Picket City Council Meeting

    June 20  3:30pm  Government Center, City Council Committee hearing to update progress on the Toledo Waterways Initiative -- a half-billion dollar project to keep storm water overflows out of the lake. We'll be there with signs at 3:30, hearing starts at 4:00.
    This is an excellent place to bring up the "When are you going to support an impaired designation!?!" question. 
 

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 World Premier

"THE BATTLE FOR LAKE ERIE"

    Consider this your engraved invitation to the world premier of the ACLE production, "The Battle for Lake Erie," at our July 20 meeting, 6:30pm, at Grace Lutheran Church, 4441 Monroe St. in Toledo.   This colorful, riveting slide presentation tells the story of how we got Lake Erie into this mess and what it will take to get it healthy again.
    Come see it...and Don't Give Up the Lake!

 (Rated PG for occasional algal blooms) 
 

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ANOTHER 2.2 MILLION CHICKENS AND 2.5 MILLION GALLONS OF MANURE ?

    A dozen ACLE members trekked to Van Wert on June 15, to support local residents who want to keep another 2.2 million chickens and all the stink that comes with them out of their back yards.  
    Val Szegedi arranged carpooling and joined Sue Terrill, Jim Bradley, Sue Carter, Ginny Mojzesz, Libby Marsh, Marj Mulcahy, Alice, Ed and Elenore Weber, Tahree Lane and Mike Ferner, who testified.   
    Pine Valley Ranch is the corporate euphemism for another 210,678,000 lbs. (2.5 million gallons) of manure and 2,187,810 lbs. of Phosphorus annually going into the Western Lake Erie Basin watershed -- on top of the 690 million gallons already produced by CAFO livestock in the WLEB.  The company's permit application said it would only generate 36,666,000 lbs., of manure annually, one of several discrepancies in its application that Vickie Askins, Pam Taylor, Lynn Henning, Sandy Bihn and Kate Anderson pointed out to the hearing officer. 
   See just how bad the company's application is at Guardians of Grand Lake St. Mary's web site.

    Written public comments will be accepted up until 5:00 p.m. on June 22, 2016 and must be sent to: ODA Division of Livestock Environmental Permitting (DLEP), 8995 East Main Street, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 or sent to Bret Gates bgates@agri.ohio.gov

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ACTIONS!

JULY 20
6:30pm Grace Lutheran Church
Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie meeting

Nancy Roffey pickets at Sanger Library town hall meeting

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WHO IS THE OHIO EPA's "DIRECTOR OF LAKE ERIE PROGRAMS?"

      With a title like that, you would expect Karl Gebhardt to be 100% behind getting Lake Erie on the U.S. EPA's impaired list.  In fact, in that position he could tell OEPA's director, Craig Butler, to just go ahead and do it.   
     But your expectations would be dashed.  Mr. Gebhardt says that an impaired designation would give the area a "bad mark" and discourage economic development.
      Say What?  That's from the Director of Lake Erie Policy for the Ohio EPA?  
      Yes, but before Mr. G came to his public position, he worked for 19 years as a lobbyist for....tell me it ain't so....the Ohio Farm Bureau.   When faced with this fact earlier this year, he said "it was only 18 years," but that's not what his LinkedIn profile says.  
      Not coincidentally, it was the American Farm Bureau and the CAFO lobby that sued the US EPA to prevent it from establishing binding pollution limits for the Chesapeake Bay. That suit took five years to go through federal courts until the Supreme Court ruled 4-4 in February they weren't going to hear it and let a lower court ruling against it stand. 


The "Gebhardt Bad Mark" as seen from outer space










 

MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
NEXT ACLE MEETING
JULY 20, 6:30pm
Grace Lutheran Church 4441 Monroe St. in Toledo
 

MARCY KAPTUR'S POSITION ON LAKE ERIE

    As we meet the public, one question comes up fairly often: "Where's Marcy Kaptur on this impaired issue?"
   Given our Congresswoman's frequent statements on how important Lake Erie is, many assumed she would be foursquare in support of having the U.S. EPA declare it impaired, so an inventory of sources and amounts of pollution would be done, followed by a thorough cleanup with deadlines...until we decided to verify that assumption.
    ACLE member, Nancy Roffey, called Marcy's Toledo office last month and talked with Jane Ruvolo, her aide on this issue.  After hearing some general statements about Marcy's concern for the lake, Nancy pressed to find out where she stood specifically on an EPA designation and Ms. Ruvolo could not answer in the affirmative. 
    More recently we've heard from a very reliable source that the Congresswoman may be starting to acknowledge that voluntary agreements to curb nutrient pollution are not going to work.
     Until now, she has placed her faith in NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin.)  and NASA satellites with high-res capabilities that can visually map the many streams flowing into the watershed by assigning different products colors. The satellite also has infrared and color spectrum mapping so researchers can differentiate between manure streams and fertilizer streams.  Getting "down to Earth," however, to find out specifically who is responsible for how much of those many colors is something else again.
     That's where Ms. Kaptur and Toledo officials would be well served to consult with Pam Taylor and her colleagues in Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan.  With no staff and barely a shoestring budget, they have established a scientifically valid, highly valuable database of water testing results simply by...believe it or not...sampling streams where the manure from the feedlots flows into them!
     NOAA's and NASA's high tech capability was supposed to bring everyone to the table for a voluntary setting of loading limits but, our source says, the word is Marcy "is starting to realize the industrial feedlot operators and the rest of Big Ag will only come along kicking and screaming."
   Not coincidentally that's the same lesson the environmentalists trying to clean up Chesapeake Bay learned after 25 years of failed voluntary agreements.

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MICHIGAN CAFO TOUR REPORT

by Libby Marsh-Casanova

    On Monday, May 9, 10 ACLE members spent half the day touring area dairy CAFOS (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) in Ohio and Michigan. 
    It began at an ACLE member’s farm in Lyons OH.  Dave Blesing’s family’s lives have been greatly affected by the Oak Shade Dairy CAFO nearby.  We were met by Pam Taylor, Michigan activist with ECCSCM, and Lynn Henning, Michigan family farmer, activist and winner of the 2010 Goldman Prize (equivalent of the Nobel Prize in environmental circles) were the tour guides.  It truly was an eye opening experience. 
     Dave gave us copies of a diary he kept, describing the many days he and his wife were sickened by the rancid putrid stench blowing in from the liquid manure dumped on fields close by.  Many days were spent locked in their home because the air was too toxic to breath. 
     He showed us two filled water bottles, one with muddy water and the other a little bit clearer, water from his well that has been affected by the Oak Shade CAFO drilling ever deeper for water. 
     He and his wife refuse to leave, though many of his friends have gone, getting bought out by the CAFO operators.  Life near a factory farm will never be the same again.  The CAFOs have destroyed their rural community. 
    Next, Pam and Lynn showed us how they gather water samples and explained the testing in a stream on Dave’s property.  We found out later that the test results had E.Coli amounts so high they could not be counted.  This stream used to be clear pre-CAFOs. 
    Lynn earned the Goldman award by creating a protocol to test water at the source, from CAFO drain tiles and field runoff, finding many violations of the Clean Water Act regulations at these factory farms.
    For example, E.Coli counts of 130 colonies per liter of water will close a public beach.  She has tested numerous water sources in MI on CAFO land that exceeds the normal/safe limit, some over 20,000, or too numerous to count.  All of these samples are recorded and reported with little or no consequences to the CAFO violating the regulations.
    We passed our first CAFO and it looks NOTHING like a farm we all know.  Not a cow was to be seen outside in a pasture.  They were all held hostage in small stalls their whole lives with the sole purpose of producing milk.  Cows on a sustainable farm, with one cow living on two acres of pasture land, live 10-12 years, compared to three years for a CAFO cow.  Their diet is mostly corn which is not a natural food for cows. Since they must be kept pregnant in order to give milk, calves are often killed to prevent an oversupply.  Their dead bodies get thrown in a pile on the property to rot (a violation).
    Pam and Lynn gave us handouts showing the CAFOs we visited, pointing out the information they've carefully documented over the years and taken, literally, to the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality, in Lansing.  
    One of the key causes of excess nutrients (Phosphorus being the main one) is the underground drain tile system used in our area to get water off the fields as quickly as possible. Formerly part of "The Great Black Swamp," the area is traversed with deep ditches into which the tiles empty, keeping the nutrient-rich water from soaking deep into the ground.    
    We went by a CAFO that had 4000 cows in 3 barns.  Pam tells us we are looking at the sewage equivalent of a town of 80,000 people, with the waste of one cow equaling that of 20 people.   And the CAFO has no sanitary sewage system to handle all the waste.  (Can you imagine having no system to treat a town of 80,000 people?)  
    The animal waste is collected in a large lagoon, with water added to make it liquid and easier to apply with various kinds of sprayers.  That day, several CAFOs were spreading manure onto the fields.
    Our area’s biggest problem is the dissolved phosphorous found in the liquid manure which is running off the fields into the area streams and waterways that empty into Lake Erie. This combined with the algae in the Western Lake Erie Basin and rising temperatures create the annual summer water crises for Toledo’s water system.  And WE PAY to clean up a problem caused by CAFOs. 
    Additionally, while driving by the CAFO’s we witnessed regulations not being followed.  For example, liquid waste had been spread on a field where there already was standing liquid waste. CAFOs are to make sure all liquid is incorporated into the soil.  If it isn’t, it creates runoff into the streams, polluting the waters headed to Lake Erie.  We saw several fields with many puddles. 
  Also, we saw workers in a field hooking up the dragline or hose to the irrigation spreaders. The hose transfers the toxic liquid from the lagoon and sprays it on the fields.  Workers’ health is at risk by breathing in hydrogen sulfide and ammonia created by the waste.  This is the same toxic air Dave Blessing and his family breathe when the wind shifts toward his farm. 
    Pam told us one of the CAFO we see forgot to turn off an irrigation spreader which developed run off into a local creek and the toxins were so strong it killed thousands of fish.  This creek also leads to Lake Erie.
    What we all experienced that day was deplorable.  (I was in shock and depressed seeing all of this… knowing that this is going on and our public officials are aware of it and are doing NOTHING to fix it.)  Regulations are not being enforced.  It is up to us to get them to back an ‘’Impaired Designation” and hold the CAFOs accountable for this toxic mess.   
Pam and Lynn were asked what solutions are there? Here are a few:
 -  Designate WLEWB Impaired and hold the CAFO’s accountable for their toxic waste management
 -  If CAFOs continue to run their operation this way they need to pay for and build an onsite municipal grade sewage treatment plant. 
 -  The subsidy money being given out (Recently $41 million) should be used for sustainable farms to grow food for people, not livestock.
 -  Go back to environmentally sustainable, grass-fed animals on open pastures.

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
NEXT ACLE MEETING
JULY 20, 6:30pm
Grace Lutheran Church 4441 Monroe St. in Toledo

"IT'S FOR THE LAKE"

    That's all it took to convince Sr. Sharon Havelak, Kris Torio and Jeff Klein to donate their skills and time to Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie.
    Sr. Sharon and Kris submitted beautiful concepts for our logo.  Members selected Kris' design at the May meeting, which is the one you see on this newsletter.  Jeff turned it into a banner that led off our group at the Old West End Festival Parade on June 6.
    The next time you see any of these good souls, be sure and thank them "for the lake."

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ACLE BURSTS ON THE SCENE     

    When a dozen Lake Advocates fell in for the Old West End Festival Parade, June 6, and unfurled our 7-ft. banner, 10 yard signs and packs of flyers, heads did turn!
    Thousands of people lined the streets of Toledo's historic neighborhood and gave us a tremendous reception.  It seems a lot of people like the idea of clean water!
    After the parade, and the following day, Advocates circulated throughout the festival-goers, passing out our informational flyers and getting dozens of people to sign postcards to Toledo's mayor and city council, telling them to support an EPA "impaired" designation for the lake.  
    It was also the first time we included Marcy Kaptur on the list of "Politicians Who Still Don't Support a U.S. EPA Impaired Designation."  We believe it's time our Congresswoman put her considerable political weight behind getting Lake Erie on that important list.

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MARK YOUR CALENDAR!
NEXT ACLE MEETING
JULY 20, 6:30pm
Grace Lutheran Church 4441 Monroe St. in Toledo