CELINA — Ohio State University President Michael Drake said the university is a willing partner in solving water quality issues on Ohio’s lakes in a visit to the area Friday.
Drake and other OSU personnel met at Lakeshore Park in Celina Friday with various area officials involved in farming to discuss the university’s role in addressing water quality issues across the state.
“Some say that water will be in the 21st century what oil was in the 20th century,” Drake said. “OSU has a special relationship with the people of Ohio.”
Drake said he grew up in a time when he “got water out of a hose, and there was no problem with it.”
“There was a lot of finger-pointing going on at first,” Drake said. “When there is a problem you look around for someone to blame. The fact is problems come from a lot of places.”
Drake said OSU is teaming with many businesses in the farming industry to come up with real solutions, including the university’s Food to Faucet study. In the program, OSU researchers and their partners seek to improve lake water quality and support healthy ecosystems so people can drink the water, sustain recreation and fishing, and endure short- and long-term changes such as storms or rising average temperatures in the ecosystem.
Drake said gathering data is the most important part of addressing the problems. Notable affected areas have included Lake Erie and Grand Lake St. Marys.
“Sometimes, gathering data leads to having to gather more data,” Drake said.
OSU Vice President of Agricultural Administration Bruce McPheron said a 50-hour shutdown of water in Toledo served as a wake-up call.
“It is not a one-stop solution,” McPheron said. “This is a team sport. We are all in it because it is about our livelihood.”
With $3 million in funding secured through the state and agricultural businesses, Greg Labarge of OSU said the university has 16 farming sites where tile and and surface runoff of nutrients are being studied. The study includes water quality and volume as well as lost nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
“This is where we are starting to find a variety of differences,” Labarge said of the 16 sites. “We are getting information that we can sort through, and it is helping us tremendously. This is going to give us science which we can base things over the next couple of years.”
