While the audio is hard to pick up, Roy is pointing out how the West Marsh spillway is conveying water that has filtered through literally hundreds of acres of our marsh before it is released (in a "cleaner" state) into Sandusky Bay;
video taken following a series of heavy rains -- July, 2015
A few nights back, I was talking with my wife about reactions to my posts to this journal. I remain somewhat surprised that most aren't using the built-in comment features, but I am equally interested at the growing feedback I receive via email and even in person, as the number of readers continues to grow. As the audience broadens, backgrounds become more varied. Yet the most common sentiment seems to be, "I had no idea . . ."
How that sentence is finished depends on the individual (and usually the specifics of what was read), but I was struck when my wife said virtually the same thing. "Most people have no idea why all this is so important."
"All this" is a big topic. So I guess I'll start with why I see wetland conservation and restoration as so vital to each and every one of us. More specifically, I'd like to focus on one particular reason that is justifiably getting a lot of area press -- particularly since late summer, three years back.
The City of Toledo’s multi-day drinking water ban of August 2014 put wetlands and their ties to Lake Erie water quality very much at the forefront of local, regional, and even national media coverage. Often referred to as “nature’s kidneys,” coastal marshes are the last line of defense to convert excess nutrients (most notably phosphorus) to plant growth before entering a lake like Erie – where the overly abundant nutrients can nourish nuisance algal blooms. Wetland environments also take up a wide array of other chemicals and compounds – think natural and manufactured fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, oils & greases, road salts, and even pharmaceuticals – to name a few. Wetlands have an innate ability to lock these "nasties" and more into growth forms (i.e., plants) that often do an amazing job of breaking them down into much less hostile elements.
This takes a diversity of organisms, time, and space. So when 300,000+ acres of coastal marsh on the Western Basin of Lake Erie (pre-European settlement) dwindles to less than 30,000 acres (present day), why is what remains so important? I'd like to share a few excerpts from columnist Jack Lessenberry's May 5, 2017 article from The Blade to help make the connection between preservation, restoration, and clean drinking water:
Few people know Lake Erie as well as Jeffrey Reutter, the recently retired director of the Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory on the lake . . .
A few weeks ago, at a “Farmers Together” forum on saving Lake Erie, I asked him what would happen if President Trump’s budget ending all funds for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and slashing funds for the EPA becomes reality.
The scientist, who is anything but an alarmist, responded instantly. “We can no longer count on Lake Erie producing safe drinking water for the 11 million people it now serves.”
To me, these few sentences sum up what has (rightfully) become a media blitz on the topic of safe and reliable drinking water. The need is obviously real, and the impact is broad. At the risk of being perceived as an extremist or alarmist myself: while there are many crucially important causes out there, I believe wetlands are at the heart of something vital to our very existence.
I'll write more on wetland's many values and functions in the days and weeks to come.