Sugar Creek Method

Water Quality and Testing Along the Sugar Creek

A. Water Quality Background:      (next)        (return to Water Quality page outline)

The Sugar Creek is the second most impaired watershed in the State of Ohio.

Water quality issues on the Sugar Creek are related to water quality as far away as the Gulf of Mexico.

• To reduce the size of the hypoxia zone in the Gulf of Mexico, major agricultural conservation efforts required to reduce Nitrogen (N) loadings (as well as other excess nutrients) should be conducted in headwater systems throughout the Mississippi River basin.

• In terms of N, it is estimated that over 78,000 – 200,000 km2 of riparian forests and 21,000 – 53,000 km2 of associated wetlands need to be restored across the Mississippi River basin to effectively reduce N loadings of streams and rivers in the headwaters of the Mississippi River basin and Gulf of Mexico (Mitsch et al. 2001).

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) and others have documented water quality issues on the Sugar Creek

• OEPA has the responsibility, through the Clean Water Act to carry out pollution remediation to all 888 waterways in the State of Ohio.

• EPA's Approach is to determine Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) planning for each impaired watershed by benchmarking levels of pollution and creating a plan to stop the pollution from entering the streams and rivers.

The old approach wasn't working:   Our haphazard downstream approach to watershed restoration is due to historical reasons (not logical scientific reasons):

• In the 1800's we concentrated on draining swampy areas. This led to the large floods on the Ohio River in the early 1900's necessitating the development of dams.

• In 1974 the EPA was created to carry out the Clean Water Act to remediate point source pollution and drinking water issues which were usually industrial or sewage sites located downstream.

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