Newsletter

The following article is from an archived newsletter. See our Shared Waters newsletter.

LEEP Forums a Chance to Hear from Experts, Tell Your Story on Lake Erie Algae

IJC staff
IJC
LEEP Forums a Chance to Hear from Experts

These numbers and dates are important: 26 million, 11 million, and Nov. 12 and 13.

The Great Lakes are a source of drinking water for more than 26 million people, but the source has been tainted by harmful algal blooms this year in Lake Erie and other parts of the basin.

Lake Erie supplies drinking water to some 11 million people. In the Toledo, Ohio, area, about 400,000 of those people were told not to drink their tap water for three days in early August. The same thing happened later that month to hundreds of residents of Pelee Island south of Leamington, Ontario. Beaches were closed and users of private systems were told not to drink their water.

Water sustains life, and the IJC has been involved for years in studying and sounding the alarm about the threat of harmful algal blooms. We released a Lake Erie Ecosystem Priority report in February, advising the Canadian and U.S. governments to take 16 steps to help curb the threat --- many of them having to do with curtailing excess phosphorus that runs off from farms and cities.

To continue to focus attention on the issue, we’re holding two Harmful Algal Blooms Public Forums to provide an update on the latest science, and another opportunity for people to offer their views on the effects of declining water quality in the lake.

The forums are Nov. 12 at the Leamington Municipal Complex in Leamington, Ontario, and Nov. 13 at the Maumee Bay Lodge and Conference Center in Oregon, Ohio, near Toledo.

We’ve rounded up a panel to offer interesting perspectives from 3-5 p.m. on both days. The public will have a chance to hear a presentation on our LEEP recommendations, and offer comments from 7-9 p.m. on both days.

 

Your browser does not support iframes.

This map shows the Lake Erie watershed, the Great Lakes watershed, and the locations of the two meetings. Click on a flag icon to see information on times, addresses for, and links to the event venues. See a larger map.

 

For Nov. 12, the panel will include Rick Masse, mayor of Pelee Island. Also on hand will be Larry Verbeke, a vegetable farmer and town councillor in Leamington who is a director with the Essex County Federation of Agriculture; Dr. William Taylor, a biology professor at the University of Waterloo; and Dr. David Coates, a physician with expertise in the human health aspects of Great Lakes contaminants.

In Oregon, the panel includes Dr. Thomas Bridgeman, a professor at the University of Toledo who leads the Western Lake Erie Limnology Laboratory; and Dave Spangler, a Lake Erie charter boat captain.

Also sitting in will be Dr. Seth Foldy, a member of the IJC’s Health Professionals Advisory Board and an associate professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin; and Doug Busdeker, a member of the IJC’s Great Lakes Water Quality Board and senior manager at The Andersons Inc., which provides services to the agribusiness industry.

We also want to hear from you, the residents who rely on Lake Erie for drinking water. Again, that amounts to about 11 million people. We won’t be able to fit quite that many into the conference rooms in Leamington and Oregon, but we hope to see a strong showing.

Please plan to join us and bring your stories and views. We hope to compile an update to our LEEP report in time for the one-year anniversary of our recommendations.

Panelists at an earlier discussion on LEEP at the 2013 Triennial Meeting/Great Lakes Public Forum in Milwaukee.Panelists at an earlier discussion on LEEP at the 2013 Triennial Meeting/Great Lakes Public Forum in Milwaukee.

IJC staff
IJC

Subscribe to our Newsletter!

Go to subscription form