Fifteen years after serious algal blooms reappeared in western Lake Erie and four years after a toxic algal bloom shut down Toledo’s drinking water for a weekend, it’s time to stop pretending and ask a basic question: can our governance system deliver a solution to the problem? Does it even want to?
It’s not exactly a brilliant insight. A recent report issued by Ohio’s EPA was unable to document any meaningful reduction between 2013 and 2017 in the phosphorus loadings that foster western Lake Erie’s algal blooms, even after the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on farm subsidies and the lavishing of inspirational quotes in countless news releases over the years.
Consider that phrase: any meaningful reduction. And remember that the experts have called for a 40% reduction in loadings by 2025 to reduce algal blooms to tolerable levels. Michigan, Ohio and Ontario said they would strive for a 20% reduction by 2020. We’re not close.
This is reminiscent of the 30 years of missed targets in the restoration of Chesapeake Bay. Progress was stalled there in part because of the same reliance on voluntary environmental measures by agriculture. Only when the Obama EPA stepped in and began pushing enforceable loading reductions did slow progress occur. (The current EPA management is unlikely to continue down this path.)
Because the bulk of the phosphorus fouling western Lake Erie comes from agriculture, a solution must largely come from agriculture. But American environmental policy toward agriculture can be simply summarized. Taxpayer-funded incentives good, accountability and enforcement bad. And incentives are not working. Still, the Ohio Legislature just okayed more than $20 million in new subsidies.
They won’t admit it, but the little secret of politicians and the farm lobby is this: if it’s a choice between cleaning up Lake Erie and escaping dreaded regulation, they’ll take the latter. They should just say so and stop accepting subsidies that waste taxpayer money.
Unless things change, this Battle of Lake Erie is lost.