problem should be policies that require farmers to create detailed fertilization reduction plans. Water management experts point to these kinds of management policies as being a “practical first step toward jumpstarting conservation efforts.” Those mainly producing the fertilizer containing nitrogen and phosphorus so damaging to Lake Erie’s ecosystem and economy should act out of concern for human health at minimum. Beyond this, collective change requires measures brought forth through a governing body.
Other conditions also influence the growth of these blooms. Warmer waters and stagnation arise from both Lake Erie’s shallowness, an unalterable characteristic, and climate change’s warming of the earth and its alteration of storm patterns. These problems are impossible for Toledo to solve alone. More must be done to help solve the already vastly complex problem of climate change.
Climate change especially acts as a vehicle for runoff transport by increasing storm intensities, which add to the terrestrial runoff that feeds algae blooms. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that climate change alone “might cause harmful algal blooms to occur more often, in more waterbodies and to be more intense.” Ohio must address all known sources of algae blooms in formulating preventative measures, to include similar situations throughout the U.S. Otherwise, they will fail to find and implement a real, lasting solution.
This implementation will not come easily. Dealing only with farm runoff regulation, even after 2014 events, is still an ongoing process legislatively. So much so that the people of Toledo tried to take the work into their own hands with Lake Erie’s ‘personhood status.’ Legislative bodies recognizing and actively working toward a solution to the broad concept of climate change would take even longer.
Once acknowldegment happens, next would come management and how to accomplish such a large task. Farmers would have to change their practices, and sacrifice “for a collective benefit at an individual cost.” To address climate change, every single person would have to do the same thing in their everyday lives. A measure regulating any given person’s use of an air conditioner or a car would be practically unenforceable and extremely unpopular among American voters. Regardless, thinking about the long term requires a solution that considers just that, not the comforts of today or what will make someone the most money.
Environmental problems often plague areas because of human activities, or at least the human activities escalate natural processes. The communities in Ohio around Lake Erie’s southern edge further algal blooms simply because of the region’s land use and agricultural industry practices. Toledo specifically experiences the impacts of such land utilization, and more than just poor lake aesthetics affect the community. These algal blooms can eliminate aquatic species in the water, cause detrimental health effects if humans consume algae-contaminated water, and hinder the economy of communities due to tourism decreases.
2014 marked an unfortunate miracle when the year’s algae bloom made its way into the Toledo municipal water intake, shutting down Toledo and surrounding communities for three days. Five years since the disaster, the blooms still threaten Ohio each year while politicians fail to pass legislation. What does pass or emerges in discussion solely focuses on farm runoff, just one of the causes that have continually increased the size and severity of the algal bloom each year. These blooms will not simply fade out of existence if ignored long enough. Real change must come from further understanding through research, recognition through regulation, and action to combat all causes of the harmful toxins that threaten Ohio’s wildlife, human health, and economy.
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Sydney Walker is originally from Colorado. She studies both civil engineering and film at The Ohio State University. She hopes one day to combine her passions of service and engineering in building a sustainable future. She enjoys reading fiction, traveling often, and painting nature scenes.
