Could a floating basket made of firehose help create fish and wildlife habitat along the Cuyahoga River?

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Mike Minnick and his family were floating along the Cuyahoga River in a pontoon boat last summer when his young children lamented the lack of animals to see.

They spotted tires being used as bumpers along the metal bulkheads of the shipping channel and commented, " ‘We should throw some stuff in there to grow,’ " said Minnick, a stay-at-home dad with a mechanical engineering background.

“So, it kind of came out of that,” he said.

The it is his idea to fasten floating baskets made of recycled firehose up and down the channel, which extends six miles from Lake Erie, to allow vegetation to grow down into the water to create fish habitat, and up above to attract birds, bees and butterflies.

Minnick’s idea was impressive enough to convince the judges of Thursday’s Erie Hack quarterfinals to select his team, called Island Hoppers, as one of four to move on to the semifinals next month. Other teams advancing offered up various ways to address harmful algal blooms.

Erie Hack, sponsored by the Cleveland Water Alliance and others, is a contest being held around Lake Erie to promote new ideas to address serious water issues in the region.

The floating baskets need to be sturdy enough to withstand the roiling waters of the shipping channel, which are churned up by the propellers of the giant lake freighters that move up and down the river, often very close to the edge.

Minnick, of Avon Lake, said he took inspiration from Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, where the hammocks in the bear exhibit are made of firehose.

Also moving on to the semifinals is a team called RNA Power, which hopes to analyze RNA to better predict the toxicity of potentially harmful algal blooms on Lake Erie.

This idea impressed judge Scott Hardy, and extension educator with the Ohio Sea Grant College Program. While his organization and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration do a pretty good job predicting how far the bloom will spread each year, measuring how toxic the bloom will be is far more difficult, he said.

RNA Power suggested that within two weeks it could predict the toxicity of a bloom, which would be a big help to coastal communities, Hardy said, and potentially “a real game changer.”

Donna Friedman, a watershed team leader with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, also found the idea intriguing. As Friedman understands it, while DNA may be present in the algae for a longer period of time, “RNA gives you a better snapshot.”

Also moving on is Agri-Tech Ohio, which has a plan to use “biomass sorghum” to extract chemicals from the air and soil and then harvest the plants as filler in plastic and rubber products.

There are several types of sorghum, including the kind that’s used to produce syrup and other foods, but the variety of sorghum Agri-Tech would use grows fast and tall and can extract a lot of carbon dioxide from the air and phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil.

If planted on fields and in other strategic areas, biomass sorghum could be an effective way to reduce the amount of nutrients that run off into bodies of water and exacerbate harmful algal blooms.

The second component to Agri-Tech’s idea is to harvest the sorghum after it has absorbed the chemicals and use it as a plant substitute for the carbon black filler used in plastic and tires.

Joseph James, representing Agri-Tech, said he is working with the University of Akron’s School of Polymer Science to produce bio-materials from sorghum.

Friedman said she was impressed by the “full circle use” of the plants.

Agri-Tech Ohio wants to use biomass sorghum to extract carbon dioxide from the air and unwanted phosphorus and nitrogen from the soil.

The fourth team to move on, called Algae Busters, is developing a technology that could be used to reduce the amount of phosphorus in the manure that gets spread on farm fields and then finds its way into Lake Erie.

Manure is often held in waste lagoons, and by blasting it with an electric current, it breaks open the cells in the organic matter and allows the phosphorus to sink to the bottom of the lagoon more quickly, said team leader Steve Ostanek, president of Neundorfer Inc. in Willoughby.

The liquid manure that is then drawn from the lagoon contains less potentially harmful phosphorus.

The manure would be treated by pumping it through tubes, where the electric current is administered, and then back into the lagoon.

“It’s very simple,” he said.

The technology has been around for a while, Ostanek said, but there has been no incentive for farmers to use it in such a fashion. He said the process is being studied by the state’s H2Ohio program that offers incentives to farmers to take voluntary steps to reduce the phosphorus runoff from their fields.

The four teams moving on from the Cleveland quarterfinal will join others from around Lake Erie to compete in a semifinal on Nov. 4 to be hosted virtually from Detroit.

The finals are scheduled for Cleveland on Nov. 18, hopefully using a hybrid format that is both virtual and in-person.

Minnick said he believes his idea has an advantage in that it can be put into motion very quickly.

“A prototype basket could be out there Dec. 1,” he said.

One thing he hasn’t determined, however, is what to call the floating baskets.

“I’ll get my kids on that,” he said.

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