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posted by LaminatorX on Monday August 04 2014, @09:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the Don't-Put-in-Bay dept.

Most have probably heard about the toxic contamination of Toledo Ohio's water system due to an Algae Bloom. Even "Boil orders" aren't effective at removing the residual toxin even though boiling will kill the algae. The city has had to truck in water from all over the midstates area.

Some of us in high school in the late 60s learned that "Lake Erie was Dead." It became something of an environmental rallying cry of the times, and lead to the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Then by 80s the lake had largely recovered, due to intensive management, as reported by EPA in a 1984 Study.(pdf).

Here we go again. After a couple decades of lax vigilance and warmer temperatures the lake is full of algae bloom again.

The amount of phosphorus going into the lake has risen every year since the mid-1990s. "We're right back to where we were in the '70s," said Jeff Reutter, head of the Ohio Sea Grant research lab.

Increased farm runoff, and municipal sewage sludge are the current culprits according to scientists. But warming temperatures also play a part as the lake is so shallow that it has no way to handle this much nutrient build up, and most of it stays in the lake from year to year.

Banning the spread of manure on frozen or snow-covered ground was recommended by the US/Canadian International Joint Commission last year, along with the forced reduction of fertilizer use in general.

Will that be enough to control blooms in the face of increasing temperatures over the coming years?

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Monday August 04 2014, @10:49AM

    by BsAtHome (889) on Monday August 04 2014, @10:49AM (#77140)

    The fact that the pollution happens /again/ is a testimony to both very bad resource management and head-in-sand politics from both the people who dump the stuff directly/indirectly into the lake and the official organs that are supposed to ensure environmental sanity.

    It takes 10..15 years to kill off the environment and another 10..15 years for the lake to self-regulate the water quality, which is apparently too long a period for elected officials to take steps /before/ shit happens. The industrial system will always keep on expanding until it destroys itself, unless clear and hard limits set.

    It also shows that water is one of _the_most_precious_ resource available to us. Destroy that resource and you destroy your existence.

    • (Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday August 04 2014, @11:21AM

      by Dunbal (3515) on Monday August 04 2014, @11:21AM (#77150)

      What is the population around the lake today compared to the population around the lake in the 1960's? It stands to reason that even if you take drastic measures, increasing land use overall over time will eventually bring you right back to where you started. Overpopulation is the real problem here, and our addiction to "growth". At one point municipalities have to stop zoning new lands and "expanding their tax base", and governments have to realize that it simply will not go on forever. Public policy should not be a matter of forcing everyone to make do with less so that there can be more people - which only delays problems. It should be about discouraging the creation of more people. There is no shortage of humans.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday August 04 2014, @11:38AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 04 2014, @11:38AM (#77156) Journal

        Public policy should not be a matter of forcing everyone to make do with less so that there can be more people - which only delays problems. It should be about discouraging the creation of more people. There is no shortage of humans.

        And what do you prefer: at birth [wikipedia.org] or at an early retirement [anvari.org]?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Dunbal on Monday August 04 2014, @12:54PM

          by Dunbal (3515) on Monday August 04 2014, @12:54PM (#77183)

          I prefer education. It's a fact that highly educated people tend to have fewer children and far later in life. But of course you first have to admit that there is a problem before you can deal with the problem.

          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Monday August 04 2014, @05:24PM

            by LoRdTAW (3755) on Monday August 04 2014, @05:24PM (#77281) Journal

            The far later in life part is not because of education but a side effect of the education. Debt, high living cost and other factors push marriage far into the horizon. Both of my parents hold masters degrees. They were married by 26 and had kids at 30. For them 30 was later in life for kids compared to their parents who were married by their early 20's. Now people in my peer group are marrying around 30 and having kids at 35. Some feel that they now don't want kids any more and can only really afford one or two because they have to worry about college, clothing, health care etc. It's getting to the point where the cost of living will push the intelligent into extinction or start a regression in education.

        • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday August 04 2014, @04:10PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Monday August 04 2014, @04:10PM (#77257)

          Heh, just played a game of SMAC for the first time in ages this last weekend. Nice :)

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by BsAtHome on Monday August 04 2014, @11:56AM

        by BsAtHome (889) on Monday August 04 2014, @11:56AM (#77163)

        The late 60'ties and 70'ties were strong in environmental change after too much pollution that was just too obvious to ignore. That gave rise to the environmental awareness movements and the governments acted after much pressure(*). From the mid 80'ties there was a very hard push-back from the industrial and conservative spectrum that "environmentalists are bad" and "greed is good". This setup a new wave of "do now, problems, who cares", which really took up speed in the 90'ties. Hence the time-line of the water (environment) problems are parallel the societal and political changes, offset by about 10..15 years.

        The population in that area increased in the decades following 1970, but also increased in the decades following 1990. However, the rules of engagement changed, where the former was more environmentally aware than the latter. The increase in population is not a the sole problem, although a significant complicating factor. You can still be environmentally sane with higher population densities. It just makes it (a lot) more expensive.

        The hard part is to "sell" sanity to the people. It is a hard sell to ensure that we need to do something now in order to be able to live here in 20..50 years. Most people are extremely short-sighted and _that_ is the problem.

        (*) the environmental movements were not exclusive to the US. Also European countries suffered the same problems. The time-lines of problems and solutions are nearly identical seen from after WWII til now.

        • (Score: 1) by Fry on Monday August 04 2014, @06:30PM

          by Fry (642) on Monday August 04 2014, @06:30PM (#77296)

          The late 60'ties and 70'ties

          Sixty'ties and seventy'ties? Try saying that out loud.

          Next time, just use 60's, 70's, etc. please.

          • (Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday August 04 2014, @06:37PM

            by BsAtHome (889) on Monday August 04 2014, @06:37PM (#77298)

            six-naughties and seven-naughties, simple.

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by No Respect on Monday August 04 2014, @07:59PM

            by No Respect (991) on Monday August 04 2014, @07:59PM (#77328)
            Epic fail. Decades cannot posess anything. The correct way to refer to these decades is by placing the apostrophe before the two-digit decade identifier. As in the '60s and '70s.
      • (Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Friday August 08 2014, @06:39PM

        by GmanTerry (829) on Friday August 08 2014, @06:39PM (#79030)

        "What is the population around the lake today compared to the population around the lake in the 1960's? It stands to reason that even if you take drastic measures, increasing land use overall over time will eventually bring you right back to where you started. Overpopulation is the real problem here, and our addiction to "growth". At one point municipalities have to stop zoning new lands and "expanding their tax base", and governments have to realize that it simply will not go on forever. Public policy should not be a matter of forcing everyone to make do with less so that there can be more people - which only delays problems. It should be about discouraging the creation of more people. There is no shortage of humans."

        You have solved most of the world's problems with your proposal. I have been ranting that population is the cause of most of the world's problems for 50 years. People have become a virus on this planet and we are slowly killing our host which will end in our own demise.

        --
        Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday August 04 2014, @11:47AM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 04 2014, @11:47AM (#77161)

    "showing a small but concentrated algae bloom centered right where Toledo draws its water supply"

    I'm surprised this line got past the censors. See, if you're going to do real (as opposed to hollywood) bioterrorism, this is the way to do it.

    Then get the media to help cover up by writing pages of neo-original-sin blather about how the entire lake is contaminated by all humanity and we should all feel guilty blah blah, so no one thinks its an attack.

    If these clowns were writing about the Hiroshima a-bomb attack we'd have 10 pages of copy pasta about how citizens in Hiroshima are having slight problems breathing because the whole world is polluting too much and we need to save the planet by buying brand new Prius's.

    What a joke.

  • (Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @11:56AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @11:56AM (#77162)

    well at least they will get "carbon-credit" for removing so much CO2 from the immediate surrounding of the algae bloom.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by sudo rm -rf on Monday August 04 2014, @12:35PM

    by sudo rm -rf (2357) on Monday August 04 2014, @12:35PM (#77176) Journal

    Banning the spread of manure on frozen or snow-covered ground was recommended by the US/Canadian International Joint Commission last year

    Banning fertilization during the winter months will improve the situation significantly. You want algae to stop growing? Deprive them of nutrients.
    Of course there will be other problems, like proper disposal of manure. Maybe gasification comes to the rescue? One will have to provide a solution for this, where I grew up the farmers spread the dung secretely by night when it was snowing.
    (Reminds me of a Monty Python's joke: "What's brown and sounds like a bell?" -- "Dung!"

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday August 04 2014, @01:14PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 04 2014, @01:14PM (#77189)

      "Of course there will be other problems, like proper disposal of manure."

      We've tried that in the USA, and the problem with cesspools aside from the smell is inevitably there's a leak or rain flood and then instead of occasionally green water you've got concentrated wave of death where cleanup would be easier cheaper and safer if it was merely lava instead of 10 million gallons of poop.

      Something like a literal sewage treatment plant required by regulation onside livestock farms is probably necessary.

      Higher up solutions work well. If you stop paying farmers to grow corn, it'll cost to much to run factory farms, so cows will go back to pooping in the desert in Texas and the open plains states where they belong rather than more or less directly into the great lakes.

      One lovely solution is the proven reserves of phosphorous are getting a bit thin. We've pretty much mined and used "most" of our phosphorous, and what remains is the most expensive stuff so it should drop quite a bit faster than it grew as the price explodes, and it grew very fast so its going to decline even faster. How to feed 7 billion people without cheap chemical fertilizers is a bit of a mystery. The inevitable world resource war will likely reduce demand quite a bit. It factors in nicely with the end of mechanization due to lack of diesel, and the end of nitrogen fertilizers due to the end of natgas. So in about one to two human generations, the era of spreading NPK chemical fertilizer from a diesel tractor will be pretty much over, along with the yields that used to result from that. It'll be interesting to watch.

      China has been post-peak grain production for about a decade due mostly to water issues and is in permanent decline of grain production. They're going to get hungry, soon enough.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @04:42PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @04:42PM (#77266)

        Something like a literal sewage treatment plant required by regulation onside livestock farms is probably necessary.

        Therein lies the problem. They will come out of their rat holes crying "Business crippling regulations", and it will never get implemented.

        Better to pass a law requiring the business owners, and their families, to drink that algae infested water. When the impacts of what they do start to affect them personally, then maybe you will see change.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday August 04 2014, @02:01PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday August 04 2014, @02:01PM (#77202)

    I live about 50 feet from Lake Erie (thankfully far from where the algal bloom is happening, so my water is still good).

    What happened, in large part, is that Ohio's extremely lax enforcement gave the green light for people to break the laws regarding fertilizer runoff, which most of the folks in rural Ohio see as unwarranted government intrusion on their rights to use their land as they see fit. The farmers responded by adding more fertilizer, increasing yields which increases profits. And now they're discovering that those laws and regulations were actually useful. And because the citizens of Toledo are going to bear the burden, a lot of the farmers upstream on the Maumee River just don't care very much or won't think that they had anything to do with creating the problem.

    Sometimes, those liberal eggheads in government actually know what they're doing.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by tizan on Monday August 04 2014, @08:06PM

      by tizan (3245) on Monday August 04 2014, @08:06PM (#77330)

      You mean big government is needed sometimes...
      i thought the market will fix it....most probably it will in fact after poisoning Toledo, farmers may not have a smaller market thus a fall in bad farming and therefore the market works. Give it enough time the market will work...sure there will dead bodies but the model works !!!
      Ayn Rand was a genius....

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by AlHunt on Monday August 04 2014, @02:08PM

    by AlHunt (2529) on Monday August 04 2014, @02:08PM (#77209)

    >> along with the forced reduction of fertilizer use in general.

    Farmers already use as little costly fertilizer as possible to get a profitable yield. Cutting fertilizer might help the lake but the farmers would go out of business. Or people would starve and imagine all the runoff from those bloated corpses.

    • (Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Monday August 04 2014, @06:05PM

      by nitehawk214 (1304) on Monday August 04 2014, @06:05PM (#77294)

      Easy, use the bodies as fertilizer. Two birds killed with one stone.

      --
      "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
      • (Score: 1) by AlHunt on Monday August 04 2014, @09:58PM

        by AlHunt (2529) on Monday August 04 2014, @09:58PM (#77378)

        >Easy, use the bodies as fertilizer. Two birds killed with one stone.

        Sheer genius ...

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @05:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04 2014, @05:34PM (#77285)

    The soylent news summary, linking to the death of lake erie in the 1960s, and the creation of the EPA, should not be here. The original article did not include such references.

    This time, it is agricultural runoff that is producing algae growth. That algae is producing 'Microcystins', which are toxic. I guess that not all algae produce Microcystins, but the ones in Lake Erie do, and that is the problem.