We’re spending the day at the Bioneers Conference at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs – bringing you live blogging from national thought leaders on sustainability beaming in from California and local sustainability leaders in workshops.

I'll blog the plenary session, including the local and national presenters below. And I'll attend and blog on the breakout sessions that I can attend in child pages (linked below the main body of this page)

Jeff Reuter, director, Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Lab, Ohio State University leads off the local presenters.

His topic is the health of Lake Erie.

All of the five Great Lakes are very different, with Superior and Erie as the deepest and shallowest, respectively.

Lake Erie facts:

Average depth of basin is 50 ft. like a flat bottom pan. Important because of how man made issues impact Erie. Land use around Lake Erie is agriculture. We're the southern most and shallowest i.e. warmest. And because of land use we get more sediment -- pesticides, metals, and fertilizers than any other lake. Global climate change predictions for more storms mean more sediments. On the bright side, Erie is the most productive (2% of the water of the Great Lakes but it produces 50% of the fish).

• Drinking water for 11 million people
• Over 20 power plants
• 300 marinas in Ohio
• Walleye capital of the world

We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the burning of the Cuyahoga River. The Lake's health got better after the Clean Water Act, but its health has declined since 1995. Mostly because of the sediment, the ferilizers, from the Maumee River (1.3 million cubic yards of sediment from the Maumee River are still openly dumped in the western basin of Lake Erie, by Sandusky. It just floats around. We shouldn't be doing that.

Reuter's Stone Lab does research on the lake, and found reduced phosphorous loading from 29,000 tons in 1969 to 11,000 tons in the early '90s. Since 1995, fertilizers from rivers feeding Lake Erie have increased. Lead to algae growth -- and The Dead Zone! Nice satellite picture of a big blue-green algae bloom spreading into the lake from Maumee River in the summer. On the bright side, the invasive Quagga and Zebra mussels are removing the algae.

Solutions:

The combined sewer overflows being replaced by new sewers that store the contaminated stormwater should lower the pollution into the lake.

Less phosphorous in agriculture. How can we as individuals help? Buy local organic food (organic fruits and veggies are grown without petro-chemicals).

I was just told that Stone Lab is open to the public (by appointment) for tours, and that it's an incredibly eye opening experience. Accessible by jet boat to Put-in-Bay. Hmm, I'll have to check that out.

Here's a scary fact: The Bayshore power plant kills 46 million fish per year (80,000 or 16 tons are Walleye). Probably the worst, but other power plants also have massive fish kills. "Factor that in when you're talking about bird kills and wind mills. I bet a lot of you don't know about that."

"Dead Zone -- it's getting bigger. But we have a 3-year flush out rate. We're still very productive."

Water quality is likely to still go down unless we, as a community:

Talk about the Dead Zone -- elimination might be impossible. A more realistic goal is to reduce algal blooms.

What can you do?

Get involved, with all of the great watershed protection groups, remedial action plans to raise awareness of man's impact.

Reduce your hard surfaces on your property.

Volunteer for stream and river clean ups

Buy a Streams and Rivers license plate -- it supports our efforts.

Next up: David Beach, director, GreenCityBlueLake Institute

Shiny slippery walleye slipping below the dark thermocline to die in the dead zone - could be Ray McNeice's next poem (McNeice performed a poem about the gray of Cleveland this morning). I want to challenge him to think about a poem about our new colors: green and blue.

Jeff said, Lake Erie is the most important lake in the world.

David's showing the Northeast Ohio Bioregional map showing the region as a watershed and natural area with the rivers draining into the lake.

Helping people appreciate their connection to land and their water - our bioregion. Giving props to GCBL and our practice areas and the vision for sustainability ("We are water beings...") "Go tell your spouse you've exchanged more fluids with Lake Erie than him/her today," David jokes, explaining we're made up of 70% water from Lake Erie.

Showing scary picture of the river in the '70s where the river ran red from pollution. Back than we focused on point sources - you could more easily regulate those sources with permits. Today is a non-pont source age of pollution - and we're all responsible in some way. It's hard to figure out solutions.

The Ohio Lake Erie Commission recently released report has 10 items of focus on helping the health of the lake. Think about what your role can be.

1. Non-point pollution: The new frontier of water quality is controlling stormwater runoff. Every time it rains, pollution runs right from parking lot or street to stream to lake without any treatment. It also scours out stream beds. David has good pictures of the damage to local streams. State programs such as Total Maximum Daily Loads, Balanced Growth Program, Stormwater Phase II, Confined Animal Feeding Operation -- all trying to deal with this non-point problems.

What are cities doing? Many, including the Northeast Ohio Sewer District, are forming the Stormwater Authority. That's a positive thing that we're developing the civic capacity to deal with the water pollution from our developed land.

Personal scale -- you can keep water longer on your property with rain barrels, rain gardens, permeable pavement/gravel and more native plantings (to cut down on water use).

2. Landscaping -- what your plant can reduce the impact on the streams, rivers, and lake.

3. Invasive plant species -- many come into the area through our landscaping. The Lake Erie Allegheny Partnership is working on new landscapes. We need to rethink the old perfectly managed lawn as the ideal because its very resource intensive.

4. Combined sewer overflows -- there are hundreds of locations where overflows happen, dumping raw sewage dumping into the lake. When it rains, you should stay out of the rivers and lake for a couple of days because there's raw sewage in the water that can make you sick.

5. Coastal health -- even picking up after your dog can help. A lot of this work will take 20-30 years and that means we'll be living with these problems for a long time.

6. Areas of Concern -- Maumee, Black, Cuyahoga and Ashtabula rivers are designated as toxic hot spots. The remedial action plans for each river are working on projects, some are innovative like the Cuyahoga River RAP Green Bulkhead pilot project. Dam removals are also helping, like the removal of the dam in Kent.

Plumes from the power plants also have mercury which ends up in the lake's water.

We have a lack of urgency and still focused on reducing rather than eliminating the problem.

State incentives for balanced growth. Local government fragmentation works at odds with sustainable growth and water quality. Also, our power companies have dragged their feet dealing with pollution (no incentive).

We probably have less lakefront access in Ohio (13% of the coast) than the whole city of Chicago has.

David's talking about GCBL's climate change project. How do we get a 90% carbon reductions? We can build alternative energy economy of the future and build the green jobs right here in NEO.

Big issue is the aging of the environmental movement -- we need to get more young people involved. I'm worried we're going to run out of steam and climate change is the defining issue.

Seven steps for water

1. Advocate for federal funding -- help convince elected officials to fund clean up efforts.

2. Support the creation of a NEO stormwater utility

3. Phase out coal

4. Eat local and organic

5. Live in a compact neighborhood

6. Demand public access to the water (helps create a personal connection to the water)

7. Restore your backyard

2019 vision (the 50th anniversary of burning river)

We should have a swimmable, fishable lake

(shoot, I missed the other points, I'll have to catch up with him at the office about the rest of David's vision for the region as it relates to water)

Bioneers Cleveland is composting all of the food and the utensils and recycling cups and plates.

Sarah Weiss who's leading the global water blessing over Lake Erie is speaking and asks us to image being a first person a native person to this region and the deep relationship they had with the lake.