Guardians of Grand Lake St. Marys

TOXINS LEVELS INCREASING AT ALARMING RATE

9/17/2020

The toxin levels in GLSM jumped 22ppb in just one week. The current level is 75ppb. These are still very dangerous levels.

It is surprising how many people are riding jet skis, inner-tubes or allowing their children to play in GLSM's toxic sludge. Please be reminded that the lake is still posted to have no contact with the water.

In light of the cautionary actions we are using with COVID-19 around, we all should be as cautious in using GLSM. It is toxic; will kill animals and make humans sick.

Please be safe and have no contact with the water in GLSM.

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Why do people deny the truth

7/6/2020

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I witnessed on several weekends that people are ignoring the posted safety signs around Grand Lake St. Marys which recommends "NO CONTACT" with the lake's water because of high levels of Microcystins.

I've seen adults swimming at the beaches but what is really scary is the adults who are encouraging their small children to swim in the poisonous lake water.

In our current situation with COVID-19, you would think people would pay more attention to environments that are unhealthy but not these people around the lake.

What I don't understand is why local residents choose to ignore warnings by health professionals and choose to listen to politicians for their health welfare. For years, people have been encouraged to use Grand Lake St. Marys by local and state officials eventhough the Ohio Department of Health has given their greatest health warning for the lake which is to have no contact.

If I were having appendicitis symptoms and pain, I would immediately turn to a health professional to advise me NOT my State Representative or Senator for a medical diagnosis. The toxic warning by the Ohio Department of Health for Grand Lake St. Marys should be taken seriously.

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Guardians of the Grand Lake St. Marys Join Federal Lawsuit to Force USDA to Consider Impact of Industrial Ag Operations on Air & Water

6/6/2019

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The Guardians of the Grand Lake St. Marys (GOGLSM) today joined a lawsuit challenging a recent USDA rule change that makes it more difficult for rural communities to fight back against pollution of their waters. Pollution of West-Central Ohio’s Grand Lake St. Marys has left the lake seriously impaired for decades, and has led to a particularly egregious lake-wide algae bloom in 2010.

The case the Guardians have joined – DRA v. USDA – challenges the legality of a rule adopted in 2016 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency that grants exemptions from the usual process of notice, comment and oversight in cases where the government is providing taxpayer-subsidized loans to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations considered “medium-sized” by the USDA. Such facilities are authorized to hold nearly 125,000 chickens, 55,000 turkeys, 2,500 pigs, 1,000 beef cattle, or 700 dairy cows. By failing to review the financing for these facilities under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Trump Administration has helped cloak their planned operations in secrecy, preventing rural communities from obtaining information regarding the impact of these operations on local air and water quality. In so doing, the Administration promotes factory farms over family farms.

“Grand Lake St. Marys is the poster child for how devastating manure run-off is to a community and its lake. Grand Lake St. Marys pollution goes unchecked with agribusiness and government working in partnership to ignore the environmental impact on a community - everything from the wellbeing of its businesses to the health of its people,” the group said today.

“The Guardians are proud to be a part of this momentous national legal effort that will restore decision-making power to rural communities like ours who have suffered so much from ag corporations’ indifference.”

The plaintiffs in DRA v. USDA allege that both the rulemaking process, and the final rule now being implemented by the Trump Administration, violate NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide adequate notice of the proposed rule change and refusing to clarify why medium-sized CAFOs should be provided this special treatment and automatically exempt.

In 2010, Grand Lake St. Marys experienced a lake-wide blue-green algae bloom. Despite repeated calls from residents and environmental protection groups, there has been no full disclosure of the cause of the heightened contamination levels in the lake. While state officials have said nearly $40 million has been invested in cleaning up the lake, those funds appear to have been spent on projects with little chance of improving water quality.

Other national and local groups who are part of this lawsuit include Animal Legal Defense Fund, Association of Irritated Residents (Cal.), Citizens Action Coalition (Ind.), Dakota Rural Action (S.D.), Food & Water Watch, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and White River Waterkeeper (Ark.).

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Pollution of Grand Lake St. Marys is completely out of control

5/16/2019

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From 04/30/19 to 05/07/19 the microcystins levels have more than doubled. We are currently 79.7 ppb. With fields drying out, farmers are now dumping their long-held manure pits into Grand Lake St. Marys (GLSM) again. With this careless agricultural practice comes more danger to the Celina water supply and those using GLSM for recreational use.

Let's look at a couple of incidences this spring which affected many of us. A recent presentation by a Park official explained that much of the flooding was partially due to the amount of water coming into the lake this spring. GLSM area had nearly 10" of rain in two months this spring. So, the volume of rain was greater than usual, however, as he explained, one the greatest problems were how quickly the rain entered the lake. This goes to another outlandish agricultural problem in the GLSM watershed - drain tiles. There are too many drain tiles in our watershed. Drain tiles should be used to simply drain low lying areas in a farmer's field. In our watershed, there are drain tiles nearly every ten feet in the fields whether they are needed or not. So, when heavy rains are experienced the amount of rain coming into the lake increases tremendously. A good example is it is like flushing a toilet upstream. The drain tiles prevent the fields from absorbing the rain which then gradually enters the lake.

Those who suffered from the recent flooding at GLSM has drain tiles in the fields and the farmers who uses them to thank for your problems.

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Ohio Park Service needs more funds for Grand Lake st. marys facilities and roads

5/6/2019

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A recent presentation by a Park official clearly demonstrates that the State of Ohio is doing very little to help the continual pollution of GLSM. The State's latest project is to build a beach on the west shore for swimming.

Two jetties have been built and a curtain will be used between the two to block lake water. Who will maintain this curtain? I hope whoever is responsible does a better job than the last time a curtain was used. As a reminder, when the State was evaluating the need for applying Alum, the in-lake test site (curtained area) was not properly maintained and the entire study was negated because of the tainted site. The current plan is to dig down 5-6 feet deep to the clay soil. This extra depth is suppose to help with the purification of the water. Huh?!

The goal is to remove the red sign on that beach.The water will be tested before the sign comes down, but it will not bring down the red signs at other locations on the lake. This swimming beach is the latest effort by the State to give the appearance they are doing something about the problem of pollution without holding the polluters accountable. There goes another half a million of taxpayers dollars for a project that will do nothing to help the health and viability of GLSM and the communities around it.

Shouldn't the goal be to stop the pollution and protect the health and well-being of the public an not a goal of doing anything possible of costing local agribusiness one red cent!

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The algae season is beginning

4/24/2019

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Checking the microcystins levels on the Ohio EPA website shows the beginning climb of the levels. On April 8 the microcystins levels were 6.8ppb and in just ten days later it has risen to 26.8ppb. The toxins levels have increased four times in just ten days.

Grand Lake St. Marys is the only testing site in Ohio with a microcystins levels over 20 ppb. If you are wondering how the toxin levels in GLSM can increase so much so quickly, it's because manure dumping has started.

I recently had a farmer to complain to me that their manure pits were practically overflowing because the weather had not allowed them to get into their fields to spread the manure. I suggested that he have his manure pit pumped out and moved to an area that needed manure. He stated, "That's not free."

His argument is typical for many of the agribusiness owners in our watershed. The Farm Bill is the largest welfare program in our country. What privately owned business gets the financial breaks that farmers get? Much of their buildings are paid for by the federal government; they get sales tax and property tax relief; if their business fails due to weather, the government subsidizes it; and they don't pay for waste disposal, etc. Why is this? Agribusiness will tell you it is because we like to eat cheap food. Sure who doesn't like cheap food.

Agribusiness in the U.S. is the largest growing health threat to our country not unlike smoking cigarettes of the past. Agribusiness in their drive to make more profits, they are poisoning our food supply with growth hormones and antibiotics. Many countries in the world will not allow American raised meat products in their countries because it is so tainted with pharmaceuticals. A good example of this impact is the growing problem of obesity and its many related health problems.

So, our neighboring agribusiness owners are not only poisoning our lake but the meat we eat. Where is their convictions to doing the right thing for their community? In many areas around the country, farmers have come to the table to solve the ecological disasters they have created but not in the Grand Lake St. Marys communities. These farmers could care less that they have cost their neighbors over $200million in property value loss. They could care less that they have turned a state park lake of historical significance into their personal cesspool costing their community millions of dollars. So why should any of us care about their future viability, especially since they are only 1% of the economic sector in the watershed. The residents in the watershed should be demanding that something be done.

We can begin by NOT electing farmers to our city councils and county board of supervisors.

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Disturbing action by Ohio attorney general

4/10/2019

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No, Lake Erie will not sue you
Posted: Wednesday, March 20, 2019 8:51 am

To the Editor:

After reading the misleading March 6 editorial by Putnam County attorney Lee Schroeder “Will Lake Erie sue you?” I felt compelled to assure readers they will not be sued for spilling “a single drop of phosphorus” or “a drop of any chemical.” His editorial was loose with facts and heavy on scare tactics.

This kind of fear-mongering is not surprising since a well-funded campaign used the same tactics in radio ads and push polling by two newly-formed “shadow PACs” to smear the Lake Erie Bill of Rights before the February special election.

Schroeder encourages “shields” from lawsuits, suggesting ag districts could be used as a defense for farm-related nuisances. Similarly, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and OSU College of Ag are now encouraging farmers and producers to use “affirmative defenses” from civil liability written into Ohio’s ag laws.

According to Wikipedia, “an affirmative defense to a civil lawsuit … is a fact … that defeats … the legal consequences of otherwise unlawful conduct.”

Below are some facts readers need to know:

What has changed since Lake Erie was cleaned up in the 1990s?

* The Lake Erie Commission Strategic Objectives stated – “The investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in sewage treatment plant upgrades, adoption of pollution prevention technologies and improvements in industrial wastewater treatment have resulted in reaching our reduction goals for most point source pollutants.”

• The Ohio Lake Erie Phosphorus Task Force Report stated – “phosphorus fertilizer sales have been below the running historic average since 2001.”

• House Bill 491 banned high phosphate detergents in 1988.

• Scotts removed phosphorus from lawn care products in 2012.

• The number of confined animal feeding operations (factory farms) has increased dramatically during the past 20 years. Many of these huge CAFOs spread millions of gallons of untreated, phosphorus-rich waste on tiled farm fields in the western Lake Erie basin.
Joe Logan, president of the Ohio Farmers Union, has stated “If farmers are doing things right and taking care of livestock, acreage and crops in a responsible manner, they don’t have anything to worry about.”

Quite simply the Lake Erie Bill of Rights is essential because the Ohio EPA and U.S. EPA have failed to protect Lake Erie from Big Ag and big animal/poultry producers – the same folks responsible for trying to smear LEBOR. Don’t be fooled by these deceptive big-ag tactics working to preserve their right to pollute.

Vickie Askins
Cygnet

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ODA Director takes questions in Celina, OH

3/5/2019

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ad the pleasure of meeting the new Ohio Director of Agriculture in Celina, Ohio. I asked, “how could an advocate for clean water evaluate the progress of the state’s manure management in Ohio’s only distressed watershed, Grand Lake St. Mary, especially since the manure management plans which are paid with federal and state tax dollars, are not allowed to be viewed by the public. This is a result of legislation passed while she was in the legislature.” She did not answer. I asked again and again she didn’t answer the question. When she asked for suggestions, I explained that advocates for Lake Erie are wanting a TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load), however, the Grand Lake watershed has had a TMDL since 2007 and it has done absolutely nothing for GLSM because it was never implemented. Since it identified the sources of the lake pollution and had the recommendations of how to stop the pollution, it would be great if the State of Ohio would implement the existing Grand Lake St. Marys TMDL and update it as required by law.

I was surprised by the individual (a farmer) who stated that he considers his manure management plan his private business plan. To him I say, “Dear sir, if you want your business plan to remain private, I suggest you use your private dollars to pay for it and not state and federal taxpayers money to pay for it.”

Now to Mr Homan, of Chickasaw, I greatly appreciate your and Teresa’s invitation to sit down and discuss the current activities and attitudes in our watershed. I also appreciate you warning me that there are some radical thinking farmers in the watershed who have relayed that if the current attitudes don’t change that farmers have discussed shutting down all water coming into the lake. Frankly, Mr Holman and Teresa I don’t think you should be concerned with that threat. Those offering this radical solution is no solution at all. Besides I truly don’t believe those farmers have the nerve, the power nor the intelligence to pull off such an action. I think your suggestion for us to sit down and find common ground is a much better solution and much more productive.

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The Latest Slap in the Face of GLSM!

2/15/2019

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Grand Lake St. Marys is the only designated "distressed watershed" in the state and the only support for these impaired watersheds is more funding to farmers who are the polluters. When will the time come when the State of Ohio will penalize the polluters rather than reward them with more money which does little to stop the pollution.

GLSM is the third most polluted lake in the country and the Ohio River is the most polluted body of water in the U.S. The entire state is becoming a cesspool.

Now I've learned that the liquid chemical the state is using to prevent roads from icing is radioactive fracking residue.

As guess the next thing to expect is Ohio's children will start to being born deformed and or having brain damage. Thanks to the DeWine administration nothing is going to change. See the article below.

IMPAIRED WATERSHEDS
Water quality program for Ohio watersheds applications from farmers, forest owners due by March 15
PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 15, 2019, Ohio Ag Clips

Map of the three Ohio watersheds selected to participate in the National Water Quality Initiative. (NRCS Image)COLUMBUS, Ohio — For the eighth consecutive year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will offer an opportunity for agricultural producers in three Ohio watersheds to apply for assistance to install conservation practices that protect water quality through the National Water Quality Initiative (NWQI).

NRCS conservation professionals will provide one-on-one personalized advice to help farmers determine which conservation actions will provide the best results to address a broad range of natural resource concerns, including water quality. To help install these conservation practices, NRCS will provide financial assistance to approved applicants through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP).
Conservation actions include practices that promote soil health, reduce erosion, and lessen nutrient runoff, such as cover crops, reduced tillage, and nutrient management; waste management systems that treat agricultural waste and livestock manure; and wetland restoration that increases wildlife habitat, mitigates flooding, and improves water quality. These practices not only benefit natural resources, but enhance agricultural productivity and profitability by improving soil health and optimizing the use of agricultural inputs.

“Watershed studies have shown that targeting conservation on vulnerable acres leads to greater water quality improvements,” said Terry Cosby, NRCS state conservationist in Ohio. “This latest investment focuses on small watersheds where we have opportunities to work with partners and farmers to accelerate conservation efforts and deliver real results for communities downstream.”

NRCS works closely with conservation partners and State water quality agencies to select watersheds where on-farm conservation can deliver the greatest benefits for clean water. Ohio has selected the following three watersheds where on-farm conservation investments have the best chance to address resource concerns and improve water quality:
• Brandywine Creek-Broken Sword Creek Watershed (Crawford County)
• Fivemile Creek-East Fork Little Miami River Watershed (Clermont and Brown Counties)
• East Branch South Fork Sugar Creek Watershed (Tuscarawas and Holmes Counties)

NRCS accepts applications for financial assistance on a continuous basis throughout the year. The NWQI application deadline is March 15, 2019.
To learn more about the NWQI or other technical and financial assistance available through NRCS conservation programs, visit Get Started with NRCS or visit your local USDA Service Center.

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Without legislation GLSM needs litigation

2/6/2019

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Over the many years, I've been working for clean water for Grand Lake St. Marys, I have hundreds of times, "The State of Ohio will not clean-up GLSM until someone sues or someone dies from the toxins."

The Guardians of Grand Lake St. Marys has been working hard to educate the public about the toxicity of the lake and the dangers to human health. We have met with much resistance but we are not waiting until someone dies.

We are building and have been building a legal case in hopes we can force our public officials to seriously make an effort to clean-up our lake. For the past three years, we have been gathering much needed data using outside sources to eventually take legal action.

Between now and March 1, 2019, we need our supporters to send photos and videos of farmers to violating the "frozen ground" legislation to 20goglsm13@gmail.com. Also, file a complaint to the Soil & Water Conservation District at https://www.mercercountyohio.org/county-services/soil-and-water-conservation/technical-assistance/pollution-complaints/. It would be helpful to also send complaints to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency by calling 1-800-282-9378.

If you really want to see Grand Lake St. Marys safe again, please help us now.

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TOXINS LEVELS INCREASING AT ALARMING RATE

Why do people deny the truth

Guardians of the Grand Lake St. Marys Join Federal Lawsuit to Force USDA to Consider Impact of Industrial Ag Operations on Air & Water

Pollution of Grand Lake St. Marys is completely out of control

Ohio Park Service needs more funds for Grand Lake st. marys facilities and roads

The algae season is beginning

Disturbing action by Ohio attorney general

ODA Director takes questions in Celina, OH

The Latest Slap in the Face of GLSM!

Without legislation GLSM needs litigation

Author
Kate Anderson-

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Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio

AuthorKate Anderson-

Categories

Contact us for more information.

Grand Lake St. Marys, Ohio

Author
Kate Anderson-