SALEM, Ohio — Aaron Siebeneck grows soybeans and corn on his family farm in Ottawa, Ohio. Most days, he spends more time paying attention to the weather and changes in the grain market than anything else.
But five years ago, before the onset of a life-disrupting pandemic, something new caught his attention: the rollout of a program called H2Ohio, a comprehensive water quality plan launched by Gov. Mike DeWine to reduce agricultural runoff causing harmful algal blooms, improve wastewater infrastructure and preventing lead contamination
“It made it really easy to start looking at how we do different things with our soil fertility and how we do our fertilizer differently,” Siebeneck said.
Siebeneck, who is also a member of the Putnam County Soil and Water Conservation District board of supervisors, has embraced the program, which altered his approach to fertilizer applications. He used to bulk-apply nutrients from a spreader truck. Now, Siebeneck has invested in a specialized, precision fertilizer toolbar that directly applies nutrients to crops, using the incentive payments he received from the H2Ohio program to purchase it. He fertilizes in-season rather than in the spring to mitigate excess runoff when heavy rainfall may occur.
Siebeneck said he can now administer a more responsible amount of phosphate, potassium and nitrogen in a single pass under prime growing conditions. His fertilizer expenses decreased, and his soil health improved.
“And at the end of the day, what we’re able to see is a healthier, more efficient plant, and it’s growing more bushels on less fertilizer, essentially,” he said.
Siebeneck is one of the success stories of H2Ohio. The program was a big swing from the Ohio government, which has appropriated more than $270 million since its inception to address legacy water quality issues, from surveying major rivers for “forever” chemicals to supporting water infrastructure projects and protecting and restoring healthy wetlands.
H2Ohio has garnered strong participation from farmers like Siebeneck, who adopt voluntary best practices like cover cropping, subsurface nutrient application and controlled drainage systems to reduce agricultural runoff into Lake Erie. Statewide, more than 3,200 producers have enrolled 2.2 million acres in the program.
The state’s investment is beginning to pay off in some ways, but there are still challenges to getting farmers to participate, and there’s still much work to be done. Ohio’s agriculture contributes phosphorus and nitrogen to waterways through fertilizer and manure runoff, fueling algal blooms that harm aquatic life and human health. About 11 million people get their drinking water from the lake.
What is H2Ohio?
The fight over the health of Lake Erie has been ongoing for decades. While the 2014 water crisis in Toledo is still fresh in people’s memories, the lake has suffered repeated setbacks due to pollution and nutrient runoff.
By the 1970s, the lake, oversaturated with nutrients from farms, public sewers and heavy industry, saw mass fish kills and toxic algae outbreaks. Efforts to stem the tide, including the 1972 Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada, helped reduce point sources of pollution — those coming from a single, identifiable location — and revived the lake.
But gradually, as more feedlots and farms appeared in the Western Lake Erie Basin, phosphorus began to wash into the lake.
Blooms caused by agricultural runoff appeared again in the late 1990s and have continued largely unabated ever since, culminating in 2014 when a highly toxic algal bloom infiltrated Toledo’s water plant intake. The city issued a “Do Not Drink” advisory, effectively shutting off its water supply to between 400,000 and 500,000 households for two days.
Officials pledged to work towards addressing agricultural runoff to reduce harmful algal blooms, and in 2019, DeWine launched H2Ohio in partnership with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Department of Natural Resources, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Lake Erie Commission.
The scope of the program has grown. Last year, DeWine announced the H2Ohio Rivers program, which has provided $1.7 million in grants to 31 local governments to upgrade road salt equipment and reduce salt runoff into rivers, lakes and streams.
ODNR, for its part, has worked to restore and improve wetlands under the H2Ohio banner, with 183 wetland projects completed or in progress.
H2Ohio also offers “last mile” funding to municipalities for drinking water projects and river improvement projects by way of the Ohio EPA, which in 2024 awarded more than 300 communities across the state a total of $27.3 million in grants.
However, H2Ohio’s primary objective of reducing harmful algal blooms in the lake has yet to be achieved.
In bloom
The 2024 bloom started earlier than almost any other in the last 20 years, said Richard Stumpf, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist.
“It actually first appeared the last week in June, and that’s, I think, only the second time (a bloom) has shown up then.”
It was measured as “moderately severe” by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science and was more intense than the bloom in 2023. At its peak, the bloom covered 550 square miles.
“The key determination of how bad the bloom will be is basically the phosphorus load going into the lake. Because once it uses up all the phosphorus that’s available, it can’t grow anymore,” Stumpf said.
Jeffrey Reutter, former Director of the Ohio Sea Grant College Program, Stone Laboratory, said in a recent interview with Farm and Dairy that despite voluntary measures such as H2Ohio, the average concentration of phosphorus in the Maumee River released into Lake Erie has remained largely unchanged.
In collaboration with the International Joint Commission in 2013, Reutter helped set a new goal for phosphorus load reduction: a 40% reduction in phosphorus loading from the Maumee River, identified as the largest contributor of phosphorus to Lake Erie, and Western Basin tributaries, or else harmful algal blooms will keep plaguing the lake.
In 2016, both the United States and Canadian governments adopted that target. Reutter, however, said that since then, no appreciable progress has been made in achieving the goal, save for one exception.
“2019 was so wet in the spring that farmers couldn’t get out onto the fields to apply fertilizer and manure,” he said. That resulted in a reduction of the flow-weighted mean concentration, or average, of phosphorus in Lake Erie by 29%. “We were essentially three-quarters of the way to our target. We were almost there.”
Reutter believes it is possible to reduce the average level of pollutants in the lake, just like back in the 1970s and 80s. That was when the Clean Water Act took on sewage treatment plants and point sources of phosphorus runoff, and cut them down significantly. Lake Erie rebounded, becoming the walleye fishing capital of the world.
“It was just a massive success story,” he said. “Lake Erie became the best example in the world of ecosystem recovery.”
But gradually, the harmful algal blooms returned. Reutter says today’s blooms are largely owed to the growth in livestock operations in the region, particularly manure applications from livestock enterprises that have expanded there so widely.
An analysis completed by the Environmental Working Group found that, between 2005 and 2018, the total number of livestock operations in the Maumee basin — especially those large enough to define as “factory farms,” producing substantial manure that contributes to phosphorus pollution in Lake Erie — increased from 545 to 775, including permitted and non-permitted facilities.
“I think that there are a whole lot of people applying commercial fertilizer and (otherwise) trying to do the right thing,” Reutter said. “And I think that the good things they’re doing are being covered up by the increase in the amount of manure being applied every year, and those manure applications are now what’s driving the harmful algal blooms.”
“A worthwhile fight”
State officials are using a more optimistic tone to describe the work ahead of them, hopeful that Lake Erie’s water quality can still be improved.
“We are backlogged with many years of bad practices. But as we look to the future, we know that we are going in the right direction to continually improve on this problem,” Ohio Agriculture Director Brian Baldridge told Farm and Dairy.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture, in partnership with local soil and water conservation districts, administers participant contracts, provides technical assistance and supports producers with the implementation of best management practices.
Last year, ODA reported that participating farmers reduced phosphorus discharge in the Western Lake Erie Basin by over 332,000 pounds, with projections reaching 420,000 pounds by the end of 2024 as enrollment grows.
ODA verifies participating farmers are following the practices before incentive payments are processed, but they don’t measure the specific impact on water quality on a granular level at individual farms.
This year, nearly 90% of producers in the Maumee River Watershed who joined the H2Ohio program at its launch renewed their enrollment. That’s 2,600 farmers managing 1.85 million acres across 24 counties. This represents about 43% of the area’s farmland.
Baldridge said farmers are embracing science-based practices to address decades of inefficient nutrient use that fueled harmful algal blooms. By applying only the nutrients crops need and ensuring they are removed with the harvest, farmers optimize fertilizer use while reducing runoff.
He hopes for “100% enrollment of our ag community” in H2Ohio going forward, acknowledging some farmers opt out due to competing federal programs or other reasons.
“It is a very worthwhile fight,” he said, “to continually strive to decrease harmful algae blooms … We in the ag community care about water quality and we care about soil health and conservation.”
But challenges persist. Some farmers, like Crawford County farmer and social media influencer Zoe Kent, find it difficult to apply H2Ohio’s better management practices such as cover crops because of weather and pests.
“I signed up. I did the cover crops. And then like the year after that, we had too many issues with slugs and voles damaging our crops … So it wasn’t profitable,” Kent said. She described the process of submitting records for what she planned to grow and how, noting some initial stress caused by challenging fall weather that made it difficult to meet the required planting deadline, which was eventually extended.
After completing all of the necessary documentation, the process faded from memory until Kent received a check in the mail.
“I had to, like, refresh my memory on what that was for,” she said.
While Kent left the program, she still follows the Tri-State Fertilizer Recommendations, which are cited as the standard by the program. She said she might re-enroll if incentives aligned with her existing practices. Under the program, each practice has its own payment rate, typically tied to the number of acres where the farmer implements that practice. For example, if a farmer meets the manure application standards outlined by ODA, they could earn $60 per acre for those fields.
Crop producers can customize the program to their production and management practices.
“I wouldn’t alter the way I’m farming just to get a payment. But … if there’s an added little bonus for doing those things and there’s money on the table, obviously I would be intrigued,” she said, adding that at times she feels overwhelmed with “tons of companies reaching out about different carbon programs and different initiatives” to guide practices on her land.
“You have to make sure that you’re not double enrolled … It kind of more or less led me to not get involved with any of them,” she said.
To qualify for H2Ohio payments, a farmer must develop or already have a voluntary nutrient management plan. An approved VNMP is required for all cropland enrolled in H2Ohio. Additionally, farmers must document their nutrient management actions to remain eligible for the funding.
Putnam County, located in the Maumee River watershed, saw an impressive surge in participation this year, with 402 new H2Ohio contracts signed. Samantha Bluhm, organization director for Allen, Paulding, Putnam and Van Wert counties at the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, said the county’s enthusiasm for the program stems from leveraging existing methods and embracing precision agriculture.
“I think what we have found and the reason why (Putnam County) has been so successful in terms of the volume of acreage we have added to the program is really just the fact that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel on a lot of stuff,” she said.
Farmers and agriculturalists, she said, are known for their resourcefulness, making it a natural transition for them to adopt new technologies such as large-scale soil testing and precision nutrient application tailored to individual plants.
“We have really been able to look in the mirror and say, ‘Listen, we can do better. How do we go about doing that?’” she said.
Bluhm believes the program’s true appeal lies in its long-term impact.
“When you get down to the core of it, that is what keeps people going. They want the next generation or the next owner to inherit land that is healthy, that is nutrient-rich and waterways that are clear. So I think beyond the financial gain, that’s a tactile incentive. It really is.”
