TOLEDO, Ohio — Year after year, algal blooms continue to choke Lake Erie costing millions just so residents can drink the water.
"Residents in our region have had to reach into their pockets for some $700 million to allow water from a poisonous source to be drinkable," Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz said Wednesday.
It's also limited — sometimes for weeks at a time — from swimming in the lake and now, the Lucas County commissioners and Toledo's city leaders are sick of it.
"They are avoidable and unnecessary, and harmful to our city, our county and our economy here," Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said.
Gerken and his fellow county commissioners said they know the source of the problem. Dumping from massive factory farms across the state that feed the algae. They believe said farms have created an environment that allows them to keep getting away with it.
"The pork producers, the Ag industry in Ohio, they are very powerful in the state legislature," Gerken said. "They have weighed in heavily to the operating arm of the government to make sure that they don't have regulations."
That's why Wednesday afternoon they announced a new lawsuit against the U.S. EPA, attempting to make it set new standards to regulate the farm's unrestricted dumping and cut down the long-standing algal issues.
"All we want them to do is get a permit for discharge just like we do," Gerken said. "Get a permit that says, 'I can put this much in and if I'm over it, I get a fine.'"
It might sound simple, but this isn't their first time suing the EPA over this same problem.
Back in 2019, the county commissioners showed in federal court the EPA didn't have a proper measure of how much waste was being dumped into the lake.
In the aftermath, the EPA was required to set a new standard but the commissioners said that measurement has no teeth.
"They refuse to take into this measuring stick the amounts, the frequency of the runoff, how far it goes," Gerken said.
So now they want the EPA to force these mega food producers to start playing by the rules.
"We are railing against the giants, we know that," Gerken said. "But I know if we give up, it only gets worse."
Now the U.S. government has 60 days to respond to the complaint or choose to dismiss it.
WTOL 11 did reach out to the U.S. EPA's communications team who sent this statement:
"EPA received the lawsuit from the city of Toledo and is currently reviewing. Addressing the problem of algal blooms in the western basin of Lake Erie will take all of us. It will take unflagging commitment and resolve. And it will take time."