You better be-leaf it! Fall leaves that wash into stormwater are a contributor to excess nutrients in our Great Lakes. Learn how changes to your yard practices can make a positive difference this autumn.

How big of a deal can autumn leaves be for our waterways? After all, leaves are all-natural!

At the simplest level, leaf litter in storm drains blocks the flow of water. This means enough leaf litter piled in curbs or covering drains can cause roads to flood. Leaves can also cause blockages inside a drain and damage our local pipes. However, there’s more to the story.

Decaying leaves are full of nutrients, especially phosphorous. In environments like forests, prairies, and wetlands, soil and plants absorb these extra nutrients and they go on to become plant food. However, cities are full of hard surfaces like streets, parking lots, and buildings. Leaves still fall, but there’s nowhere for those nutrients to go besides getting washed into stormwater. Stormwater is untreated, meaning it flows directly from your street into a local ditch or stream, into a larger waterway like Swan Creek, the Ottawa River, or the Maumee River, and ultimately out into Lake Erie. That means all the nutrients that would sink into the soil of a forest instead get channeled right into our Great Lakes, contributing to algal blooms.

It turns out that the nutrients from municipal leaves have a big impact on our Great Lakes. A 2016 study in Madison, Wisconsin found that timely autumn leaf removal can reduce harmful phosphorus in stormwater by over 80 percent!

Taking care of your autumn leaves can save you money and time spent on your yard, help your municipality take care of its stormwater, and help Lake Erie’s nutrient levels all at the same time. Here are our leaf tips this autumn:

1. Use a lawnmower to mulch the leaves on your lawn. Leave them in place or put them on your garden beds. The nutrients from leaves create free fertilizer for your plants to use.
2. If you want to rake your leaves for municipal collection, make sure to keep leaf piles out of the curb and away from storm drains. If your street has a sidewalk, between the street and the sidewalk is the sweet spot.
3. If you remove your own leaves to take them to be composted, temporarily bagging them reduces the chances that leaves will get loose and pollute our waterways.
4. Adopt a storm drain. You can take responsibility for storm drains near your home or workplace and get into the habit of making sure they’re free from leaves, trash, and other debris. Learn more on adopting storm drains from Clear Choices, Clean Water Toledo-Lake Erie.

We’re proud of how our programs benefit our region’s rivers, streams, and creeks, but which rivers, streams and creeks, exactly? Dive deeper into our water with a slept-on section of our website: About Our Waterways.

Northwest Ohio is home to some of the rarest ecosystems on Earth. Thousands of years ago, glacier movements carved out our extraordinary Great Lakes. The ancient shores of Lake Erie created a landscape of momentous sand dunes and densely-forested wetlands. Before drainage projects began in the late 19^thcentury, the Great Black Swamp stretched for nearly one million acres across Northwest Ohio, Southeast Michigan, and Northeast Indiana. Today, our region hosts rare wet prairie ecosystems, vernal pools, coastal wetlands, and sand dunes that seem to rise mysteriously out of forests and fields. This unique landscape sets the stage for incredible biodiversity to take root in Northwest Ohio. Lucas County boasts more rare and endangered species than any other county in Ohio. (Source: Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

Clean, clear, and safe water forms the nexus for this network of life. Our waterways are home to hundreds of species of plants and animals, and serve as highways for many more. Abundant fresh water is a resource we shouldn’t take for granted. At Partners for Clean Streams, we love to walk alongside our rivers, boat on them, fish in them, and of course, drink the fresh water they provide. Every day and in many ways, our connection to our waterways runs deep.

Dive into the Lake Erie tributaries that make up our region’s lifelines: About Our Waterways.

It takes a village to pull off Clean Your Streams for 27 years running! We want to highlight some of the sponsors who make our programs possible, and share ways that you can contribute to our mission all year long.

First of all, we’d like to thank again a returning grant funder for 2023. In 2022, we announced that the Greater Toledo Community Foundation approved a grant from the Sisters of St. Francis Foundation Donor Advised Fund to Partners for Clean Streams for $17,535 to support marine debris removal efforts. This grant supported Clean Your Streams 365 programs earlier this year, and was also a key source of funding for the 27^th Annual Clean Your Streams.

Partners for Clean Streams benefited from one returning Community Partner sponsor this year: O-I Charites Foundation. We are also grateful for the three Underwriter sponsors of The Andersons, Inc., Arcadis, and Jones & Henry Engineers and eight returning Underwriter sponsors. University of Toledo, First Solar, Lucas County Storm Water Utility, City of Toledo Environmental Services, City of Oregon, Kwest Group, NSG Glass North America, and OmniSource are repeat Underwriters! We are so grateful for these businesses, organizations, and municipalities’ continued commitment to our waterways. For a full list of our 27^th Annual CYS sponsors, click here.

We are also supported by generous individuals who see the difference that our programs make both for our waterways and for the volunteers who get an opportunity to uplift their communities. You can make a one-time gift to Partners for Clean Streams online, or become a sustaining donor through our membership program. Consider getting involved with workplace giving via our partnership with Northwest Ohio Community Shares, or let your everyday shopping contribute to our programs via the Kroger Community Rewards program.