Water Ban Lifted, But Lake Erie Algae Bloom Still a Threat

Water taps are flowing again for about 500,000 northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan residents after a toxic algae bloom on Lake Erie made their water undrinkable.

Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins lifted the ban Monday and said the water is safe for drinking, cooking and bathing, the Detroit Free Press reports. The water emergency affected mainly Ohio residents, but also residents in four communities in Monroe County – Bedford, La Salle, Erie and Luna Pier.

Numerous tests put the level of microcystin, which can cause liver damage and other serious health problems, at lower than 1 percent, which the World Health Organization considers safe.

Holding a glass of tap water, Collins said six tests had confirmed the water was safe, The Detroit News reports.

Luna Pier, MI, Mayor Dave Davison said residents there have been complaining about a strong odor coming from Lake Erie that environmental health officials later traced to rotting algae on the beach, The Detroit News said.

“There is no quick fix to this problem,” Davison said.

Collins said the emergency was the “first chime” in a wakeup call to better manage water quality in the Great Lakes and Lake Erie. Scientists will gather at the University of Toledo to study the source of the algae bloom.

“We didn’t get here overnight and we’re not going to get out of it overnight,” Collins told the Free Press. “But we’re never going to get out of it unless we’re proactive about it.”

In an email to The Detroit News,Don Scavia, the director of the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute, said that though factors such as climate change, invasive zebra and quagga mussels that colonize on lakes have “changed the susceptibility of the system,” agricultural runoff is the primary culprit.

“The most protective thing to be done is reduce those river loads,” he said.

Erie received more phosphorous from agricultural runoff than any of the Great Lakes – representing 44 percent of the total of all the lakes, about two-thirds of it from agricultural runoff – according to a recent study by the Ohio government.

Scientists who have been concerned about the environmental health of Lake Erie for years weren’t surprised by the emergency.

This spring, scientists with the International Joint Commission, a U.S.-Canadian agency that monitors water quality in the Great Lakes and other boundary waters, warned that Lake Erie was “severely threatened’ and made 16 recommendations to reduce nutrient loading into the lake.

The IJC called the Toledo water crisis “a teachable moment and called for more stringent water quality protection plans.