OREGON, Ohio — (AP) — On a warm late-summer evening, a small speedboat motored across a pea-green stretch of Lake Erie past a beach where a child sat splashing and a pair of newlyweds waded for a portrait photographer. On the sand, unseen or ignored, bright red signs warned people to stay out of the water due to dangerous algae toxins.
Some 70 miles away, farmer Bill Kellogg is trying to do something about the chronic algae blooms in America’s southernmost Great Lake. Instead of scattering fertilizer atop his fields, Kellogg now uses a strip till machine that knifes fertilizer pellets 8 inches into the soil — deep enough that heavy rains won’t wash it away.
He plants cover cropsthat strengthen the soil so it can absorb more nutrients. In other fields, he’s replaced some crops with buffer strips of grasses and other plants that can absorb nutrient runoff before it shoots into …