The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Canadian officials met in Chicago last week to discuss shared priorities and success stories along Lake Erie and throughout the Great Lakes watershed.
The international Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada requires stakeholders to meet every three years to discuss and determine ways to protect the ecological condition, water quality and ecosystem health in Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes.
Conditions for algal blooms in Lake Erie remain favorable, particularly in shallow waters in the lake’s western basin, according to the binational State of the Great Lakes Report, but sustainable measures have made some positive impacts.
Conservation efforts in Defiance, Ohio saw success along the Maumee River watershed according to Jennifer English, a stormwater coordinator for the city. A "Land to Lake" initiative transformed 17 acres of farmland into wetlands to protect and ensure clean drinking water in the city.
"We are not finger pointing, we're not looking at anybody that's causing the problem in particular," English said. "We're just saying, how can we really work together to be part of the solution and be part of what our job is at the city of Defiance is to produce clean drinking water?
In Northwest Ohio, researchers with Ohio State University's Sustainability Institute are working with local farmers along five thousand acres of Lake Erie's watershed to explore how sustainable agricultural practices can reduce phosphorus runoff, a key contributor to toxic algal blooms.
Measures like this have helped, but need to be explored further and scaled up, said Jay Martin, faculty co-lead at the institute.
"There's some really good news about water quality in Northwest Ohio right now," Martin said. "The challenge for us moving forward is sustaining and building upon these gains going forward and demonstrating how we can have a sustained reduction in dissolved reactive phosphorus for multiple years."
Even as efforts to manage nutrients in the lake continue, Lake Erie beaches were deemed safe for swimming for the majority of the swimming season, according to the report. Between 2020 and 2023, water quality along Lake Erie's U.S. beaches was deemed safe 80% of the time, and 83% of the time in Canada.
Invasive aquatic species like grass carp, zebra mussels and quagga mussels remain an issue in Lake Erie, and can pose a threat to ongoing conservation efforts.
The herbivorous grass carp can help clean out vegetation in waterbodies, but University of Toledo Researcher Christine Mayer said they've recently been spawning throughout the Maumee watershed, posing a risk to ongoing wetland restoration in the state.
"Ohio is actually constructing and reconnecting wetlands. So they're investing dollars in building wetlands and we don't want larger vigorous fish to get into these areas," Mayer said. "The grass carp were imported as herbivores because there really are no native species that eat plants is their primary way of life. So they're kind of an unusual thing and we want to keep them out of the wetlands."
Plans are in development through the Lake Erie Committee of the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission to effectively manage grass carp populations, in addition to other invasive aquatic species, without further disrupting the lake's ecosystem, Mayer said.
