SALEM, Ohio — How much fresh, clean water does it take to sustain healthy communities, thriving ecosystems and strong economies? And how can societies protect that water from both natural and human-made threats?
The 25th annual Great Lakes Water Conference, “Water Security in the Great Lakes Region,” hosted virtually by the University of Toledo on Oct. 31, set out to explore those questions through the lenses of law, policy and science. Panelists covered a wide range of issues, emphasizing the need for stronger governance, cross-border collaboration, respect for Indigenous rights, smarter technology and better communication to build more resilient water systems for the future.
One focus was agriculture, a cornerstone of the region’s economy that also relies heavily on groundwater for irrigation.
“When water systems fail, food systems, economies and livelihoods all fail with them,” said Evan Zoldan, associate dean for academic affairs and director of the Legal Institute of the Great Lakes at the University of Toledo College of Law.
The conference’s first panelist, water policy analyst and lecturer Michael Taboris, defined water security as “the ability of a population to meet all of its critical needs — its health and social and economic needs — with the water that’s available and of acceptable quality.”
That’s a tall order in the watershed of the Great Lakes, which provides drinking water for at least eight million people. If the region hopes to meet the challenge, it’s already starting from behind. Taboris explained that local infrastructure was built for snowy winters, not the increasingly rainy seasons the area is now facing. As a result, heavier spring and fall storms are flushing large amounts of nutrients from farm fields into nearby waterways before much can be done to stop it, contributing to flooding, water pollution and harmful algal blooms, all part of the broader climate-driven changes affecting agriculture.
The challenge, according to Taboris, is that water management in the region is based largely on voluntary compliance and incremental cleanup, all of which moves at a pace he considers “structurally inadequate” to achieve lasting water security.
“It’s disingenuous to call it incremental progress if there’s no significant effort to do something significantly different,” he said.
Taboris argued that the Great Lakes region must adopt new, integrated approaches to managing its most vital resource.
“If we know that something is inadequate to achieving the goal, even by increment,” he said, “then the incremental progress isn’t really progress at all.”
Wetlands at work
But one such approach to managing water and curbing pollution is already proving its worth in Ohio.
Lauren Kinsman-Costello, a wetland ecologist and associate professor at Kent State University, told Farm and Dairy that recent monitoring results from the state’s H2Ohio program show how effective wetlands can be at reducing the nutrients that fuel harmful algal blooms.
“I think the most important takeaway is that wetlands could be a powerful component in a portfolio of approaches to mitigate the nutrients that fuel HABs,” she said. “A relatively small area in the right place, designed the right way, can really punch above its weight.”
Kinsman-Costello explained that her team measures how wetlands perform in nutrient retention by calculating two things: how much phosphorus runoff is held back when farmland is converted into wetlands and how much nutrient-rich water the wetland filters as it flows through.
One standout example, she said, is the Williamsburg Wetland Treatment System in Williamsburg, Ohio, a former reservoir that now filters nutrient-heavy storm water from the East Fork of the Little Miami River through a winding, vegetated flow path.
“You have this combination of, it can store a lot of water — it’s connected to a river that carries a lot of nutrients — but then it slowly releases that water through a vegetated, kind of living soil area,” she said. “So a lot of nutrients get in and very few nutrients get out.”
Even in dry years, Ohio’s wetlands are performing well.
“And they could be working even better in a wetter year where they’re getting more nutrients to hold onto,” Kinsman-Costello said.
But how do climate extremes like droughts or floods affect the performance of wetlands?
Kinsman-Costello said they aren’t necessarily less effective during those periods but may face challenges at both ends of the spectrum.
“During drought conditions, they’re not going to get a lot of water,” she said. “During extreme flooding and extreme precipitation events, a lot of nutrient-laden water can just kind of exceed the capacity of the wetland and just flow right through it. So at either end of the climate extremes … the wetlands aren’t as effective.”
Despite these challenges, Kinsman-Costello believes effective management and oversight can make a big difference in how well wetlands perform. When asked what good governance looks like for wetland protection and nutrient management, she said, “I would advocate for strong evidence available to stakeholders — relevant evidence and information being used to guide decisions.”
That means continuous monitoring, she said, because “in many ways, (nutrient pollution) is largely invisible until it’s fueled a harmful algal bloom at the outflow of whatever system you’re looking at.”
Making a dent
While researchers continue to study how wetlands and other conservation strategies can reduce nutrient runoff, early reports suggest Lake Erie fared relatively well in 2025.
The official 2025 Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Seasonal Assessment Report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is not yet available due to the ongoing federal government shutdown, but the season appears to have been in line with NOAA’s mild-to-moderate bloom severity prediction from earlier this year, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency officials told Farm and Dairy.
Several key factors influence bloom severity, especially the amount of spring rainfall that carries sediment and nutrients into the lake and the summer water temperatures that drive bloom growth. In 2025, rainfall and runoff from March through July were about average, while cooler June temperatures delayed bloom formation, resulting in a later start and an overall mild to moderate season.
Kinsman-Costello remains optimistic that the trend will continue.
“I think (wetlands) are absolutely going to make a dent,” she said of Ohio’s restoration efforts. “Especially if wetland restoration continues and is guided by good evidence to locate where there’s an optimization between local community needs — including the agricultural community — and watershed-scale nutrient needs.”
