March is Rotary Water and Sanitation Month, but not all service projects undertaken by Rotarians are necessarily overseas! Often the need can be as pressing in our own local communities: the western basin of Lake Erie, the source of drinking water for millions of people, is threatened by blooms of poisonous blue-green algae, so local Rotarians are joining the fight!
By Diana Schoberg Photos by Alyce Henson
For 56 hours in August 2014, nearly a half-million people living along the shores of the largest freshwater lake system in the world could not drink the water out of their taps. They couldn’t use it to brush their teeth or wash their dishes. Restaurants shut their doors. Hospitals canceled elective surgeries. Stores ran out of bottled water, and the Ohio National Guard stepped in to help.
A bloom of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, had poisoned the western basin of Lake Erie, the source of drinking water for Toledo, Ohio. The algae had been fed by nitrogen and phosphorus runoff that heavy rains had washed down the Maumee River, the largest watershed in the Great Lakes. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes and therefore the warmest, creating ideal conditions for the toxic algae to flourish. Wind and waves carried the bloom to the intake pipe for the city’s water supply. Drinking the contaminated water can cause symptoms ranging from fever, vomiting, and headaches to liver failure and death.
Over the previous five summers, major algae blooms had become more common, and water managers in Toledo and nearby communities were bracing for the possibility of a bloom contaminating the water supply.
How did we get to this point? Who or what is to blame? The pioneers who settled the area? Paved-over cities? Old, leaky septic tanks on rural properties? The mania for lush lawns? Changing farming practices?
The answer is all of them – all of us. That means we all must play a role in solving the problem. It’s a complex knot, but one that Rotary may be uniquely poised to untangle.
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