Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
Volume 9, Number 1 • January-February 2001
Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat NewsThe Newsletter of the Great Lakes
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by John Ritzenthaler, Ohio Audubon
The effort to protect a substantial portion of the Little Darby Creek watershed in a wildlife refuge has stalled. The Darby is a national and state scenic river about 25 miles west of downtown Columbus. Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio, along with a host of other supporters, maintain that the best way to protect the Darby is by purchasing and preserving large tracts of land. Delaying tactics by government representatives and community members have resulted in non-action on the proposal. Some landowners within the proposed refuge boundaries have placed deed restrictions on 18,000 acres of their land, intending to block any sale to U.S.F.W.S.
Senator DeWine is leading the effort to find a compromise that will adequately protect the Darby and satisfy landowners that the federal government will be minimally involved. Possibilities for alternative plans include establishing buffers and federal tree planting programs.
The struggle for local versus federal control, farming versus land for wildlife, stable land values versus inflated development prices, resource protection by local forces versus government managed resource conservation continues. Regional Director of U.S.F.W.S. Bill Hartwig maintains that they are still very interested in protecting the Little Darby and realize that there is a lot of support for the refuge in the Columbus area, but there are a number of factors continuing to delay things. The potential value of land for development may in the end outweigh the actual value of the biodiversity of the Darby.
by Marc Grossman, Ohio Environmental Council
Over fifty people braved treacherous roads and dedicated an entire weekend to attend the Ohio Environmental Council/River Network Clean Water Act: Activist Training workshop in Columbus, Ohio this past January. Conference participants received a broad based overview of the tools offered by the Clean Water Act. Jeff Skelding, Water Policy Manager for the OEC and Gayle Killam of River Network, a national river protection organization, led the workshop.
Workshop participants included members of Ohio’s environmental and conservation community. These included County Commissioners, river protection groups, watershed activists, watershed coordinators, Soil and Water Conservation District representatives, and staff from both Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
One highlight of the workshop featured a presentation by Mike Utt, watershed coordinator for the upper Scioto River just north of Columbus and a fishing enthusiast who has taken his passion for small mouth bass to the Ohio statehouse. Mike Utt hopes the small mouth bass, Ohio’s newest state symbol, will be used as a teaching tool for clean water and healthy aquatic habitats. Ohio House Bill 19 recognizes the small mouth bass as Ohio’s official state fish and a symbol of clean water.
The three day workshop focused on biological criteria as a method to measure water quality, Ohio’s antidegradation regulation, an overview of point source pollution controls and the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), the Clean Water Act’s Section 404 and 401 stream and wetland protection measures, and strategies to meet Clean Water Act watershed restoration requirements known as Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL).
Participants came out of the conference with “a sense of renewed vigor” and armed with new knowledge of Clean Water Act tools to assist them in achieving their goals of clean water and healthy streams, rivers and lakes.
For more information, contact:
OEC
1207 Grandview Ave. Ste. 201
Columbus, OH 43212
(614) 487-7506
marc@theoec.org