The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is working on an assessment of the 2015 western Lake Erie algae bloom to see how it stacks up against the 2011 record bloom, one of the agency’s top scientists told The Blade on Tuesday.
Rick Stumpf, an oceanographer for NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science in Maryland, said the assessment is coming along but said scientists want to go through satellite images and other data multiple times to get a better handle on the volume of biomass and how far it spread through the summer and early fall.
NOAA revised its earlier prediction upward in July, stating the 2015 bloom could become the second-worst on record or even rival the 2011 bloom as the worst after record June rain fell in northwest Ohio, saturating tributaries with fertilizer runoff.
Though large, the 2015 bloom did not produce nearly the level of toxin that some officials feared, though. Scientists have said there is no direct correlation between the size of a bloom and its toxicity.
In other algae-related news, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality released more details about how it hopes to achieve a 40 percent reduction in phosphorus inputs to western Lake Erie by 2025, a goal shared by Ohio and others.
The Michigan DEQ said it is taking comments on its proposal until Dec. 7.
The agency released a six-prong strategy that calls for reductions in Detroit Water and Sewerage Department discharges to be maintained, tighter discharge limits for the Wayne County Downriver Wastewater Treatment Plant, collaborating more closely with Ohio and Indiana on a tristate plan to reduce Maumee River nutrients, trying to better understand causes of algae in Michigan waters, trying to better understand the role of invasive mussels, and better understanding River Raisin nutrients.
From 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. today, the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments will hold its first Water Quality Council meeting in the grand lobby of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Plaza near downtown Toledo. The council was created following the reorganization of TMACOG’s environmental planning department, a move to put more focus on water quality.
Algae also will be one of the key issues at the University of Toledo college of law’s 15th annual Great Lakes Water Conference being held Friday inside UT’s McQuade Law Auditorium, starting at 8:30 a.m.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) is the keynote speaker. Other topics include the controversy over petroleum pipelines near valuable water resources, laws pertaining to wetlands, an Ohio Supreme Court decision related to waters designated as impaired, and a proposal to divert Lake Michigan water to Waukesha, Wis. The latter is the first test case of the Great Lakes regional water compact that took the eight Great Lakes states years to create.
Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.
First Published November 4, 2015, 5:00 a.m.
