There is no simple answer to stopping another algal bloom in Lake Erie.
That was the crux of George Bullerjahn’s recent talk, hosted by the League of Women Voters.
Bullerjahn, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Bowling Green State University, has
been studying Cyanobacteria for 40 years. He spoke at the Wood County District Public Library on
Tuesday.
“Cyanobacteria is good guys,” he said. “Cyanobacteria is the reason we have oxygen in the atmosphere. Why
we have an ozone layer. Why we have life on land.”
However, the issues on the lake are caused by a minority of Cyanobacteria bad guys.
Bullerjahn has been looking at toxic events back to 2010.
Toxic Cyanobacteria can be found all over the world, including Lake Victoria, Kenya, and Taihu, China.

Wherever there is mismanagement of water with respect to agriculture or sewage, there are toxic
cyanobacterial bloom events in freshwaters.
His talk focused on August 2014, when Toledo residents were told not to drink their water for three days.
The crisis affected 400,000 people.
“The loss of public trust is such that I know people today who will only drink bottled water,” Bullerjahn
said.
As a scientist, he said he could see this coming. A water treatment plant in Ottawa County went offline
in 2013 due to detecting a Cyanobacteria toxin in the water.
“This only affected 1,000 registered voters,” so it was mostly ignored, Bullerjahn said.
The 2014 bloom that affected Toledo wasn’t large but was insanely toxic, he said. There was a massive
release of toxins that weekend because the bloom was under viral attack. The virus that attacks
microsystems was everywhere and released a mass amount of toxins.
“The timing was perfect for extra toxins to go into the (water treatment) plant, and not be effectively
quenched by the water treatment, and get into the supply.”
The toxin molecules are rich in nitrogen atoms, and while phosphorus is in the forefront of the cause of
the blooms, you need to be worrying about nitrogen at the same time, he said.
“The land agricultural run-off where we are is the big issue. It doesn’t have to be sewage.”
There are a lot of different ways these blooms can be attacked, and dual nutrient management is
warranted.
Lane use alterations divert nutrients. Constructing a wetland will dilute the nutrients as may barrier
strips, cover crops or management of manure from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations).
Social scientists also are needed to create a link between science and policy. Will incentivizing these
options for people who are generating the nutrients be the answer? It could be taxing folks for
fertilizer purchases, giving tax credits for fertile reductions, adopting precision farming technology,
or fining farms that are known hotspots.
“Whatever we do is meaningless unless social science gets involved,” Bullerjahn said.
The designation last year that the waters of Lake Erie are impaired came from a lawsuit. Ohio and the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gathered experts and told them to come up with a metric to prove it
is impaired and come up with a metric to prove it is no longer impaired as it improves.
The latest bloom is exclusively due to the nutrient loads caused by a wet spring and excessive water
runoff down the Maumee River, Bullerjahn said.
Low-bloom years – including 2002 and 2005 – were due to reduced rainfall in the spring.
Massive blooms were recorded in 2011 and 2015 when excess phosphorus and nitrogen made it into the
watershed.
Satellite images can detect how many cells are in the water and can be applied to any body of water. This
will give us ideas of how blooms grow, decline, move and persist, he said.
If there is a condition that is violates in a six-year window, it’s impaired, Bullerjahn added.
“Even if the lake was perfectly crystal clear, we would still be impaired to 2023.”
Agricultural management is needed to create a 48-percent reduction in nutrient runoff to reduce the bloom
events. Some groups claim, however, if that number is met, it would result in a 5-percent loss of
property.
Studies have been done with land-use models to achieve nutrient reductions, including two-stage ditches
to relay water, buffer strips, and timed application of fertilizer.
“Most of the models failed, but a few came darn close to meeting this 48 percent reduction,” he said.
That cost gets moved to the consumer, he said.
Vickie Askins, who runs the Ohio Environmental Stewardship Alliance, pointed out that concentrated animal
feeding operation aren’t regulated. Her group represents citizen push-back to corporate agribusiness and
factory farms.
CAFOs are an issue, Bullerjahn agreed. There are small farm operations and large ones.
“In terms of large operations, they are fairly well managed,” he said. “It’s the small ones that sneak
under the door and we don’t know much about.”
Sharon Libby, with the League of Women Voters, said their initiative includes working on vital issues of
concern to members and the public.
“The momentum is there to implement change,” on both sides of the aisle in Congress, Bullerjahn said.
His group helped write the Drinking Water Protection Act, which was supported by U.S. Rep. Bob Latta,
R-Bowling Green, and signed into law in 2016.