This action plan describes the potential actions needed to improve water quality in the lake and to meet the restoration goals identified by Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA 2010):
• Improve Grand Lake St. Marys from its present hypereutrophic and unhealthy state (200 μg/L of phosphorus) to a eutrophic state (between 25 μg/L and 50 μg/L phosphorus).
• Greatly reduce harmful algae blooms by inactivating internal nutrients.
• Restore and maintain water quality to ensure safe human recreation.
• Greatly reduce fish kills caused by insufficient dissolved oxygen levels.
• Reduce external nutrient and sediment loads into Grand Lake St. Marys.
• To ensure the level of land use management is sufficient to protect Grand Lake St. Marys.
Section 2 provides additional background information about the watershed, and Section 3 outlines potential and recommended in-lake and near-lake best management practices (BMPs). Section 4 describes
practices that should be employed throughout the watershed to reduce nutrient and sediment loading to the lake. A proposed implementation strategy and schedule are presented in Section 5, and an adaptive
management plan, which includes monitoring and tracking the effectiveness of BMPs, is summarized in Section 6.