(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

Fixing Lake Erie and its watershed is the focus of course, of numerous organizations, both citizens and governmental in Ohio.

We're joined by Mike Ferner of the citizens group, Lake Erie Advocates.

Mike, I wanna thank you for being here today on "Journal."

- Thank you.

[Steve] And tell us a little about Lake Erie Advocates.

Obviously, the name says a lot, but tell us a little bit about the organization, its history and then we can get into the details on what your initiatives are.

- Okay, well, we've been organized since early 2016.

And after the 2014 water crisis in Toledo, which got everybody's attention.

You know, I live right on the lake in Point Place and the people that I knew who'd been interested in environmental issues would stop and say, well, what are we gonna do?

- [Steve] What are we gonna do?

- Yeah and there had been a group for a while that Sandy Bihn was heading up for a number of years before that.

But I was working with, over the years, I'd been working with people who were used to getting out and being a little louder than Sandy traditionally did.

So we thought, well, okay, let's get a new group going that will get out on the streets, we'll do picketing, we'll do whatever it takes to draw attention to the fact that public officials aren't doing their job.

And so, that's what we did.

And we got started in early 2016 and the following year, 2017, in that first year, we had popped up in the press here and there and the law firm in Chicago, Public Interest Law Firm, the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

- [Steve] Oh, sure.

- Yeah, they were considering suing the US EPA because the US EPA wasn't making the Ohio EPA do their job.

And they were looking for plaintiffs.

They needed standing in the area.

And we were the only group that they contacted who said, "Yeah, sign us up."

So, we became a plaintiff in 2017 and that suit lasted a year and a half, something like that.

And then, another one was refiled shortly thereafter, all in the federal court under Judge Carr.

And so, we remained a plaintiff in that until the end of 2021.

And we had explained this to the attorneys who weren't happy, but we were saying, since we got started here, since we became a plaintiff, we've learned a lot about what's going on here.

And we knew that the TMDLs, the total maximum daily allowance for...

Boy, that's a total maximum daily load.

That is the term that's used to by the Clean Water Act to say, okay, here's a plan that we think is gonna take care of the problem and here's what people have to do in order to cut back the pollution.

Well, we had looked into that for two or three years and we realized that what the Ohio EPA was gonna recommend was gonna be pretty- - [Steve] Far below what- - Way below.

- All the scientists believe would.

- And so at the end of 2021, we decided we weren't gonna remain plaintiffs in that lawsuit because assuming it ended at some point because it had been dragging on, we're gonna wanna say, well, look what we won.

And we didn't think we could say that to the public because what did we win?

So anyway, we pulled out of that and we explained it as best as we could because we had done this research on the H2Ohio program that was- - The recent initiative by the state to try and mitigate or correct the issues on Lake Erie.

- By putting in buffer strips and no-till.

- And voluntary or incented farm management and things like that.

Farm fertilizer management.

- And even if they were mandatory.

The research that we did showed that they don't work very well.

- [Steve] That was gonna fall short.

- Yeah, so anyway, so we said, we thought this was gonna be something, but to the best we can tell, it's not.

And it proved to be the case because just recently, the Ohio EPA issued their draft TMDL, total management daily load.

Total maximum daily Load.

- [Steve] It's a phrase that most of us deal with.

- And I used to use it all the time too.

But anyway, they just issued the draft report on it.

And some of the most knowledgeable scientists who have been working on this for a long time, Jeff Reutter, who used to head up the Ohio Sea Grant and Pete Hess, who no longer lives in Ohio, he's Toledo originally, but he has been involved with EPA TMDLs out in California.

And they took a look at the draft and they said, "If this is what you guys think is gonna work it, it's not gonna work."

So, I mean, basically- - Why are we here?

- So anyway, that's a brief overview of what we've been doing.

But mostly what we try to get out, we go to high schools with the program that we have that's available on our website.

It's called The Third Battle for Lake Erie.

And we present that at high schools and church groups and any place we can.

And we have a postcard campaign to elected officials and we speak out at the hearings that are held and just whatever we can do to let people know this is a problem and here's what's causing the problem.

And if we don't address that, we're never gonna get the lake cleaned up.

- Yeah and one of the things I think that's interesting about this is that people will hear about all these government initiatives, as you said, the TMDL, the Ohio EPA, the US EPA and when we come back, we can talk a little about the fact, the US EPA has not, as you mentioned, hasn't been overly thrilled by some of the things the Ohio EPA has done or has not done.

Because I think they've looked at some of these plans and gone, these aren't really where we want to be guys.

But when we come back, let's talk a little bit about that.

Back in just a moment with Mike Ferner from Lake Erie Advocates here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

My guest is Mike Ferner from Lake Area Advocates.

When we left the last segment, we were talking a little bit about the Ohio EPAs efforts, their plans, their proposals about how to mitigate and fix Lake Erie, deal with the issues that we've been talking about now for a lot of years.

Talk a little about the fact, of course now, as you mentioned that too, that the Ohio EPA proposes plans, the US EPA has been trying to kind of hold their feet to the fire and has, I think, ruled a couple of times that what they're proposing isn't going to meet the standard that the US EPA believes will deal with the problem.

You kind of mentioned that, but the proposals are setting the bar way below what a lot of people will be effective.

We're gonna put something out there, do it, but it's really like, kind of whistling into the wind kind of a thing at this point.

- Well actually, the US EPA has not officially said- - [Steve] No to this.

- Well, they haven't said anything about what they have not.

They get six months after this comment period is over to review it and then they come out and their decision is, this is satisfactory or this is unsatisfactory.

And I was involved in Cleveland in the federal court hearing in Cleveland.

Judge Carr out of Toledo's federal court sent it to the Cleveland judge for a mediation because the suit had been going on under his jurisdiction for a long time.

So we had a full day in the federal courtroom in Cleveland.

And the US Department of Justice was representing the US EPA and I can tell you they were not helpful.

We had discussions in there that I wished would've been televised because it was pretty enlightening.

We walked in there with the attorneys from the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

And then there's 15 suits on the other side and all supposedly working for us.

But we were there to try to hammer out an agreement with, okay, when are you going to get serious about this?

What's the timetable gonna be?

And I was interested in what's it gonna consist of because we had done enough research into these H2Ohio programs by then that I was thinking, if that's all they're gonna use, we're going nowhere.

- This is back to where you were before.

We're basically treading, it's a bad pun, treading water basically.

- Yeah and so, I told the attorneys, I said, what they're proposing is not gonna work.

For example, I know this gets into the technical weeds a little bit, but there's a big difference between total phosphorus and dissolved reactive phosphorus.

And the dissolved phosphorus is what is not stopped by any of these H2Ohio programs.

Now, the H2Ohio programs, they have their origin way back when they're trying to keep the top soil out of the lake and keep the nitrogen out and so forth.

And it does a good job for those for topsoil, for nitrogen and for total phosphorus.

- But not the dissolved phosphorus.

- Not the dissolve phosphorus 'cause that's like, you have a glass of water and dissolve some sugar in it, that sugar's gonna go wherever the water goes.

And that's what happens.

- [Steve] That's what's happening.

- Yeah and so, that was the first time I heard the Ohio EPA representative say very plainly, we're not gonna concern ourselves with dissolved phosphorus when we're measuring what's going on and how successful any of these things are.

We're using total phosphorus and I went goofy.

I said to the attorney, you can't let 'em get away with that.

That's not even good science.

- That basically undercuts the whole idea.

- Yeah and so, by the way, that is still what's in the TMDLs is they're only using total phosphorus.

That's one of the problems with them.

But the attorney started pushing the Ohio EPA person and said, "We really need to say in our proposed agreement here that we're going to use good science."

And I mean, who's gonna argue about that?

- You wouldn't have have to negotiate or litigate.

- But the Department of Justice attorney, representing the US EPA said, "Oh no, no because that makes it sound like we're not using good science."

And so, there's this argument for, well how about if we just say we're gonna use science.

And our attorney tried going back to good science and this is the point of the whole thing.

The Department of Justice guy closed his binder and said, "If you're gonna be insisting on things like that, we're leaving it, you're not gonna have an agreement."

I just thought, whoa.

- [Steve] Why are we here anyway, then?

- So that's an indication of how hard the US EPA is leaning on anybody.

- Because the impression you get when you see stories in the news is, at least the ones that I've come in contact with, are that the US EPA is pushing harder on the Ohio EPA.

But you're saying when you get in a court of law, when it comes down to actually nail this down, they're not as insistent about the Ohio EPA.

- Not at all.

And the only reason is the US EPA started saying to the Ohio EPA, hey, you've been for years, you should have declared Western Lake Erie impaired.

And Sandy Bihn had been working on that for 10 years before we got started.

You should list it as impaired.

And that means the Clean Water Act kicks in, you have to do the total maximum daily loads.

There's a whole process there.

Well, the Ohio EPA just refused to do it.

And so, when the Environmental Law and Policy Center with us as plaintiffs sued the US EPA to make them enforce the Clean Water Act, that's when they started moving finally.

So, whatever has happened, and we don't think it's a whole lot at this point, but whatever has happened has happened because that lawsuit, that's what was holding their feet to the fire.

- Now, we've got just a couple of minutes in this segment.

One of the things we'll want to talk about, when I looked at your website, there are a couple of interesting maps up there.

And the audience will see those when we start to talk about it.

But one of them talks about point sources for pollution in the lake or what most people would assume are things that are polluting the lake.

And then the other map that was kind of interesting, when we see this in the next segment, is the subsurface drainage map that's laid out there.

Because when I saw that for the first time, and I live in farm country, there's tile everywhere.

But it was interesting what it showed about, well, what we would call kind of the corn belt, just how intensely we subsurface tile compared to a lot of other places in the country.

And as you know, the fact that that moves the water to the lake quicker, that sort of thing.

So when we come back, let's talk a little about that and then of course, we wanna talk about some of the issues you touched on earlier.

Your outreach to communities and schools and things like that.

When we come back, we can talk about those things.

Back in just a moment with Mike Ferner from Lake Erie Advocates here on "The Journal."

You're with us here on "The Journal."

Our guest is Mike Ferner of Lake Erie Advocates.

We've talked a lot in theory and in practice about some of the things going with the lake.

I looked at your website and there are a couple of interesting maps up there.

The first one you see is a map of what I thought were government point source, like wastewater treatment plants.

But that map actually is point sources, but not the ones that most people would think.

These are the concentrated animal feeding operations that are scattered throughout the Maumee Watershed.

And when people see that map, it's a pretty amazing document.

There's different colors there.

Some talk about the ones that were here prior to a certain date, then things that have happened since then.

But your first thought is, well those have to be cities and towns and places with water treatment plants and they are other kinds of facilities.

So, talk a little about that and what we believe the impact or your group believes is the impact of those operations on trying to deal with the issues we face on Lake Erie.

- Well, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, in conjunction with the Environmental Working Group, which is a national environmental group, did really groundbreaking study of how many of these things are there in our watershed.

And they used satellite images to identify these concentrated animal feeding operations, factory farms.

And when they started counting them up, they realized there were an awful lot more of them than- - [Steve] Than we believed, than we thought.

- Because what you hear all the time from the officials is one number that is much lower than that study found because they're only counting the ones that the Ohio Department of Agriculture has given a permit to.

And so if the standard is, I think it's like 650 cows, before you have to get, so you have 640.

- [Steve] They're stages below the threshold of permitting.

- Right, now some of these facilities got 2,000, 5,000 cows on them and there's one in Williams County that we use as an example out near Bryan and it's not the biggest one.

It's got 3,900 cows and it creates as much waste as the cities of Maumee, Sylvania, Perrysburg and Fremont.

Now, all of those places and a lot smaller places than that have gotta have sewage treatment plants.

But the law has been written and interpreted in such a way that this is agriculture, so they don't have to do that.

Now under the Clean Water Act, a confined animal, concentrated animal feeding operation is a point source.

And that's what the Environmental Law and Policy Center is pushing to get them regulated as that.

But the way the law's been interpreted is once a manure leaves that facility and gets applied to the land, it's no longer a point source regulated operation.

It's considered non-point source agricultural runoff.

- Whole different in this area.

- So anyway, that's kind of- - And we wanna be clear that the people that are operating these, they're operating within the guidelines and the rules set by the Ohio EPA.

They're not violating the law technically.

They're following the laws that how they're interpreted.

So, they're doing what they're allowed to do legally.

- Yep and- [Steve] So we don't wanna say they're not breaking because they've been told this, you're allowed to do this, so that's how people are gonna practice their business or whatever.

- And let me say a word about the farmers that are involved in this whole thing.

You've got the ones that operate these factory farms and it's hard to even consider 'em a farm.

I mean, they're in industrial operation.

And they are inhumane all the time in barbaric, frequently.

So, the conditions for the animals are awful.

But at any rate, that's one kind of operation.

The other kind of operation are the farmers, the row crop farmers that have been doing corn, soybeans, wheat forever.

Now, some of them use this manure for fertilizer.

And then you get into the whole question of, how much are they applying or how much are they letting the factory farm owner apply.

And there is nobody out there enforcing this.

- See, the thought would be that that's being regulated somehow and it may be some maybe.

I guess I'll just leave it at that.

- Well, there's recommendations that you only put so many parts per million of phosphorus and nitrogen and so forth.

If you're gonna go grow corn, you need this much and soybeans this much.

And they do soil tests, but you know who enforces?

They're gonna have another tank full of manure come out and unless somebody's driving by and and sees them doing it.

- Yeah, so the oversight is a little scarce.

- To say the least.

However, the row crop farmers that use commercial fertilizer that don't use the manure.

Commercial fertilizer is expensive.

It gets more expensive all the time.

Manure is a waste product.

They can't get rid of it fast enough.

The commercial fertilizer they have over the last probably 15, 20 years, they've been doing a great job at reducing the amount they use.

They've got technology, they have GPS technology that sends a signal to the fertilizing unit behind the tractor.

- [Steve] And tells it to raise and lower the amount as they go.

- And so they have really reduced the amount.

So, that's why our group is saying, the problem are these factory farms.

- [Steve] The extremely large groups.

- They're generating liquid manure that, this being the Great Black Swamp and all that drainage tile that you mentioned.

You take that liquid manure, put it on the ground and it goes right down to the drain tiles.

And so, it's not even surface runoff.

I mean, most of the studies that look at what happens with nutrients on farmland, they look at surface runoff.

And that's not our- - [Steve] That's not the problem right now.

- At least half of the nutrients getting into the streams and the lake are coming from those underground tiles.

So it's a huge part of the problem.

If there's one part of the country that should never have liquid manure applied to the fields, it's our watershed.

- Because I know when we looked at the map that the audience will see shows just how intensely we subsurface tile, which, because well we've got a lot of water to move.

And of course, now besides moving water, we're moving this other application of manure as you're talking about.

Are there any, just briefly on that, are there any way to address that sub soil tiling issue?

Because that's about as traditional a thing.

You look at Wood County.

Wood County floats without that tile.

But it's what we're adding to the mix that maybe wasn't there when those ditches and the tiles went in before.

And that, as you said, is seemingly, at least to the average person, appears to be unregulated.

Once it leaves the farm and goes into the applicator, unless someone is paying real attention, providing oversight, you can theoretically apply as much as you want.

Now people will probably say, no, we're not doing that.

And maybe they're telling the truth, but that's the question is, we don't really know, I guess.

- We don't and anybody from the Ohio Department of agriculture or the Ohio EPA, whoever, they can tell you it's regulated.

The Farm Bureau can tell you it's regulated and I can say without a doubt, that the enforcement stinks.

So, the proof is in the pudding, look at the lake.

Our presentation we do publicly is called The Third Battle for Lake Erie.

The first battle was Commodore Perry.

The second one was in the sixties, early seventies, when people all over the country were looking at lake Erie as this poster child for pollution.

And saying Lake Erie's damn near dead.

Then it was the sewage treatment plants from the cities, it was the factory, industrial pollution and the phosphorus in the detergent.

So, the Clean Water Act at that point did a good job- - Of addressing those particular- - Of addressing those.

Now it took Ohio at least 10 years after the Clean Water Act to get rid of the phosphates and the detergent because we got a big soap company in Cincinnati called Proctor and Gamble.

[Steve] Which, okay, they do a lot of good, but that particular product was a problem.

And obviously, addresses, you said, attempted to be addressed in the sixties and seventies to some degree and to somewhat successfully.

- And so the Clean Water Act came in, the cities really cleaned up their act, industry cleaned up their act.

We got the phosphates out of the detergent.

Lake Erie cleaned up.

Through the eighties into the nineties.

When did it start going sour again?

There's the mid nineties and you can track part of our presentation slideshow.

We've got a graph of dissolved phosphorus going down from the mid seventies to the mid nineties.

And that's exactly when these concentrated animal feeding operations came in.

And you can see the dissolved phosphorus is going up.

So, it says to us.

- That appears to be the... You have to go looking far to see, maybe that's what the issue is.

We've got just a moment.

So if people want to find out more about what your group does and more about how they can help you do what you do, what's the easiest way for them to get in touch with you?

- Just go to our website, it's our name, Lakeerieadvocates.org.

That's all they gotta do.

Our presentation is there, they can click on it, they can see it.

We'll get it into schools or church groups or wherever.

And there's also a way of contacting us through the website and we'll get back to 'em.

- Great, okay, well, Mike Ferner Lake Erie, thank you so much and a lot of illumination on an issue that we hear a lot about and I think sometimes, we believe we know what's going on and it turns out, maybe we don't know as much about what's going on as we thought.

You can check us out at wbgu.org and you can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU- PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

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