Steve Pollick: H2Ohio in danger of being flushed down drain

For a week in early April, Ohio’s Sandusky River had hardly lived up to its designation as “state scenic,” boiling brown and angry and flooding bankside lowlands.

Four and a quarter inches of rain or more had turned a lovely winding stream into a raging torrent. Much the same could be said for the Sandusky’s big cousin, the Maumee River, about 35 miles to the west and the largest river and watershed by far on the entire Great Lakes.

A friend described the smaller Portage River in between them as “coffee with three creams.” Ottawa County backroads were a maze of barricades marked by “road closed” and “high water” signs. You almost could not get There from Here.

I meandered about the region to get a sense of the rain event and subsequent flooding. Yes, after a few days the water went down, the barricades collected by township road crews, and the daily commerce of life returned to normal, the flooding more or less fading from the public mind.

But I wondered, how many of us really understood what we were seeing: Thousands of tons of some of the finest topsoil in the world –  runoff from farmland – flushing down to Sandusky Bay and Maumee Bay and thence to western Lake Erie. Maintaining the Toledo Ship Channel constitutes the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ largest annual dredging project of the Great Lakes.

And it was not just topsoil in that boiling brown flood. Untold thousands of pounds of crop fertilizers rich in algae-boosting phosphorus and nitrogen, other agricultural chemicals, and livestock manure runoff were carried along with the soil particles.

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Come summer, as the shallow Erie western basin heats up, thick blooms of the infamous “Green Goop” will appear – toxic blue-green algae. Beaches will be closed, swimmers and dog-owners and anglers warned to avoid prolonged contact with the water. The “Goop” this summer will be nourished and fed by the spring flooding event described above and any other high-water “events” between March and July.

These are the things I was thinking about in early April as I witnessed the rains. The members of our State Legislature were, and are, blind to it. They want to slash funding of a long-term, comprehensive science-based program intended to combat Erie’s Green Goop – H2Ohio – by 45% in the next state budget.

Our lawmakers would reduce H2Ohio funding from $270 million to $150 million in the next cycle, supposedly to save the state some money and because they “think” the program already has done much of what it needs to do.

This from a Legislature that is sitting on a record state Rainy Day fund of nearly $4 billion. Well, lawmakers, it’s raining.

This from a Legislature that wants to hand $600 million in bonds to billionaires Jimmy and Dee Haslam to help bankroll a closed-roof stadium for their Cleveland Browns, out in the ‘burbs away from the hallowed downtown Cleveland lakefront. Poor Haslams, their $1 billion buy of the Browns a few years ago now is worth some $5 billion. But somehow they now have empty pockets – for a Brook Park stadium diehard fans don’t want – without jonesing for a state handout as a kickstart.

Wonder if the Cincinnati Bengals can expect lawmakers to shell out another $600 million of taxpayers’ money for a new stadium on the Ohio River. Only fair, right? Maybe they’ll float you some bonds, too, to build yourself a new home. Uh-huh.

If a doctor prescribed you an antibiotic for an infection and the prescription calls for taking it for 10 days, you take it for 10 days, the full course, not just till you “think” you feel better. Otherwise, you risk having the infection return with a vengeance.

H2Ohio is Gov. Mike DeWine’s signature conservation initiative, begun in 2019 primarily to address the persistent problem of Erie’s “Green Goop” but also to address similar issues in other watersheds statewide, along with an array of related issues such as improved access to drinking water via best farming practices, road salt runoff reduction, litter cleanup, dam removal, land conservation, and water-supply improvements.

H2Ohio is data-driven and science-based. From Day One the governor and his administration have acknowledged that reducing the “Green Goop” and related issues would take time. After all, it took us some 150 years to destroy 90% of Ohio’s watershed wetlands – nature’s pollution and soil-filter “kidneys.”

Even though, commendably, H2Ohio so far has restored or is restoring more than 200 wetlands sites already, more are waiting in the wings that need to be planned and recreated.

But the whimsy-based minds of state lawmakers have in their “wisdom” declared that time is just about up and it’s time for a program stepdown. This despite the collective science community’s doctors telling us that the prescription must be taken for its full course, not because of some politicians’ notions that Lake Erie suddenly feels better.

It thus comes as no surprise that Ohio politicians rather would protect concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO)s from common sense regulation instead of assuring clean drinking water for 500,000 people served by the city of Toledo’s system, for example. This is the lakeshore city where “Green Goop” shut down the drinking water supply for three days in 2014. But never mind; there are sports stadiums to build.

Nearly half a billion dollars (taxpayer dollars, again) have been spent on the Toledo water system to make sure the drinking water for Lucas, Wood, and Fulton counties in Ohio and south Monroe County in Michigan is safe despite the toxins allowed to accumulate in Lake Erie.

H2Ohio is not perfect. To expect that probably is unrealistic. It needs tweaking, as this column has pointed out previously, such as making mandatory the still-voluntary aspect of farm compliance with best conservation practices and soil testing. Cheers and huzzahs of those good land stewards who volunteered to practice soil conservation measures on their farms. They deserve medals. But they are a minority.

According to the state, so far more than 3,200 producers have enrolled 2.2 million acres in H2Ohio across the state. But Ohio has some 13.5 million acres of farmland and 74,000 farms (2024 figures).

In northwest Ohio, approximately 43% of cropland in the WLEB (Western Lake Erie Basin) – nearly one in two fields – is enrolled in H2Ohio, according to administrators. Again, it’s a good start. But as any politician knows, 43% won’t win an election – or cure a persistent water-pollution problem.

Scientists tell us that after six years of H2Ohio’s “voluntary” compliance among farmers, the program is nowhere near reaching its initial goal of even a 40% reduction in phosphorus/nitrogen nutrients in runoff to Erie by this year. It is clear that the screws must be tightened.

In a way, the governor, himself a Republican, can do only so much, given that he is somewhat hostage to a veto-proof, GOP-packed Legislature. It was much the same case a couple of years ago when the same mindless lawmakers approved House Bill 175 to allow elimination of ephemeral wetlands – those myriad, small seasonal wet areas at the top ends of watersheds.

They are the beginnings of streams, the capillaries in a watershed’s bloodstream. HB 175 was a sop to mining, farming, fracking, logging, industrial, and other commercial lobbies. It was akin to cutting off the head of a patient to “cure” a hangnail. Some prescription for conserving the land – a cheap tradeoff to put profits in a few pockets at public expense.

So, here we are: Is H2Ohio being flushed down the drain by the mindless, veto-proof State Legislature? Best ask your state representative.