 | Areas of Concern in Great Lakes Basin
What is a Remedial Action Plan (RAP)?
History of the Black River RAP
Areas of Concern in Great Lakes Basin
The International Joint Commission (IJC) is a bilateral governmental organization formed to jointly address issues confronting both Canada and the United States. Water quality in the Great Lakes has been an issue of significance since the 1970's, dramatized by Lake Erie's designation as a dead lake in 1979. The boundaries of the Great Lakes are shared by both Canada and the United States. Maintaining water quality in the Great Lakes requires collaboration between both countries. Early efforts focused on clean-up of the lakes themselves. However, the IJC realized that clean-up would not be possible unless the hundreds of rivers carrying toxic sediment and pollutants into the Great Lakes were also cleaned up.
In the 1980's, the IJC conducted detailed water quality assessments of the rivers feeding the Great Lakes. They identified 43 Areas of Concern (AOC) where water quality conditions were degrading the Great Lakes (26 of these areas are in U.S. waters and 17 are Canadian). The AOC's were designated by the geographic area or watershed that fed the impaired portion of the river. Most AOC's covered just a portion of a river, although for some, like the Black, the entire watershed is considered an AOC. The AOC's were defined by the U.S.-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (Annex 2 of the 1987 Protocol) as "geographic areas that fail to meet the general or specific objectives of the agreement where such failure has caused or is likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the area's ability to support aquatic life." The U.S. and Canadian governments have identified 43 such areas; 26 in U.S. waters, 17 in Canadian water (five are shared between U.S. and Canada on connecting river systems). The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, as amended via the 1987 protocol, directs the two federal governments to cooperate with state and provincial governments to develop and implement Remedial Action Plans for each Area of Concern.
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What is a Remedial Action Plan (RAP)?
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, as amended by 1987 protocol, directs the United States or Canada to cooperate with state or provincial governments to develop and implement a Remedial Action Plan or RAP for all Areas of Concern. There are four AOC's and accompanying RAP's in Northern Ohio, including portions of the Cuyahoga, Astabula, and Maumee rivers and the Black River in its entirety. All of these rivers feed Lake Erie and contribute to the water quality problems of the lake. All RAP's pursue an ecosystem approach to restoring and protecting beneficial uses, which include recreation, fishing, navigation, drinking water, and aquatic ecosystems. RAPs typically follow a three stage process which includes: a) identifying problems through water quality and land-use assessments; b) a detailed set of steps to determine responsible parties and a time table for actions; and c) documentation and evaluation of action steps to determine progress.
Each AOC has a different set of impaired uses and water quality challenges. Resolving problems within each AOC evades "one size fits all" solutions and each RAP must adapt to diverse stakeholders and sources of problems. Some AOC's confront human health challenges, others face industrial or agricultural pollution, and many face aquatic ecosystem degradation. Most AOC's face a combination of these problems. All RAP's encompass the concerns of all stakeholders who share a responsibility in implementing solutions. For the Black River RAP, stakeholders include agricultural interests (the Farm Bureau, Ohio State University Cooperative Extension, the Natural Resource Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, and farmers), government bodies (municipalities, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, city governments, port authorities, county health departments, and wastewater treatment operators), industrial representatives, civic organizations, and citizens. RAP meetings are open to the public and implementation of RAP projects require wide public involvement.
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History of the Black River RAP
While the Black River has a long and rich history, recent pollution problems have created a negative public perception of the river. In 1985, the Black River was designated as one of 43 Areas of Concern (AOC) in the Great Lakes basin by the Water Quality Board of the International Joint Commission. This board is an advisory body between the United States and Canadian governments and oversees water quality issues in the Great Lakes. As an AOC, a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) was prescribed by the IJC for the Black River Watershed to address its contribution to the pollution problems of Lake Erie. The unique RAP process uses an ecosystem approach to solve environmental problems and involve diverse public stakeholders throughout problem identification and clean up. In addition to citizen representatives, various agencies, municipalities, and industrial representatives serve together on a RAP steering committee. This committee oversees and evaluates the implementation of the three RAP stages for the Black River:
- Stage I involves the identification of all the environmental problems in the AOC and at a minimum describes these problems according to impacts on the fourteen beneficial uses of watersheds listed by the IJC;
- Stage II prescribes the actions needed to eliminate the problems and assigns responsibilities for these actions; and
- Stage III involves an ongoing monitoring of the AOC to ensure that problems do not develop in the future. The purpose of the RAP is to define the actions necessary to overcome the current water quality problems, to restore the river as closely as possible to its original, natural state, and keep it in a healthy condition.
By 1990, a RAP process was initiated for every AOC in Ohio (Ashtabula River, Cuyahoga River, and the Maumee River) with the exception of the Black River. Cheryl Wolfe, a life-long resident of Lorain County working for Oberlin College, learned of the RAP process in an environmental studies course and started asking why the process had not yet begun for the Black River. In her search, she discovered that the local Nord Family Foundation was also interested in the RAP process for the Black River. Wolfe, along with David Orr, a faculty member of the Environmental Studies Program, obtained funding from the Nord Family Foundation to engage the assistance of Oberlin College students in the production of an educational slide program describing the problems of the river. The information was presented at various public events and service organization meetings. As a result of their efforts to collect the names of residents interested in the river, the Friends of the Black River (which became Seventh Generation), a nonprofit environmental organization, was established and held its first meeting in February 1991 with nearly 100 people in attendance. Ironically, during the wait for a response to their grant proposal, an article appeared in The Cleveland Plain Dealer which highlighted the RAPs in Ohio and blamed public apathy as the reason for the delay in the initiation of the Black River RAP process.
In reality, a meeting had been held a few years earlier where a paper entitled "The Black River Remedial Action Plan" written by an out-of -state consulting firm was presented to a handful of representatives from local various agencies. If the meeting was "public" the announcement must have been hidden in the fine print of the local papers. There was a great deal of confusion at that time whether the process had already been initiated, who was responsible for taking the lead, and what the invited agencies were to do next. Many were under the impression that the RAP (at least Stage I) was completed, hence the reason for presenting the report by the company hired by the EPA. Additionally, the Ohio and Federal Environmental Protection Agencies had enforcement actions pending. One was a law suit against the steel plant for air emission violations which, after many years, finally resulted in a consent decree that included an agreement by the steel plant to dredge the toxic sediments associated with the outfall of its coking facility during the fall of 1990. There was also a lawsuit brought by the EPA against the City of Elyria that forced it to make several million dollars of long-needed improvements in the wastewater treatment plant. With those two actions pending, there was internal indecision at Ohio EPA as to whether an official RAP process would be started for the Black River. At any rate, there was no true public or local involvement in the first attempt to create a Stage I document.
Shortly after the first meeting of the Friends of the Black River, Don Schregardous, director of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, officially initiated the RAP process for the Black River by appointing a Coordinating Committee with Ken Pearce, Lorain County Health Commissioner, to serve as chair. Five citizen representatives were named to the committee and agencies such as the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Lorain County Soil & Water Conservation District, the Lorain County General Health District, The US Department of Agriculture, Ohio State University Extension, and the state and federal EPA were appointed as participants. Local jurisdictions included a Lorain County Commissioner, the Lorain County Metroparks, the cities of Elyria, Lorain, and North Ridgeville, the head of the Lorain County Township Trustees, and serving in a supporting role for the process, the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency. USS/Kobe Steel, the Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, Englehard Corporation, LTV Steel and the Lorain County Port Authority were appointed to the committee as the commercial and industrial representatives. Membership has changed in recent years to include more members from Medina County (Commissioners and Soil & Water Conservation Districts) and others whose participation and education are crucial in solving the problems of the river: Lorain County Community Alliance, Building Industries Association, Farm Bureau, and the Lorain County Engineers Office.
The RAP committee appointed a technical Study Team to identify the problems of the river and to draft the Stage I report. Citizen representatives were influential in the Study Team's first decision to consider the entire watershed in the identification of beneficial use impairments rather than limiting the scope to the Area of Concern first designated by the IJC. By July 1992, the Study Team had completed the collection and examination of existing information on the condition of the watershed.  The team waited for the results of an Ohio EPA Intensive Survey of the river conducted during the summer of 1992 before completing the final draft of the Stage I document in April, 1994. Gaps in available data were also identified by the Study Team which made recommendations for further research to complete the profile. The Black River Remedial Action Plan Coordinating Committee sponsored a public meeting at the Lorain County Community College to explain the findings of the Stage I document and to inform citizens about the RAP process.
The discovery of cancerous tumors on the livers of the Brown Bullhead catfish in the late 1970's first caught the attention of the IJC.  Paul Baumann, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey and adjunct professor with Ohio State University, traced the tumors on the catfish to effluent from the United States Steel's coking facility. The source of the tumors was determined to be Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH's), known for several decades to be the carcinogen associated with testicular cancer in chimney sweepers. This effluent is considered a point source of pollution because it can be traced to an original point of origin. In addition to industrial point sources of pollution, the obvious environmental issues for the river at the initiation of the RAP
process (see table on the next page) included:
- combined storm and sewer overflow problems (where sewage waste bypasses sanitary sewer pipes during large rainfall events causing raw sewage to flow into waterways),
- outdated municipal wastewater treatment facilities,
- failed home septic systems,
- feedlot runoff,
- loss of riparian habitat, and
sediment loading due to intensive farming and development practices.
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