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The lady of the lake
Sandy Bihn and the Waterkeepers take on Lake Erie pollution
published November 14th 2007
Waterkeeper — sounds like a character in a fantasy. It calls up the image of some mythical creature, sent by the gods to watch over our rivers, lakes and seas; something from a story to make little ones feel the world is a safe place with guardians to protect them from harm. In reality, the job of waterkeeper is full of the same spirit, but less fanciful.
Sandy Bihn, executive director for the Western Lake Erie Waterkeeper Association, which counts activist/author Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. among its members — has a practical view of her job. Despite the whimsical title, Bihn is a facts and figures person.
“I remember things like numbers, such as the three billion gallons of water a day that the power plants in Lake Erie take in,” Bihn said.
Numbers like that are essential in her job as waterkeeper. The western basin of Lake Erie is surrounded by three power plants that pump the lake's water through their cooling system, killing millions of fish and their eggs each year — issues that keep the Waterkeepers Association busy and relevant.
The Great Lakes provide 95 percent of the fresh water in the country, and two percent of the world's fresh water supply. Lake Erie and the Maumee River are often overlooked and underappreciated Northwest Ohio resources.
The Waterkeepers Association is one of 162 organizations around the world affiliated with the international Waterkeepers Alliance. The non-profit organization’s goals are advocacy and protection of watersheds and bodies of water in their area. The goals are clean water and healthy ecosystems for the communities that the Waterkeepers (along with Riverkeepers, Baykeepers and Coastkeepers) watch over.
Bihn’s work revolves around both educating people and protecting the resource. As president of the Toledo Harbor Lighthouse Preservation Society, she also concentrates on publicizing some of the fun and interesting activities offered around Lake Erie and the Maumee River.
“We have the warmest, shallowest, fishiest water in all the Great Lakes, maybe the world,” she said. “Yet people don’t know all the bragging rights they have living near this resource.”
The perception that Lake Erie is too polluted to enjoy or that the Maumee is too muddy, while untrue, is part of the problem. The Waterkeepers Association faces many environmental issues. The Detroit Edison plant, Whiting Consumers Power and First Energy Bay Shore power plant all butt up against western Lake Erie. All of these plants require cooling systems, and the method they use sucks gallons of water, along with tons of fish, out of the lake each year.
By the gallon
The Maumee River and Maumee Bay provide First Energy with over 750 million gallons of water per day. Consumers Power uses 330 million gallons from the Erie Marsh, and Detroit Edison uses 1.9 billion gallons of water from the River Raisin, Maumee Bay and western Lake Erie. Bihn said that 80 percent of the Maumee is sent through these plants each day. The problem with this is that fish, plus their larvae and eggs, are brought into the plants with the water.
Due to this, millions of yellow perch and walleye are killed each year, with drastic effect on the fish population. In April 2007, Governor Ted Strickland reduced the quota of perch and walleye that can be caught by commercial and sport fishermen to help counteract declining fish populations. Yet there are no comparable limits for the power plants.
According to a 1983 study of Detroit Edison’s impact on fish populations in the River Raisin, over 10 million perch, walleye and gizzard shad are trapped each year in the screening devices used by the power plant.
There is also the issue of entrainment, which is when smaller fish, larvae and eggs that pass through the screens and into the plants’ cooling systems. Few, if any, survive once they are discharged. It is hard to measure the impact entrainment has on the fish population. The 1983 Detroit Edison study listed the number killed at over four billion each year.
Part of the problem is that Lake Erie not only has the most fish of any of the Great Lakes, but also is the shallowest of the five. Reaching depths of only 24 feet in the western basin, and five feet near the shoreline, it is difficult for boats to enter the area.
To help deepen the water, the Army Corps of Engineers designed a contained disposal facility (CDF) that juts out into Maumee Bay from the spot between the intake and outtake valves of First Energy Bay Shore. The bottom of the lake is dredged to make it deeper, and the dredge materials are dumped on CDF’s man-made peninsula. Fish are trapped between the CDF and the power plant as they swim from the mouth of the Maumee to the open waters of Lake Erie, and unintentionally herded right into the plant's cooling intake systems.
Caught in the act
It’s a problem that could be easily solved. Open cycle cooling systems, like the ones that these three plants employ, draw water from the river and lake to absorb the heat within the plant, then spew it out at a higher temperature. Methods like dry cooling or closed cooling systems could cut down or eliminate these fish kills, such as the cooling towers used at the nearby Davis Besse and Enrico Fermi plants.
These power plants may need to clean up their act soon. In January 2007, the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York decided that power plants cannot employ cooling systems that kill billions of fish each year. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was remiss in failing to require closed-cooling systems while allowing power plants to use technology that endangered fish populations.
It seems, though, that as soon as one problem is approaching a conclusion, another one will come along. The water that is expelled from these power plants is warmed to 58º. In the winter, this means that water along the south shore of Maumee Bay does not freeze like the rest of the lake. Hypothetically, Bihn said, this may be having an effect on the algae recently discovered along the shore.
Creeping plants
Lyngbya wollei algae infested the shores of Lake Erie late in the summer of 2006. Experts told Bihn it would freeze in the winter, and probably be gone by the next year. However, it reappeared full force in the spring of 2007. Bihn’s guess is that it may have something to do with the warmer temperature of the water coming from the power plants.
The kind of algae is mostly found in the southeast U.S., near Florida and North Carolina. Bihn believes it came in on the hull of boat or other outside source, because it does not naturally exist in this area.
“What’s strange is that it’s piling up on the shores of Maumee Bay,” she said. “If freezing is the answer, then thermal release from the power plants could be the problem.” The spongy, wool-like algae have been known to cause rashes when it comes in contact with human skin, but otherwise little is known about the dangers or solutions for it. In some areas of the water, it is more than five feet deep and piles up on the once-sandy shores.
One cause is nutrients like phosphorous present in the lake waters. Phosphorous was found to be a problem by the International Joint Commission (IJC), a bi-national group that protects and regulates disputes on boundary waters between the U.S. and Canada. The IJC set phosphorous load limits in 1988 because high levels in the 1960’s and 1970’s turned parts of the Lake Erie green and soupy. Since 1995, though, levels of phosphorous in the waters have continued to rise.
Though phosphorous was banned in laundry detergents, it still exists in many lawn fertilizers and dishwasher detergents. Too cut down on the growth of this algae, consumers can use phosphorous-free products, and contribute by testing the waters near them for phosphorous.
Taking care of the area is an important part of living so close to a water source like Lake Erie and Maumee Bay. But Bihn believes that locals don’t understand how fortunate they are to live on the shore of the Great Lakes. It may be a matter of taking for granted what has always been readily available.
“People in this area have never had limits on how often they can run their hose to water their garden, or how many showers they take each day,” Bihn said. “I imagine people in Atlanta or Las Vegas would appreciate having a resource like this.”
Bihn also is working on renovating the Toledo Harbor lighthouse, with the help of the Lighthouse Society. They plan to build a dock for boats alongside the lighthouse, and set up a gathering area and educational facilities inside. Bihn is very excited about the possibilities that the lighthouse offers.
“It is one of the most architecturally unique lighthouses in the world,” she said. “People from all over the country contact me about seeing the lighthouse. A guy from Mississippi even e-mailed me about shooting his movie there.”
The same seems to be true for the fishing. Bihn said she went out on a charter boat this summer, while filming a documentary she is putting together for WGTE.
“The other men were more experienced fishermen than I was,” she laughed. “But I still had fun.”
In fact, people come from all over the country to fish in what is known as the Walleye Capital of the World. In 2004, 8.4 million walleye were caught in Lake Erie. Unfortunately, it seems that most people in the area don’t know about this distinction.
“We have a lighthouse, a river with tons of islands, and the (largest fish populated) lake of all the Great Lakes,” Bihn said. “I think people need a different perception of the community.”
It seems as if the government needs a different perception, as well. In 2003, the City of Toledo and Lucas County began looking into building a coking plant near Maumee Bay in Oregon, Ohio. As plans progressed, so did speculations about how much pollution a plant like this would emit. Now, a site has been purchased and permits have been issued. On December 6, 2007, there will be a public hearing at Clay High School about the plans for the coking facility. Bihn, for one, is opposed to the idea.
“Why put such a heavily polluting facility in such a great resource?” she asked. “The coking plant is in the wrong location.”
Indeed, the FDS Coke Plant LLC will be situated right between two watershed areas, Duck Creek and Otter Creek. Both run into the Maumee River and Lake Erie. Though the plant has gone through several different permit modifications, the latest allows emissions of 51 pounds of mercury and more than 200,000 pounds of air pollutants per year, including hydrochloric acid.
“Duck Creek used to be a pristine wetland, but was filled in by the Port Authority,” Bihn said. “Now there will be over seven million pounds of pollution emitted near these water sources.”
The fish kills by the power plants, new species of algae and plans for the coking plant are just a few of the fights that Bihn faces each year as a Waterkeeper. She said as new issues pop up, she does what she can to help the bodies of water under her care. But, even with all the threats to the environment around her, Bihn looks for new ways to promote the beauty she recognizes in northwest Ohio.
“I concentrated at first on how to protect Lake Erie and the Maumee,” she said. “But I realized the job is also about being a steward for this great resource, and showing what it has to offer. I hope people love this area as much as I do, if that is even possible.”
