One Solution To Great Lakes Nutrient Troubles
March 7, 2015 
A bloom in the lake’s Western Basin made news during the summer of 2014.
The only way to avoid regulation is to solve this situation ourselves,” says Dr. Jeffrey Reutter, director of Central Lake Erie Area Research at The Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory. The “situation” being the nutrient run-off from farm fields that has contributed to toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie over the past several years.
A bloom in the lake’s Western Basin made news during the summer of 2014, when 500,000 residents in and around Toledo, OH, were warned not to use their water for several days, even for non-drinking purposes.
The problem has been growing since the mid-1990s, as more dissolved phosphorus has made its way into Lake Erie via the rivers that drain into it, says Reutter. The blooms have driven home the need for growers along these routes to reduce the amount of phosphorus entering waterways.
Enlisting The 4Rs
The latest blooms have also come at a time when the tenets of the 4Rs of Nutrient Stewardship (Right Source, Right Rate, Right Place, Right Time) have gained national attention due to educational efforts, in part, by The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) and International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI).
Enter Carrie Vollmer-Sanders, Western Lake Erie Project Director with the Nature Conservancy and a northwest Ohio farmer. In 2013, she challenged TFI, IPNI and retailers at various meetings with the question of how were they proving that they were actually implementing the 4Rs. “How was what they were talking about different from a PR campaign,” she asked. “So we started talking about a consistency program for retailers.”
Such was the genesis of the Western Lake Erie Basin 4R Certification Program, launched in March 2014. A wide array of stakeholders came together in the effort, including the Ohio Agribusiness Association (OABA) and many of its member companies; The Nature Conservancy; other non-governmental organizations; several government entities; and The Ohio State University.
A science-based, private non-profit with a history in the Western Basin watershed, The Nature Conservancy offered a solutions-oriented style to facilitate the program’s formation, says Vollmer-Sanders. “We were able to help the discussions along, even the difficult ones, in a way that was not combative,” she describes. “We also made sure that other environmental groups that were not sitting around the table knew what was going on.” The Conservancy’s work in carbon markets and forest stewardship and its experiences in other certification programs also proved helpful.
A Challenge For Dealers
A separate entity, the Nutrient Stewardship Council, now runs the program which covers Ohio, Michigan and Indiana, says Chris Henney, OABA president/CEO. The association administers the program, but it is governed by representatives from the Nature Conservancy, Ohio State University extension, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and ag retail. “A whole host of people serve on the Board,” explains Henney.
The certification process is rigorous. Third party auditors have been trained to evaluate retail facilities on 41 different criteria — best management practices drawn from the 4R nutrient stewardship principles.
A sampling of audit points? Don’t apply phosphorus or nitrogen on frozen or snow-covered ground; have a certified crop advisor on staff overseeing all nutrient recommendations; and soil test customers’ fields and base fertility recommendations on those results.
Since its inception, 64 retailers have signed on to the 4R program, and three have earned certification: The Morral Co.’s Caledonia facility, Legacy Farmers’ Custar facility, and The Andersons’ Fremont location.
“Nobody sailed through the process,” says Henney. “Some of the audit reports did require some corrective actions on the part of the facilities.” Facilities that have gone through the process and have not been certified yet are working through their corrective action plans.
The question has come up as to whether gaining 4R certification will give dealers a competitive advantage with grower customers. While anecdotal evidence has been positive, The Ohio State University and OABA have been conducting a research study to quantify some of the reasons why retailers are participating — or why they’re not.
Measurable Changes Needed
OSU’s Reutter summarizes the goal of Great Lakes 4R practices with a simple question: How do we keep phosphorus and nitrogen on the field? In the case of Western Lake Erie algal blooms, he says phosphorus is the nutrient that drives the problem, but nitrogen is close behind.
“The size of the blooms is controlled by the amount of phosphorus, but often we hit a point in the summer where they become nitrogen limited,” says Reutter. “When we supply a lot of N [nitrogen] to the blooms, such as when we’d be doing a lot of sidedressing on corn, that also feeds them.” The problem intensifies if applications are not made carefully enough or are made immediately before a rain event.
Reutter and his team have determined growers need to reduce the amount of phosphorus coming off fields by 40%, to get loads in the Lake Erie down to acceptable levels. He says a key tactic is incorporating fertilizer into the soil, not just broadcasting it. “We can reduce the phosphorus coming off the field by 50% if we incorporate it,” he says. “Right there, that’s enough to solve the problem.”
Another approach is to develop best management practices that focus on reducing the amount of dissolved phosphorus (which is totally bioavailable to algae) escaping through drainage tiles, not only the particulate phosphorus that’s eroding off the surface.
Growers Not Alone
Reutter says that in addition to farm fields, confined animal feeding operations along Great Lakes’ rivers also likely play a role in phosphorus discharges, though their exact contribution hasn’t been nailed down yet. It’s a place for more research, he says.
Then too, in fields, regulators need to treat manure and fertilizer the same, says Reutter. “It’s absurd that we have different laws for them,” he believes. “The algae don’t care where the phosphorus comes from.”
Poor sewage treatment and faulty septic tanks may be adding to the contamination problem as well. In fact, when Lake Erie first experienced major phosphorus-caused algal blooms in the early 1970s, sewage treatment plants were tapped as the main culprit. Plant improvements reduced the amount of phosphorus going into the lake by 60%. “We hit target loads in the mid-1980s. The lake responded, and we became the walleye capital of the world,” says Reutter.
While changes at sewage treatment plants were difficult and expensive, “we only needed to deal with about 20 facilities,” says Reutter. “Today you’re probably dealing with 15,000 farmers in the Maumee drainage area alone. So you’ve got a lot more people that need to take action,” he says. “If everybody waits for somebody else to do it, we’ll be regulated.”
Another way to protect drinking water is to help water treatment plant managers get toxins out of incoming supplies, says Reutter. “We’re spending a lot of time on that as well,” he notes.
Not Unique
Harmful algal blooms are by no means unique to Lake Erie, though “no one else in the Great Lakes has this problem anywhere near the level we do,” says Reuter. He cites problems in Saginaw Bay and Green Bay.
The Nature Conservancy is working with farmers, government agencies and agribusiness in that region to help implement conservation practices to slow the flow of water to the bays as well as reduce nutrients leaving fields. “We have developed a precision conservation tool that identifies the best places to put various conservation practices to make an impact on the health of the streams,” says Vollmer-Sanders. “This kind of targeting is unheard of, but critical if we are going to spend Farm Bill dollars in a way that helps solve large problems like harmful algal blooms.”
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