TOLEDO, OH (Toledo News Now) - Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has been speaking out about the water crisis. Only on 11, she told Jerry Anderson that, while the all clear may have been given, we're far from being out of the woods.
Kaptur says it's possible we could have a repeat of this past weekend, explaining it's all about a huge watershed that drains through the Maumee River.
"What makes us vulnerable is the conditions that produced the algal bloom and the toxic algae inside of that huge floating mass," she said. "The conditions that created them have not changed."
"When you go deeper into the watershed, all the way to Fort Wayne or down to Findlay or Sandusky Bay, Michigan, there are point sources and non-point sources of the nutrients that wash off the land when it rains and they flush their way into the Maumee River and that loads into Lake Erie," she explained.
"It's the major loading point for the entire Lake Erie."
Kaptur says the first steps to fixing the problem should be to give real teeth to the Western Lake Erie Basin Partnership. It was put together by three states in the last 15 years, but has no real legal standing.
Despite Director of Public Utilties Ed Moore saying the crisis was unavoidable given the size and location of the toxic algae bloom, Congresswoman Kaptur insists Toledo's water treatment system, and most of the those serving larger older cities, need to be modernized.
