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A Watershed Cooperative Addresses Short and Long-Term Perspectives for the Management of Harmful Algae at a Southwestern Ohio Drinking Water Reservoir
Citation:
Nietch, C., Matt Heberling, M. Elovitz, J. Beaulieu, Joel Allen, AND J. Young. A Watershed Cooperative Addresses Short and Long-Term Perspectives for the Management of Harmful Algae at a Southwestern Ohio Drinking Water Reservoir. To be Presented at Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America 36th Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, November 01 - 05, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
present how a watershed stakeholder group addresses short and long term management of harmful algae
Description:
The multi-agency East Fork Watershed Cooperative (EFWCoop) has focused discussion and consequent leveraged monitoring efforts to understand how to ensure water safety in the short term. The EFWCoop is also collecting the dense data sets required to consider potential options for reversing the harmful algae bloom (HAB) problem in East Fork Lake (aka Lake Harsha) over the long term. Since 2009 the EFWCoop has pooled its resources to: 1) document historical changes in lake water quality and coincident shifts in algal communities required to prove to stakeholders and other funding agents that the problem is getting worse, 2) establish a water monitoring infrastructure and facilitate research studies used to address both short and long term goals for HAB management, as well as account for potential co-benefits or unintended consequences, 3) support the development, testing, and validation of models that are used to integrate and scale the monitoring data for system-wide assessment and to simulate HAB management alternatives, and 4) engage a broader stakeholder community to promote watershed protection education and acquire the funds for implementing and evaluating management strategies at a large enough scale to actually produce a measureable effect. With the collective action, we have found it illogical only to rely on regulating point sources to fix the problem. We also have documented that traditional water quality trading, a market-based approach with a total maximum daily load cap, would not be economically feasible either. Now we research potential alternative participants for the market-based approach with the goal of increasing the supply of and demand for nutrient control. Increasing the supply and demand would make water quality trading a more viable option over the long term. We study the cost and/or eco-based incentives a drinking water treatment plant, lake recreationists, homeowners, municipal separate storm sewer system permit holders, wastewater treatment plant operators, and farmers all potentially have to participate in a market designed to reduce nutrient loading to control harmful algae in Lake Harsha.
