watershed management

Working to protect Columbus’ drinking water — while also managing costs

Hoover Reservoir is a major source of water for Columbus. The 20 billion-gallon impoundment lies in a rapidly growing area north of the city. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

Hoover Reservoir is a major source of water for Columbus. The 20 billion-gallon impoundment lies in a rapidly growing area north of the city. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)

High nitrate levels at a Columbus water plant last year led to a two-week, no-drink advisory for pregnant women and infants younger than 6 months old.

Preventing such problems drives the city of Columbus’ new, in-development Watershed Master Plan.

Consultancy CDM Smith leads the effort with help from, among others, specialists from Ohio State University Extension.

Myra Moss and Joe Bonnell, plus faculty emeritus Bill Grunkemeyer, are helping the firm identify and prioritize agricultural activities in the Scioto River, Big Walnut Creek and Alum Creek watersheds that could impact water reaching the city’s water plants.

Protecting Columbus’ watersheds “will help control treatment and reservoir operation costs and reduce risks in delivering safe drinking water,” said Julie McGill, water resources engineer with CDM Smith.

“The fewer contaminants entering the water plants,” said Bonnell, Extension’s watershed management program director, “the less technology — and money — required to remove those contaminants.”

Moss, Bonnell and Grunkemeyer have unique expertise in water issues, sustainable planning and consensus building.

“OSU Extension brings deep, unique experience in working with the agricultural community, developing comprehensive plans and delivering educational programs aimed at changing public behavior,” McGill said. “This lets them reach out to farmers and other stakeholders with simple, straightforward dialogue that can change mindsets.”

Essentials

  • Columbus’ Watershed Master Plan stands to benefit 1.1 million central Ohioans by safeguarding their drinking water sources and spending their water revenues wisely.
  • Columbus’ main drinking water sources, the Scioto River and Big Walnut Creek, receive runoff from 1,200-plus square miles of land, 72 percent of which is agricultural, before reaching the city’s Dublin Road and Hap Cremean water plants.
  • Runoff of fertilizer from farmland can be a major source of nitrates in the Scioto River.
  • Other challenges when treating Columbus’ water include atrazine, a weed killer; Cryptosporidium, a protozoan sometimes in manure runoff and failing septic systems; and phosphorus from fertilizer, which can contribute to harmful algal blooms.

Learn more about the city’s watershed planning here.

Showing the benefits of tearing down dams: Healthier rivers, cleaner water

John Navarro poses along a restored stretch of the Olentangy River in Columbus. Removing a nearby obsolete dam helped key the restoration.

John Navarro poses along a restored stretch of the Olentangy River in Columbus. Removing a nearby obsolete dam helped key the restoration.

Tear down a dam, and a river will change. But how? And how much? To find out, Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center scientists are looking in their own backyard.

Mazeika Sullivan and Kristin Jaeger are studying the impacts of dam removals at two former dams in Columbus: one on the Olentangy River on The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus, and another close by on the Scioto River. They’re documenting the exact changes seen in the rivers’ flow, biology and water quality.

“There’s a growing trend toward using dam removal to restore rivers, but studies documenting the rivers’ responses are limited,” said Sullivan.

“It’s logical to assume that removing a dam and restoring a river back to its natural state would provide an ecological boost,” said study sponsor John Navarro, program administrator with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife. “But until now, there have been few studies that quantify these benefits.”

Essentials 

  • Ohio has removed 60-plus dams in the past four decades, in large part to improve water quality.
  • A recent low-head dam removal project in Northeast Ohio, for example (not connected to the OARDC study), led to a previously impaired section of the Cuyahoga River meeting Ohio Environmental Protection Agency water quality standards within just six months — with fish diversity going up by 57 percent.
  • Dam removal cools a river’s water — about 6 degrees Fahrenheit in a previous study in Michigan — and restores its natural temperature range.
  • The improved water flow from dam removal keeps sediment from building up. Dam sediment can be full of accumulated toxins, including health threats such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
  • Sullivan and Jaeger’s research is partly funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Said Navarro, “The partnership between Ohio State and the ODNR Division of Wildlife, through the Ohio Biodiversity Conservation Partnership, supports the research being conducted by Mazeika and Kris, and will provide concrete evidence of the benefits of dam removals.”

More: go.osu.edu/RiverRestoration