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The Lake is Alright: Grand Lake St. Mary’s bounces back by going back

A public dock at Grand Lake St. Mary's
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
A public dock at Grand Lake St. Mary's

WYSO Environmental Reporter Chris Welter is taking an in-depth look at some of the places where people in the Miami Valley like to swim, boat, and fish. The first stop, Ohio’s largest inland lake: Grand Lake St. Mary’s. More than ten years after toxic algal blooms seriously threatened Grand Lake’s economy and reputation, WYSO found that a collaboration among nearby landowners, organizations, and state agencies has improved the thirteen thousand acre lake’s water quality.

On a crisp October morning, three cows are crowded into a trailer towed by a rumbling pickup truck in Auglaize County. The truck passes by acres and acres of row crops just about ready for harvest and dozens of confined animal operations.

It’s easy to see what the major industry is in the area surrounding Grand Lake St. Mary’s: hearty and productive agriculture.

Cows in Auglaize County
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
Cows in Auglaize County

The creeks and streams that pass through the farms eventually run into Grand Lake–all the while collecting water from the fields and pastures. A little more than ten years ago, that farm runoff provided the main ingredient for devastating harmful algal blooms on the Lake.

The runoff, along with sewage from leaky, worn out septic systems on some lakeside properties, had a lot of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus in it. When it combined with the shallow, hand-dug lake waters and got lots of sunlight in the summer, Grand Lake St. Mary’s was the perfect place for an algal bloom.

“Our grandchildren call it their happy place.”

Mary Ellen and Tony Kremer have lived on the lake since 1983.

The Kremer’s host family and friends at their lakefront home throughout the summer. They have a dock with a boat attached to it in their backyard, just steps away from their living room.

Tony Kremer remembers the most severe algal blooms of the late aughts well. He thumbs through the notebook where he kept track of his observations.

“Back in here, back in this channel, there was a layer of foam, almost like a kind of a white, blue algae,” Kremer said.

Kremer said his family stopped swimming, jet-skiing, and tubing during the bad years.

They weren’t alone. After the Ohio EPA said people should have limited contact with, and not ingest, the water in 2009, beaches were empty and businesses that relied on tourists struggled. Stories about dogs who died after swimming in the lake spread in the community.

Agencies and consultants tried to fix the problem. They treated the water with chemicals like alum. They tried pumping and filtering the nutrients out at the source streams. They even bought huge machines to oxygenate the water in particularly bad dead zones to kill the algae.

None of it worked on a large scale. So they tried something different.

Nature’s filter

State and local organizations teamed up to purchase some of the farmland around Grand Lake St. Mary’s to revert it back to what it was before Europeans colonized and drained the land in the 19th century: wetlands.

Stephen Jacquemin, professor at Wright State’s Lake campus, studies Grand Lake. He spoke about the scale of the land use change over the humming of a pump at a restored wetland about a quarter mile from the Lake.

“Well over 99 and a half percent of the wetlands in this watershed were drained and destroyed,” Jacquemin said. “So all the wetlands that are here now are the result of concerted restoration efforts.”

From afar, the restored wetland looks like a normal, midwestern nature preserve that would be good for birdwatching or frog hunting. But looking closer, its intentional design becomes clear.

The pump at Coldwater Creek
Chris Welter
/
WYSO
The pump at Coldwater Creek

The pump pushes the water from one of the lake’s adjacent tributaries, Coldwater Creek, through the restored wetland. By the time the water makes it to Grand Lake, lots of the nutrients that cause algal blooms have settled to the bottom of the shallow wetland waters or have been sucked up by the deep roots of wetland plants like cattails and sedges.

“It's been fantastic,” Jacquemin said. “This site can process up to 6 million gallons of water a day. This site overall, in terms of the amount of gallons going down that creek, will remove 5% of every phosphorus molecule that goes in that creek.”

Thousands of acres of restored wetlands like the one at Coldwater Creek now surround Grand Lake and Jacquemin said more are in the pipeline.

The restored wetland strategy won’t work forever. That’s because at some point the wetlands will shift from being a nutrient sink to a nutrient source. When that day comes, Jacquemin said they’ll have to dig out the wetlands and reset them.

Farmers have also done their part. They changed how they handle manure and some have added wetland plants, called buffer strips, around the edges of their fields to catch runoff before it gets to the tributaries.

Jacquemin said the wetland restoration and farmer outreach program have been so successful that he fields calls from other lake management experts with their own algae problems.

The push and pull of West Central Ohio’s lakes

Back at the lakefront house, Tony Kremer said he is grateful for the work done to keep nutrients out of the lake.

“2022 has been a very, very good year on the lake. I mean, we've had a lot of good weather. We've had a tremendous amount of boat traffic,” Kremer said. “We're close to a little bar over here called Shingle Shack. There will be four or five or six pontoons out here waiting to get in.”

Another factor that has led to Grand Lake’s comeback is that the other local, popular man-made boating spot Indian Lake, which saw growth during Grand Lake’s algae troubles, has been dealing with an environmental problem of its own: unprecedented aquatic plant growth making the lake almost unnavigable at times.

WYSO will look into Indian Lake in the next part of its series on places where people in the Miami Valley like to swim, boat and fish.

Chris Welter is a reporter and corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms.

Chris Welter is the Managing Editor at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.

Chris got his start in radio in 2017 when he completed a six-month training at the Center for Community Voices. Most recently, he worked as a substitute host and the Environment Reporter at WYSO.