Western Lake Erie
Water Quality Incident
Emergency Response Coordinator
Protect the population while evidence is incomplete.
A city on the shore of western Lake Erie is reporting an increasing number of complaints about the taste and odor of tap water. The water treatment facility suspects a harmful algal bloom may be developing in the lake. No cause has been confirmed. Public reports are growing, and the situation is changing hour by hour.
You are the Emergency Response Coordinator for the affected region. You decide what information is shared, what samples are collected, and how the city responds while the cause is still unconfirmed.
Protect the population while evidence is incomplete. You cannot know everything yet. Your decisions will shape what happens next.
Harmful algal blooms
Cyanobacteria, sometimes called blue-green algae, can form visible blooms in warm, nutrient-rich freshwater. Some cyanobacteria produce toxins that can affect drinking water.
The 2014 western Lake Erie event
In August 2014, the city of Toledo, Ohio, issued a do-not-drink advisory for public tap water after a harmful algal bloom affected the city's water intake in western Lake Erie. This scenario is inspired by that event.
Nutrients and runoff
Algal blooms in western Lake Erie are driven in part by nutrients such as phosphorus carried into the lake by rivers that drain farmland and developed land. The Maumee River watershed is a major contributor.
This is a simulation
The event, characters, and timeline in this scenario are fictional. They are designed to teach decision-making under uncertainty, not to document the real crisis.
Information will be incomplete
You will receive evidence over time — lab results, citizen reports, official statements, satellite observations. Some of it will be reliable. Some of it will not. You will rarely have the full picture when you have to act.
Decisions have consequences
Your actions will change the simulated world: public trust, risk, and what happens next. You manage response credits, a game resource that represents the limited capacity of an emergency response.
Simulated time
The simulation runs on its own clock, not real time. Time advances in steps, and events unfold at their own pace.
Time is moving. The situation is not waiting for you.