PATA History Pages

Ohio Stream and River Water Quality Terrible

What are your kids are wading in when they explore the creeks?

LOCAL SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANTS THAT ARE INCREASING CAPACITY AND PROLIFERATING LIKE MUSHROOMS CONTRIBUTE TO AREA PROBLEM.


State’s rivers, lakes fail standards
Only one waterway gets a passing grade
Monday, February 02, 2004
Geoff Dutton
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Not one of central Ohio’s lakes and rivers is clean enough to swim or fish in or nurture diverse wildlife, according to a new Ohio Environmental Protection Agency report.
Statewide, only one of 331 waterways meets federal recreational and healthy habitat standards, according to the study.
The assessment is worse than one performed two years ago, largely because the U.S. EPA rejected the state’s rosier analysis as incomplete.
Ohio officials had listed some lakes and rivers as meeting federal water-quality standards — even while advising people against eating the fish in them because of mercury, lead, PCB and other toxic contaminants.
Ohio officials also had not included bacteria counts from sewage in the water.
Factoring those problems into the analysis made water conditions in Ohio appear to be worse, but they have "not substantially changed compared to 2002," according to the report.
Most waterways still are deemed "impaired" — the lowest rating — because of pollution from factories, sewage-treatment plants, runoff from farms and developments, and other sources.
The federal Clean Water Act requires the Ohio EPA to test waterways regularly for pollution and report the results every two years, along with a plan for improving impaired waters.
The Ohio EPA will present the draft report on Tuesday, based on 34,000 water samples, and request public feedback before finalizing it. (The 63-page report can be viewed at www.epa .state.oh.us/dsw and responses can be sent to dan.dudley@epa.state.oh.us)
Statewide, there are 29,113 miles of rivers, 262 miles of Lake Erie shoreline and 118,801 acres of publicly owned lakes.
Despite lingering pollution problems, the state’s waterways are cleaner than they have been in years.
"We’re actually seeing an improvement overall in terms of the percentage of the waterways meeting the criteria," Ohio EPA spokeswoman Linda Oros said. "It’s a very slight, incremental improvement, but it’s going in the right direction."
The waterways are evaluated on the health of aquatic life, bacteria levels that can make swimmers sick, and whether fish are contaminated enough to prompt eating advisories.
In Ohio, 48 percent of watersheds meet the healthy aquatic-life standards, up from 46.5 percent two years ago. For large rivers, 64 percent meet the standards, compared with 62 percent in 2002.
Waterways, however, must meet all the standards before they are deemed acceptable.
"They’ve been getting better for a long time," Oros said, although "the degree to which they’re improving has slowed down."
Keith Dimoff of the Ohio Environmental Council, an advocacy group, agreed.
"The Clean Water Act did a good job in the first couple of decades in fixing the worst problems, but that progress has leveled off," he said.
"It should remind the public and our state legislature that clean water is important, but we’re not there yet."
Gov. Bob Taft made no mention of the environment in his State of the State speech last week.
After the report two years ago, the Ohio Environmental Council sued the state EPA over what it considers the slow pace of cleanup. The case is pending in federal court.
The state water-quality report notes numerous state and federal funding efforts under way, including $10.6 million awarded for habitat restoration, such as dam modifications and land purchases. Low-interest loans of $242 million also have been provided for fixing malfunctioning and overburdened sewagetreatment plants, which spill untreated waste into waterways.
For now, the only Ohio watershed that meets federal standards is the Clear Fork branch of the Mohican River near Mansfield. The only river is Raccoon Creek in southern Ohio.
Watersheds are natural drainage areas that include, for example, a river and its tributaries. None of central Ohio’s watersheds or rivers met all of the federal standards.
Much of the Big Darby Creek watershed — a national and state scenic waterway that’s home to 11 threatened or endangered fish and mussel species — suffers from impaired aquatic conditions and high bacteria counts and is under a state advisory to limit eating its fish because of contamination, according to the study.
"I really don’t think that’s an indication that there’s a new problem," said Dan Dudley, a manager of the Ohio EPA’s Surface Water Division. "We’ve just never sampled it that intensively."
Alum Creek, as well as the Olentangy and Scioto rivers, also is labeled as impaired.
The number of impaired waterways statewide increased to 242 from 205 two years ago, primarily because of the tougher standards imposed by the U.S. EPA. The state is required to devise a cleanup plan for impaired waterways.
"These results are no surprise and unfortunate given that if we had a plan for all waterways, and enforced that plan, we’d be able to make progress and prevent them from getting impaired in the first place," said Erin Bowser, state director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an environmental advocacy organization.
gdutton@dispatch.com

Poor Ohio Water Quality

The Columbus Dispatch