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In case you haven’t heard, 500,000 people have been left without drinking water in the city of Toledo, Ohio, and store shelves there have been stripped bare of water.

“Residents of Toledo, its suburbs and small areas of southeastern Michigan began lining up for water Saturday after news of the contamination surfaced,” reports USA Today. (1) “Ohio Gov. John Kasich declared a state of emergency for Lucas, Wood and Fulton counties and deployed the National Guard to get water and meals ready to eat, or MREs, to the area.”

The water in Toledo has been contaminated by a toxic poison produced by “algal blooms” in Lake Erie. But here’s what no one in the mainstream media is telling you: What causes algal blooms in Lake Erie?

Agricultural pollution 

Algal blooms are a sign of a wildly imbalanced ecosystem. Before modern industrial agriculture came along and started polluting the lake, algae were kept in balance and didn’t mass-produce the poisons that now contaminate the Toledo water supply.

As the Lake Erie Ecosystem Priority (LEEP) group explains: (2)

“…Research has confirmed that Lake Erie is impaired by an excess of nutrients that feed harmful [organisms].” …The major phosphorus loadings to Lake Erie are from non-point sources, especially agricultural operations.

What’s happening is that all the fertilizer being dumped on nearby farm fields causes phosphorus runoff. This phosphorus runoff winds up in Lake Erie where it feeds the algae, resulting in algal blooms that produce the toxins. These toxins contaminate the drinking water supply and have led directly to the current water crisis.