LANSING – Michigan has had various controls in place for decades to reduce the nutrient loading that caused a recent algae bloom in Lake Erie, but is now asking for federal assistance in taking the next steps.

The requests, made at a meeting with federal officials Wednesday and announced Thursday, was for a national standard on blue green algae and the poisons it can release, as well as limits on dumping dredge materials into the lakes and funds for agriculture programs and invasive species controls.

There was a health standard used in deciding that the water drawn into the Toledo, Ohio, water treatment plant was not safe, but Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant said there is not a single national standard on the pollutant.

“We’re looking for a national health standard,” Wyant said. “There should be one national health advisory.”

The World Health Organization has published standards for the toxin, but Wyant said that standard had not been peer reviewed.

“If it is appropriate, Michigan would adopt it,” he said.

The federal government would also have to set any controls on dumping dredging materials, Wyant said.

Currently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers allows the materials to be dumped deeper in the lakes. Wyant said there at least needed to be studies to show the materials are not contributing to the nutrient loading that created the algae bloom in Lake Erie, but he also said it was likely – given the material being dredged comes from runoff – there are nutrients in it that are being released into the lakes by the dumping.

Though both Wyant and Agriculture and Rural Development Director Jamie Clover Adams said farm runoff is less of a problem than it once was, Clover Adams said the state is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be sure that funds are available to help with additional runoff control projects.

“More education has to be happen in showing the economic advantage of keeping the phosphorus where it can do the plants the most good,” Clover Adams said.

She said creating additional regulations on nutrient loading in farm runoff would not likely give much benefit.

“Working with the growers I think can accomplish the same thing regulations would accomplish with less fighting back from the growers,” she said.

To the allegations by some environmental groups that runoff from Michigan farms was a key source of the nutrients that caused the algae bloom, Clover Adams said Michigan has only 15 percent of the farms in the Lake Erie watershed.

Additional research on controlling invasive species is also essential to preventing future algae blooms. “If we don’t do anything about the zebra mussels and quagga mussels, nothing we do with phosphorus will make any difference,” she said.

The mussels have filtered much of the sediment out of the lake, making the water clearer and allowing more sunlight to reach deeper into the water, expanding the area habitable by the algae.

Wyant and Clover Adams said the state would also continue with its own programs to reduce nutrient emissions both from water treatment plants and from farm and lawn runoff.

“We need a holistic approach,” Wyant said.

He noted the state had, among other things, developed a new permit for the Detroit sewage treatment plants that limit the amount of phosphorus they can release.

The state in recent years has also provided substantial funds in grants and loans for communities to improve their sewage treatment facilities, Wyant said.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it also had dedicated hundreds of millions to infrastructure improvement and farm runoff prevention.

Most of the funds announced Thursday were for interest-free loans to improve water ($50 million) and sewage treatment ($100 million), but $2 million went to research on algae blooms and $1.25 million went to drainage controls and cover crops on farms to reduce runoff. Some $1 million was for testing equipment to find the algae toxins.

Clover Adams said the state’s Conservation Reserve Program has some 23,000 acres in buffer strips and restored wetlands to separate farms from water bodies. State permits for larger animal farms and the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program certifications also help to reduce the amount of nutrients being washed off farms, she said.

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