Lucas County in Ohio, the city of Toledo, and the Environmental Law and Policy Center are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over harmful algal blooms in western Lake Erie.

The lawsuit alleges that the EPA’s consent order with the state of Ohio does not measure the actual amount of phosphorus from sources like manure that’s getting into the Maumee River and the western basin of Lake Erie, primarily from unregulated large-scale animal feeding operations called CAFOs.

Phosphorus is a mineral that encourages the growth of cyanobacteria, commonly called harmful algal blooms.

Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said Ohio, unlike many other states, does not require CAFOs to have permits to limit the amount of manure they produce, and how they dispose of it. He said that encourages more and more CAFOs to set up operations in the state.

“We know that the majority of the pollution from the Maumee River, Lake Erie now is coming from concentrated feeding operations. There’s large concentrations of cattle upstream that are taking their effluent, taking their waste, putting it on farm fields and it’s running directly in,” he said.

Gerken added that the city of Toledo had to take steps to control its municipal sewage from flowing into Lake Erie.

“We found a way with technologies to control our waste being discharged into the river,” he said. “There are technologies they [CAFOs] can use other than just spreading it on a field. Citizens have paid to treat their waste — corporations don’t want to.”

Michigan efforts

Manure runoff from CAFOs and cropland in Michigan has contributed to toxic green algae in Lake Erie. In 2015, Michigan signed an agreement with Ohio and Ontario to reduce the amount of phosphorus spilling into the lake by 40% by 2025, but in a December interview with Bridge Michigan, Tim Boring, director of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, acknowledged the state will not meet its deadline.

Like Ohio, Michigan has declined to force farmers to limit their pollution, instead relying on taxpayer-funded, voluntary programs that pay farmers to change their ways. It does not appear to be working.

Michigan does regulate CAFO waste, but state officials argue those regulations are too weak. When the state moved to strengthen them, farm groups sued.

In April, MDARD announced a nearly $5 million grant to the Alliance for the Great Lakes to increase water-quality monitoring in five sub-watersheds of the western Lake Erie basin. “The information gleaned from this effort will help MDARD better understand various drivers of nutrient transport and allow for better targeting of conservation efforts to combat nutrient pollution,” the department said in a news release.

The EPA said it’s reviewing the lawsuit. The agency added that addressing the problem of algal blooms in the western basin of Lake Erie will take time and “unflagging commitment and resolve” from everyone.

Bridge Michigan’s Kelly House contributed to this report.