H2Oh-No

Most People In Ohio Want Clean Water... Others Prefer Dirty Profits

-by Jerrad Christian

Sorry to the kids that want clean water— you didn’t donate enough money to politicians.

That’s how it works now. If you’re a child, a parent, a fisherman, or just someone who likes not drinking poison, tough luck. But if you’re a billionaire agribusiness executive or a campaign donor who thinks wetlands are wasted space, the Ohio legislature’s got your back.

This month, Republicans in the Statehouse gutted one of the only environmental programs in Ohio that was actually working: H2Ohio. They just slashed in the 2025–27 budget like it was nothing, right as the program was finally proving it could clean up Lake Erie.

H2Ohio was launched in 2019 after toxic algal blooms turned the western basin of Lake Erie into a fluorescent green soup and cut off drinking water for half a million people in the Toledo area. Governor Mike DeWine, to his credit, saw the writing on the wall. He built a program that paid farmers to reduce runoff, restored wetlands to filter water naturally, and helped rural counties prevent another crisis. The act was science-based, bipartisan, and long overdue.

Better yet? It worked. Farmers signed up, algae levels started to drop, the water got cleaner. It’s that simple.

But, there’s no profit in clean water. No campaign checks in restored marshes and no billionaire demanding nutrient runoff be stopped at the source. But there are giant factory farms and industrial agriculture conglomerates who hate being told what to do. There are donors who think environmental regulations are “government overreach,” and lobbyists telling their bought-and-paid-for politicians to kill the program before other states get any bright ideas.

And Ohio Republicans are happy to help. Hell, some of them own the wells. cough Senator Brian Chavez cough.

This isn’t just an Ohio problem, it’s a national pattern. Trump’s administration gutted the Waters of the U.S. rule, making it easier to dump pollution in streams and wetlands. They repealed the Stream Protection Rule so coal companies could bury creeks in sludge. House Republicans just rammed through bills to "streamline" Clean Water Act permits— code for giving polluters a green light. And Trump’s EPA, stacked with industry hacks, rolled back rules limiting PFAS “forever chemicals” in our drinking water.

Let that sink in: they made it easier for toxic chemicals to stay in your water on purpose because their donors asked them to.

They call it “cutting red tape” but the reality is, it’s just letting billionaires cash in while working families drink shit water.

We always get left with the consequences of these disgusting policies— sick kids, poisoned wells, devastated ecosystems, and rising costs to treat water that used to be clean. And when the next toxic bloom hits? When your city can’t drink from the tap again? Don’t expect them to take responsibility. They'll just blame the libs and give big insurance companies another tax break to deny your kid’s cancer treatment.We already pay taxes to a government that gives more protection to fertilizer runoff than to your health. Soon we can't take your kid swimming without checking if the lake’s turned toxic. This is what happens when we let corporate greed set public policy. When the people making the rules are the same ones cashing checks from the industries they're supposed to regulate.

But, if we work for it, they don’t get to keep this power forever.

Not if we fight back. Not if we stop pretending this is normal. Not if we remember that access to clean water and safe food is not some luxury— it’s a human right. And anyone standing in the way of that— Republican, Democrat, billionaire, bureaucrat, or a faux patriot— needs to be called what they are:

A danger to the people.