An independent prototype · Maumee River → Western Lake Erie
Fix the Maumee by making river recovery
cheaper, measurable, and publicly accountable.
Then reuse the operating pattern for other public problems. The Maumee is the single largest phosphorus source to Lake Erie — and it is solvable. This is an independent prototype of a public operating system — not a government body, and nothing here carries government authority.
What we're asking you to do
- Today: nothing to vote on, sign or pay. We ask you to check our numbers and tell us where they are wrong.
- Who decides: no public body has been asked to decide anything yet. This project has no authority. A real project would need the landowner and the permit agencies to say yes.
- When: no hearing or vote is scheduled. If one is, its date will appear here first.
- Cost to you: none. No cost to households or taxpayers has been proposed yet.
If you farm in the basin
- Voluntary: taking part would be your choice. This project has no authority to require anything of anyone.
- Who pays, how much: no payment rate per pound or per acre has been set, and no one has agreed to pay.
- Your ground: no landowner has been contacted and no pilot site is chosen. Named sites on this site are examples only.
The goal, and how far the river is from it
The U.S. and Canada agreed on a spring phosphorus limit for the Maumee. Spring means March 1 to July 31. One metric tonne is about 2,200 pounds.
- U.S. EPA, Recommended Phosphorus Loading Targets for Lake Erie (2015), under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, Annex 4. Measured at Waterville, Ohio.
- National Center for Water Quality Research, Heidelberg University, tributary monitoring (dry year about 2012, wet years about 2011 and 2015).
The scorecard — what the team has actually done
Live from the program's own pipeline records, refreshed every 10 minutes. Honest numbers: nothing has been built yet, and the kills are published alongside the finalists — that's the filter working in public.
In the real world, so far
Ideas screened on paper
How we filter ideas
Before a person ever looks at an idea, six AI personas, standing in for farmer and voter points of view, rate it. They are a screening tool, not votes: no human has voted on anything. They have logged — ratings so far, counting each persona once per idea per round. Another — ratings from — round(s) were produced by backup code when the AI call failed; they are left out of that number. "Independently validated" means a second agent in this program reproduced the arithmetic; no outside party has checked any figure.
The Public Office — an independent prototype of a transparent operating system
Everything the program does is public: who works here, what they did today, how procurement will run, and where every dollar goes. Live-synced from the program's own records every 10 minutes. This is a prototype run by an independent project — not a government office.
👥 Team
The full staff directory — every agent, their mandate, and a live feed of work actually performed. Watch the compute meter tick with real measured usage.
Open →📑 Procurement
Public solicitations, bid rules, and dates — modeled on public-sector RFP practice. Currently a demonstration; activates with the first funded project.
Open →🏛 Budget Office
The public fund, every transaction, and the running balance — a demonstration ledger today, a live bank link when real money arrives.
Open →Why the Maumee, of all rivers?
Fort Wayne's St. Joseph and St. Marys join to form the Maumee, which runs 137 miles to Toledo. It's the worst phosphorus source because four physical facts stack up with nothing breaking the chain.
- Biggest Great Lakes watershedLargest basin of any Great Lakes river — big basin, big load.
- The drained Great Black Swamp1,500 sq mi of wetland ditched and tiled away, 1859–1900. Flat, heavy clay.
- ~85–90% row crop on tile drainageTile delivers dissolved phosphorus — the form algae eat — fast, bypassing the soil.
- It empties into a shallow, warm reactorThe western basin averages ~24 ft. Warm, shallow water turns the load into a bloom.
The six levers
Farm & tile-drain runoff
The largest remaining load. 4R timing, controlled drainage, saturated buffers, two-stage ditches, blind inlets — the idea is to pay for verified pounds; no rate is set. If you farm →
Wastewater & CSO
Small share, but permittable and fast to verify. Tighten the permit; finish sewer separation.
Wetland & buffer
Rebuild the swamp's filtering function at the tile outlets that replaced it.
Legacy phosphorus
Stored P leaks for years — draw it down, don't just cut inputs.
Low terrain & flood
Point Place sits below wind-setup level; water recovery and waterfront value are one project.
Monitoring
You can't pay for pounds you don't measure. Instrument the blind spots first.
Was the river ever clear?
The toxic-bloom problem is ~125–175 years old, and it has a datable start: draining the Great Black Swamp. The western basin was never crystal-clear — it's naturally shallow and productive — but it was never toxic until we removed the swamp's filter and sped up the plumbing.
Read the full history →The watershed's kidney
The swamp was the basin's kidney — it slowed, filtered, and released water. Tile drainage does the reverse. The durable fix is to rebuild those three jobs as thousands of small, measured, paid-for filters placed where the water now runs fastest.
7 ways to rebuild it →The platform
Five things, one job — see the problem, watch it live, investigate the sources, and get fixes built.
🗺 The Map
Pan and zoom the whole basin on real satellite/aerial imagery — swap to topo or streets. Toggle dischargers, live meters, and fix levers; dive into any zone for true 1 m 3D and place-a-fix.
Open →📡 Live & Incidents
Real-time USGS river conditions, the spring-load window, and a sourced log of spills, fish kills, and advisories.
Open →🏭 Discharges
Every permitted discharger in the basin, classified and filterable, so you can investigate each source and how to improve it.
Open →🔧 Fix Pipeline
Turn a spot into a permit-ready, funded, monitored project — auto-generated design, real OH/federal permit drafts, build packet, monitoring plan.
Open →📚 Research
First-principles doctrine, a searchable sourced database, and every strategy document — history, the kidney, the operating-system plan.
Open →Models & briefing
Scenario Model
Move the policy levers over a 20-year horizon and watch phosphorus load and bloom severity respond.
Open →ROI & Public Value
The economic case: property value, recreation, and water-treatment savings from recovery.
Open →Decision Certainty
Where sensors would most reduce uncertainty, and the public data feeds to wire in.
Open →Presentation Deck
The scroll-based briefing for a public audience or a room at the statehouse.
Open →Flat 2D Map
The classic pan-anywhere satellite/topo/street map — the whole basin at any zoom, no 3D.
Open →