The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Test wetland project could help Grand Lake St. Marys

Man-made marshes may help filter and treat polluted water.

Lake resident (for 16 years) Char Richtmyer pulls a dead fish off the beach to toss it back in the water: For the second year in a row, Grand Lake St. Mary has been plagued by a new and potentially toxic form of algae that is killing fish, creating foul odors and driving away tourists at the height of the summer season.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Red Cross volunteers ready at moment’s notice
Updated 4 min. ago
Longtime educator, Browns fan  is Edgewood’s Teacher of the Year
Updated 7 min. ago
All-day kindergarten costly to implement for area schools
New 11 min. ago
Injured biker itching to get back on road
New 14 min. ago
Artist completes mural on  city’s veterans memorial
8:50 p.m.
> More headlines

E-mail this page

By Steve Bennish, Staff Writer Updated 1:15 AM Thursday, July 29, 2010

CELINA, Mercer County — Engineering man-made wetlands along small creeks could help heal the waters at Grand Lake St. Marys, state officials say.

If a demonstration project scheduled to begin on Prairie Creek this fall is successful, it could prove a way forward to restoring the health of the 13,500-acre lake where a tourism industry worth up to $200 million annually is being crushed by a cyanobacteria outbreak.

Wetlands are nature’s kidneys for their ability to filter and naturally treat polluted waters. The idea is to recreate wetlands and restore a more natural, slower water flow where creeks on the south shore feed Grand Lake.

The creeks — Prairie, Beaver, Coldwater, Chickasaw and Little Chickasaw — drain a watershed with the state’s highest livestock concentration.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed $500,000 in federal grant funds to build anew or restore 18 acres of wetlands and create an acre each of native mussel reef and floating wetlands, as well as other features on Prairie Creek, one of the smaller feeders. Local funds will pay another $375,000.

The money is available now, but local officials including the Mercer County commissioners are now signing off on receiving it, said OEPA spokeswoman Heather Lauer.

Wetlands are proven pollution fighters. They’re in West Palm Beach, Fla., Phoenix; and Columbia, Mo., among other places, to give sewage extra purification.

The Prairie Creek test should reduce annual nitrogen flow by a ton, phosphorous by a third of a ton and sediments by 287 tons annually. It might not sound huge, but added to other measures, it could help.

Laura Walker, Watershed Coordinator for the Grand Lake-Wabash Watershed Alliance, said that scaling up the tactic would put new wetlands from 50 to 100 acres on the other creeks where they enter the lake.

“This is a piece of the puzzle,” she said. “There are many small pieces. This at least is a corner piece or a couple of the little pieces.”

The puzzle itself is a lake hand-dug in the 19th century as a reservoir to power the Miami-Erie Canal. It has multiple challenges that could take 10 to 20 years to fix.

OEPA’s analysis indicates that rich nutrient deposits from farm runoff over many years are lodged in lake sediments that are stirred by wind and power boats. The stirring resuspends nutrients in the water, making it available to fuel cyanobacteria blooms. When the bacteria dies, it throws off liver and neural toxins.

The lake’s shallowness and slow moving water give bacteria access to lots of sunlight. Water moves through the lake slowly, the lake recharging every 18 months — giving the bacteria chances to thrive.

Potential solutions include dredging the lake, treating sediments with alum and building islands in the lake with an average depth of 7 to 8 feet. The islands would moderate wind action.

Wetlands expert John Mack, a former OEPA scientist now with the Cleveland MetroParks, sees Grand Lake as a smaller version of the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone of oxygen depleted waters caused by the continent’s heavy farm runoff. Estimates suggest it would take wetlands of up to 10 percent of Grand Lake’s size to purify its waters, Mack said.

“The key thing is to put wetlands between the nutrient load and the lake,” he said. “I would call them working wetlands.”

Specially selected plants and soils would process nitrogen and phosphorous as cattails pump water from the soil and into the atmosphere — millions of gallons in a year.

“It’s a complicated environmental engineering and ecology problem,” he said. “You’d want to build wetlands, enough and in the right places, so runoff from human activity was being intercepted well before hitting the open water of a shallow reservoir.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-7407 or sbennish@DaytonDailyNews.com.

Share this article

ADD COMMENT

Comments feed

I agree with Dan. We should at least try to experiment with the zebra mussels. Some people say that it will be a nuisance to the users of Grand Lake, but at least we would be able to use Grand Lake, and we would not die from eating a zebra mussels, unlike the algae. Then they say that they would over-populate the lake, but they die in cold water, and with the lake's shallow depth, most would die off in the winter, controlling the population. It is at least worth a try, right?

Trent
9:37 PM, 7/31/2010

REPORT ABUSE

Zebra mussels do not eat toxic cyanolbacteria.

Jerry
4:41 PM, 7/29/2010

REPORT ABUSE

Dale, I know it seems that the spillway has changed, but please read this link, Grand Lake is mentioned in this report. There is no science ANYWHERE to support the spillway claim; you are incorrectly speculating and it appears that you are un-informed.....and the Lake Erie Watershed is showing the EXACT symptoms as GLSM.

http://www.lakescientist.com/2010/r...

Stuart
3:27 PM, 7/29/2010

REPORT ABUSE

The stirring resuspends nutrients in the water, making them available to fuel cyanobacteria blooms.
When the bacteria die, they throw off liver and neutral toxins. The words nutrients and bacteria are plural.

Mark
9:07 AM, 7/29/2010

REPORT ABUSE

Here we go again! GLSM was not DUG. The canals were "DUG". There is no scientific evidence to support: "It will take 10-20 years to restore the lake." Lastly we should quit spending taxpayers $ to build wetlands and other projects that will encourage those in the watershed to continue bad land management practices. Let's stop the flow of nutrients first then worry about helping mother nature restore the lake. This approach should not cost citizens any money. Keep your property on your property!

truthdoctor
8:49 AM, 7/29/2010

REPORT ABUSE

There are 4 additional comments

SHOW ALL

We welcome your comments. Please remember this is a public forum and behave appropriately. Your comments must conform to our visitor's agreement.