While much of the focus since last August’s Toledo water crisis has been on finding ways to reduce agricultural runoff, more immediate measures are being deployed to give western Lake Erie water-treatment plant operators a better chance against algal toxins this summer.

Several algae-detection sensors and buoys that weren’t there a year ago will give real-time data on a number of water-quality factors, such as dissolved oxygen, temperature, turbidity, wind speed, weather, and other conditions. Most of the data will be generated near Toledo’s water-intake crib, the Lake Erie islands, and Sandusky, but the information will be used by several area water plants, area universities, and a cross-section of state and federal agencies that monitor lake conditions.

Data generated by at least two buoys will be posted online for the public as it becomes available.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is developing an early-warning indicator system to help detect algal blooms, based on satellite data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The U.S. EPA said it will be able to notify water-plant managers of changes in water quality almost as they occur through a mobile app.

NOAA has been analyzing satellite data on algal blooms since 2002. According to U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) the federal government has committed $3.6 million to the collaborative effort among the agencies for stronger satellite surveillance and analysis.

“The water conditions that our region faced last summer show major weaknesses in our early-detection and response systems for algal blooms,” Miss Kaptur said.

Suzette Kimball, acting USGS director, said harmful algal blooms “have emerged as a significant public health and economic issue that requires extensive scientific investigation.”

Algae costs the U.S. economy at least $64 million a year in additional water-treatment, loss of recreational water usage, and lower property values, the agencies said.

The Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center is taking bids for a research project that will attempt to quantify more specifically what Toledo’s economy lost when water was deemed undrinkable for the metro area’s 500,000 water customers the first weekend of last August, bringing area restaurants and many water-related businesses to a standstill during one of the summer’s busiest weekends.

Several of the collaborative efforts to track algae — not only in Ohio, but also in other parts of the world — will be aired during a major symposium at Bowling Green State University today and Tuesday.

Participation in the workshop is by invitation only, but the public is invited to an open forum from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in 101 Olscamp Hall, sponsored by NOAA.

Rick Stumpf, an oceanographer from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science in Silver Spring, Md., will be one of today’s speakers. Mr. Stumpf is the lead researcher behind the federal government’s western Lake Erie algae-forecasting system, which began in 2012.

Presentations on Tuesday are scheduled to be made by Rainer Kurmayer of the University Innsbruck in Austria, Petra Visser of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and Boqiang Qin of the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology in China.

BGSU received a major grant to offer an event that helps put the Toledo water crisis into a national and global perspective. Domestic experts outside of the Great Lakes region include ones from Tennessee, California, Iowa, North Carolina, and Oregon.

One of the organizers, George Bullerjahn, a BGSU algae researcher, has said the goal is to get people to think more globally.

The University of Michigan said it will have two of its experts speak about a $250,000, 11-member research project aimed at detecting not only algal blooms, but more importantly, the concentration of toxins within them. Not all algal blooms have toxins and the size of a bloom is not necessarily in proportion to the threat.

“We know what causes these blooms: It’s nutrients from farm runoff. What we don’t fully understand is what determines whether these cyanobacterial [blue-green algae] blooms are highly toxic or not,” Gregory J. Dick, a UM marine microbiologist and oceanographer who heads up the project, said.

While scientists try to learn more about algal toxins, results of a Toledo-Lucas County Health Department report issued earlier this month suggest there continued to be anxiety among Toledo-area residents five weeks after last August’s crisis subsided.

Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed still did not trust the water coming out of their tap enough to resume drinking it on a regular basis then, according to the health department’s research.

Results showed 58.4 percent of households still were using an alternative source of water when the health department and volunteers from the American Red Cross and the Medical Reserve Corps canvassed selected blocks within Lucas County the week of Sept. 11.

Dr. David Grossman, Toledo-Lucas County health commissioner, said that is “obviously” not a good thing.

But, he said, the results give health officials a better idea of what they need to do to “educate people on some of the factors as to what happens during a water alert.”

Using Census data, the study identified 647 households to approach. Workers interviewed 171 people. The data was compiled into a 44-page report called a Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response.

Samantha Eitniear, bio-informatics analyst with the department, said a sample of 171 people is considered “statistically sound” for Lucas County. The report is online at lucascountyhealth.com.

Among other findings:

● About 16.2 percent of households claimed to have people with one or more health issues they believed were related to the advisory.

● About 9.9 percent of households claimed to have one or more mental health issues they believed were related to the advisory.

● The vast majority of households were able to obtain an alternative source of water within a day, despite long lines and local stores running low on bottled water.

The report recommends area officials promote better education about water risks and preparedness, and identify more efficient ways to get emergency water “particularly to vulnerable populations.”

The local health department said it did the research in conjunction with the Ohio Department of Health, with technical assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Grossman said the findings will help his department better prepare for this summer’s algae.

Toledo alone is spending $5.1 million to make its Collins Park Water Treatment Plant better prepared to fend off algae. Those short-term measures were recently announced by Warren Henry, an engineer the city hired to help prevent a repeat of its water crisis. They include a quadrupling of potassium permanganate at the city’s water intake and a quadrupling of activated carbon at its low-service pump station. More activated carbon also will be used inside the treatment plant and there will be more frequent removal of settled sludge, Mr. Henry said.

“We have some early-warning indicators now that we didn’t have in 2014,” Mr. Henry told 100 people at the annual Lake Erie Waterkeeper conference in late March.

Those $5.1 million in short-term measures are in addition to $264 million of plant improvements nearing completion.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published April 13, 2015, 4:00 a.m.