toledoblade.com --

YOU can tell it's an election year and that the environment rates high among voters. Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine, co-chairman of the Great Lakes Task Force, had the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog agency, check out the Environmental Protection Agency's progress in cleaning up contaminated sediments in the Great Lakes Basin, including four still-polluted Ohio river regions.

Its conclusions have spurred Mr. DeWine and Michigan Democrat Sen. Carl Levin to seek more funding for Great Lakes cleanup, and prompted Mr. Levin and Democratic colleague Sen. Debbie Stabenow to demand EPA action.

The federal government had pledged that four dirty river regions in Ohio - the Maumee (which includes the Ottawa River and Swan and Duck creeks), the Ashtabula, the Cuyahoga, and the Black rivers - would be cleaned up within deadlines set by international treaties. Now it appears that there are no remediation plans that disclose what must be done and by when.

What has ailed these waters historically has been agricultural runoff - manure, fertilizer, and pesticides - in rural areas, and industrial dumping and improperly treated sewage in and around cities.

So appalled were Messrs. Mr. DeWine and Levin by the lack of progress that they have co-sponsored legislation authorizing up to $50 million a year to the EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago for grants to some 26 areas in need of cleanup in the Great Lakes Basin. That office is now funded at $14.5 million with $3.2 million for state grants, both piddling sums.

Senator Levin - who co-chairs the Senate Great Lakes Task Force with Mr. DeWine - and Ms. Stabenow have asked EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman to commit more money and more people to the task.

The GAO puts some of the blame on citizen advisory groups at each site for not doing their jobs, but it suggested that the task was also beyond them given the inadequacy of staffs and funds available.

It put major blame on the doorstep of the EPA itself, which in 1992 - where was the Clinton oversight? - decentralized responsibility for 26 remedial action plans but left no headquarters staff to oversee the groups' work, prod them along, or clear roadblocks.

For years the EPA hadn't devoted adequate authority, resources, and responsibility to the affected areas that must be cleaned up if the Great Lakes Basin is to get healthy and stay that way. Lacking remedial action plans, it has no idea what remains to be done.

This culture of laziness that has infused both Democratic and Republican administrations vis-à-vis Great Lakes water quality is senseless and shortsighted. These reservoirs are the largest collective source of fresh water in the world. They deserve special attention.

Hopefully Mr. DeWine will bring his colleagues from Michigan and elsewhere aboard his legislative effort, as well as his Ohio colleague and fellow Republican, Sen. George Voinovich. EPA mishandling of its Great Lakes mission is a national scandal, and so is the time it has taken to arouse legislative interest.

Permanent Link