Thousands of residents in Illinois and Indiana came out last Saturday with the goal of ridding their homes of unwanted pharmaceuticals as part of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 5^th annual National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. police officers and volunteers in more than 200 locations in Illinois and 70 in Indiana collected bottles, boxes, and sometimes even garbage bags full of prescription and over-the-counter human and veterinary medications. Everything collected will be properly incinerated by the DEA.
  

Single-day collection events like this are an important way to limit negative impacts to wildlife and local waterways from prescriptions and medications that are improperly disposed of. A wide-range of pharmaceutical chemicals has been found in rivers, groundwater, and drinking water throughout the country due to medications being flushed down the toilet or thrown in the trash. The impact of these chemicals on long-term human health is still unknown, but a connection between pharmaceutical-contaminated waters and impaired development, behavior, and reproduction has been found in many species of fish and other aquatic wildlife.

IISG has been educating people on pharmaceutical stewardship issues and helping communities establish safe and legal permanent medicine collection programs for more than six years. For additional information on how to dispose of medicine between take-back events or in areas where collections are not available, visit www.unwantedmeds.org.    

“The radishes planted in northwest Ohio go in about this time of year and are left in the ground to die, explained our host, Allen Dean. Planting doomed radishes, it turns out, is an innovative technique he has used in recent years to improve soil nutrients and reduce runoff from his Williams County farm.

 

Here’s the basics on how it works: Farmers plant seeds for a plant called an oilseed radish. It doesn’t actually have to be that plant, but it needs to grow a foot or longer into the soil during the fall in a tubular shape, like a carrot or a parsnip. It also needs to grow a fair amount of foliage up on the ground. Radishes are usually more affordable.

 

It’s important that the plant drill down into the soil so that when it dies, usually during a mid-January freeze, it decays and leaves behind a v-shaped hole for snow and water to penetrate deeper. The decayed radishes Dean showed us looked like organic socks.

 

Oilseed radishes are particularly good at absorbing nutrients from the surface and sending them down into the soil as the tubular plant drills it way into the ground.”

“Financial viability is the bottom line for most farmers here along the Maumee River. The Maumee passes through 4.5-million acres of farmland before entering Lake Erie at Toledo. Along the way it picks up a lot of topsoil from farm fields. Attached to that soil are fine particles of phosphorus, one of the nutrients that helps crops grow, but also feeds algae blooms. No-till farming has reduced particulate phosphorus runoff by nearly 40-percent. But researchers from Heidelberg University say their thirty years of water quality data shows that another form of phosphorus – called dissolved phosphorus – has risen dramatically in recent years. And to reduce that nutrient enough to curb Lake Erie algae blooms will take a whole new set of techniques.” 

“The sport fishing industry, beach resorts, amusement parks – all took a hit from the 2011 algae outbreak. Connor says cities …not just farms…have to do more to stay on top of it.

Overflows from sewage systems that collect storm water and waste water are a fairly regular occurrence in Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and other communities around the lake. And it’s a huge cost to fix it.”

“At the top of that list of secondary pathways is an area in northern Indiana called Eagle Marsh, which separates the Mississippi basin’s Wabash River from the Maumee River basin that feeds Lake Erie. The two watersheds have a history of merging in extreme rains, so to reduce the threat of carp making the jump into Lake Erie, the federal government has erected a fence between them.”

“Gray infrastructure is the system of pipes and ditches that channel storm water. Green infrastructure is the harnessing of the natural processes of trees and other vegetation — so-called ecosystem services — to carry out the functions of the built systems. Green infrastructure often intercepts the water before it can run into streets and become polluted and stores the water for gradual release through percolation or evapotranspiration. Trees also clean dirty water through natural filtering functions.

 

Advocates say green infrastructure isn’t just about being green — it makes financial sense, as well. Its cost-effectiveness depends on how benefits are assigned and valued, and over how long a time scale, but green has been shown to be cheaper than gray.”

“For decades, the mathematics of waterborne transport here were simple. For every 10 to 11 metric tons of cargo that moved into and out of the Toledo port, about one metric ton of sediment left the channel. (Last year, 10.4 million metric tons of cargo were handled at the port.)

 

But with climate change, the equation is almost certain to get more complex and more expensive, say scientists and port managers. More mid-winter snow melts and rainstorms — and more frequent heavy rainfalls, especially in spring — may lead to higher soil-erosion rates, meaning that Great Lakes rivers are likely to carry more soil into harbors. Higher air temperatures already are warming the Great Lakes, blocking ice from forming, and increasing rates of evaporation that may lead to lower lake levels.”

“That will allow the federal government to build a new barrier there to keep sea lampreys from breeding in the river. Managers of the fishery expect that will bring the lamprey problem under control in Lake Michigan.”