U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has applauded the announcement that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources will administer new grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency aimed at protecting public health by helping to reduce phosphorous runoff and expand water quality monitoring in Lake Erie tributaries.

“This funding will enhance the ongoing partnership between the state of Ohio and the agriculture community to reduce phosphorus runoff from farm fields into the waters of the Western Lake Erie Basin,” Portman said. “This important step will help us to move forward with preventing the formation of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie and other freshwater bodies in the Western Lake Erie Basin. Harmful algal blooms remain an issue across the state and more still needs to be done to protect communities like those around Buckeye Lake and Harsha Lake, which are struggling with harmful algal bloom problems of their own.”

Portman has requested additional resources from USEPA to combat harmful algal blooms.

He is also the author of the Harmful Algal Blooms and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act of 2013 which was signed into law in June. This legislation reauthorized the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act, which was first enacted in 1998 and reauthorized in 2004 and 2008.

For more than a decade this program has served as the federal government’s research and response framework for harmful algal blooms. Portman negotiated a new Great Lakes section for the program that will ensure federal agencies prioritize monitoring and mitigation efforts on fresh water bodies such as Lake Erie.

In September, Portman led a letter urging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to begin work immediately on a congressionally mandated examination of the causes, consequences, and approaches to reduce hypoxia and harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes and freshwater bodies.