A new wetland is coming to Wood County, just on the outskirts of Bowling Green, and it is one of many that will be part of the H2Ohio program that was instituted by Gov. Mike DeWine to cut harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie.

“I’m putting the swamp back in the Black Swamp,” Staten Middleton said of the family farmland that he is restoring as a wetland. “The highest and best use of that land is not as a farm, but as a swamp. It used to be a swamp.”

A local contractor will be breaking ground on Middleton’s wetland restoration by early May. It is one of the 174 projects, six of which are in Wood County, that are part of H2Ohio program and totalling $6.7 million in investment.

A portion of the harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie was caused by phosphorus runoff from farm fertilizer. The H2Ohio program has been combined with the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which is a US Department of Agriculture Farm Bill conservation program that gives farmers financial incentives to take land out of production.

The farmer has to pay up front for the contractor to do the work, but gets a portion of the wetland pools paid for by the state. There’s also a one-time payment of $2,000 per acre and a 14 ½ year rental of the property from the state. After that time it will be reevaluated. In turn, H2Ohio will be doing scientific studies of the benefits to the local area.

In Middleton’s case, the land would both be taken out of production and restored into an active wetland.

“Wetlands act as a kidney, to filter out nutrients and pollutants. Basically, the water leaves the wetland in better shape than when it came in, which meets the goals of H2OHIO,” Mark Witt, Ohio Department of Natural Resources private lands biologist, said. “Once water flows into the wetland it slows down, drops sediment out of suspension, and a lot of times the nutrients that are attached to the particles, that allows plants to uptake them.”

To qualify, the land had to fit several categories. Middleton chose low-lying land that Witt categorized as both least productive, but great for the synergistic benefits to the neighboring properties and ultimately Lake Erie.

“We’re not seeing guys offering up the best stuff. It makes the most sense to go into conservation,” Witt said of most of the land that has qualified for the program. “It’s ground that’s marginal, at best. It often sits low. It floods frequently. It’s just not the productive area of the farm.”

The benefits of the new wetland will trickle through the environment. In addition to water filtration, it will also attract wildlife, which Middleton said is key to having the land healthy and not attracting mosquitoes.

Witt called the list of wildlife nearly endless. It will include pollinating insects, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals and birds. In the healthy wetland, the insects will be balanced off with the other wildlife.

“Frogs, somehow they are able to sense these things,” Witt said of the first animals likely to be seen on the property. They will be followed by turtles, raccoons, muskrat, mink, possums, whitetail deer, and a variety of birds, such as: ducks, geese, herons, egrets, kingfishers and near tropical migrating birds.

The land is almost 14 acres, bordering the old B&O Railroad line that runs from the northwest to the southeast of the property, with Mitchell Road forming the eastern edge.

Middleton is a third-generation lawyer in Bowling Green. It has been farmed for the Middletons by Jim Bostdorff and his family since the 1950s.

It’s more than just digging a hole in the ground. There will also be a tile search and, when found, the contractor will install a tile break plug.

The main pond will have a 1-degree slope, down to a maximum depth of 3 feet, in the main kidney shaped pond taking up about a third of the restored wetland. It will then have a dam, or earthen levee with a self regulating water height regulating structure.

That water then flows out and into a ditch, ultimately flowing into Lake Erie.

“It isn’t a windfall, but you’re also not taking a bath. I could just keep farming it and cashing the check from the farmer, but I don’t want to do that,” Middleton said.

After his investment, he said he hopes to break even, the remaining land that’s still farmed should be more productive and everyone benefits from a more balanced environment and cleaner water.