Flocking, Fish And The Drought Battle

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COLUMBUS IS TAKING ANOTHER LOOK AT FLOCK

A few weeks ago, we broke down Columbus’ growing Flock camera network and the privacy concerns surrounding it.

Now City Council is asking many of the same questions.

Columbus police currently operate 65 Flock license plate readers, with 11 more planned. But the city’s cameras are only part of a much larger network. Hundreds of automated plate readers are scattered across Franklin County, collecting license plates, vehicle descriptions, locations and timestamps as cars pass by.

The argument for them has not changed much. Columbus police say Flock has become an important investigative tool, helping officers locate stolen vehicles, missing people and suspects in serious crimes. Police officials have said the technology assisted in roughly 60% of Columbus homicide investigations last year.

The concern is what happens after all that information enters the system.

An audit of roughly 19.6 million searches across the broader Flock network identified more than 15,000 searches potentially connected to immigration enforcement. While the audit did not show ICE directly logging into Columbus’ cameras, federal agencies had access to information shared through the wider network.

That revelation pushed Mayor Andrew Ginther to order CPD to stop sharing Columbus camera data statewide. Nationwide sharing had already been shut off earlier this summer.

Then came City Council.

At an August hearing lasting nearly six hours, dozens of residents testified about the technology, overwhelmingly asking the city to reconsider its relationship with Flock. Council members are now weighing everything from stricter rules and limits on data sharing to ending the contract altogether.

And there is a deadline.

Columbus’ two-year, $228,000 contract with Flock expires in December, meaning the city will soon have to make an actual decision instead of continuing the debate indefinitely.

That is really where this story has moved since we last covered it.

The question is no longer whether Flock cameras are watching Columbus. We already know they are.

Now the question is what Columbus plans to do about it.But Tuesday showed that straight-line winds approaching 100 mph can tear through a city with nearly the same destructive force.

There probably is not one person or agency to blame for everything that happened. Forecasting a rapidly developing storm is difficult, and warnings are issued with imperfect information in real time.

But after the amount of damage Columbus just experienced, it is fair to expect a serious review of what happened, how residents were warned and whether people fully understood just how dangerous Tuesday's storm had become.

The goal should not be finding someone to punish.

It should be making sure the next storm this powerful does not catch Columbus quite as off guard.

Scarlet Letter Trivia

What is Ohio’s official state fish?

A. Walleye

B. Perch

C. No State Fish

D. Smallmouth Bass

A PREHISTORIC GIANT IS COMING BACK TO THE SCIOTO

Alum Creek Marina Summer Series

There was a time when one of the strangest fish in North America swam right through the Scioto River.

The lake sturgeon has been around for at least 150 million years, meaning versions of this fish were cruising through ancient waterways while dinosaurs still walked the planet. Adults can grow six to seven feet long, weigh more than 200 pounds and, in rare cases, live past 100 years old.

And historically, they were here.

Records show lake sturgeon lived in the Scioto River system, including waters south of Columbus in Pickaway County, before disappearing from the river by the early 1900s. One historical review lists the species in the Scioto prior to 1916.

Their disappearance was part of a much bigger collapse.

For decades, the Scioto downstream from Columbus was hammered by sewage, industrial pollution, dams and habitat destruction. Researchers estimate that nearly 100 fish species disappeared from stretches of the river below Columbus during its worst years. Water-quality improvements beginning in the 1970s eventually helped the river make a remarkable recovery.

Now Ohio wants to bring one of its biggest missing residents back.

As part of a broader state restoration effort, young lake sturgeon are planned for release into the Scioto River, returning the species to a watershed where it has been absent for more than a century.

And these things are wonderfully weird.

Instead of normal fish scales, sturgeon have rows of hard, bony plates called scutes, giving them an almost armored appearance. Their tails look more like a shark's than a typical freshwater fish, and four whisker-like barbels hang beneath their snouts to help detect food along the river bottom. Their mouths actually extend outward like a small vacuum cleaner, sucking up insects, snails, crayfish, mussels and other bottom-dwelling food.

They are also in absolutely no rush to grow up.

Lake sturgeon may not reproduce until they are 10 to 30 years old, and females do not necessarily spawn every year. They can also travel long distances before returning to the same general river where they were born to reproduce.

That means restoring them to the Scioto is not a project measured in summers.

It could take decades.

Which makes the whole thing even cooler.

The Scioto flowing through Downtown today looks nothing like the river Columbus abused for much of the 20th century. Dams have been removed, habitat has been restored and water quality has improved enough that wildlife once pushed out of the system has a chance to return.

A six-foot, armored fish swimming past Columbus probably sounds a little ridiculous.

Historically, though, that would actually be the normal part.

We are the ones who made them disappear.

OHIO JUST ESCAPED THE DROUGHT MAP

This might be the least surprising drought update imaginable.

First, Central Ohio got hammered by storms strong enough to flip a car on I-71, knock out power to thousands and produce a tornado in Upper Arlington.

Then came the rain that flooded streets, neighborhoods and businesses across the region.

Now we have the official result:

Ohio is no longer in drought.

According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, not a single part of Ohio is classified as Moderate Drought or worse. That puts us among just a small handful of states completely outside official drought conditions.

Which feels like quite the plot twist considering where we were two years ago.

In 2024, Ohio experienced D4 Exceptional Drought for the first time since the U.S. Drought Monitor began tracking conditions in 2000. Streams shrank, crops struggled, lawns turned brown and trees started dropping their leaves before fall had even arrived.

Then this summer, drought conditions started creeping back into Ohio again.

Apparently the atmosphere took that personally.

Repeated rounds of storms have dumped inches of rain across the state, with some parts of Central and Southeast Ohio receiving 5 to 7 inches during a single stretch in August. The result has been a rapid erasing of the dry conditions that remained on the map.

And while Ohio has gone from drought to flooded intersections, much of America is still dry.

As of August 18, 42 states still had at least some Moderate Drought or worse, while more than half of the Lower 48 was experiencing drought conditions.

There is one technical catch. Parts of a state can still be labeled D0, “Abnormally Dry,” without officially being considered in drought. Actual drought begins at D1.

But after watching wind flip cars, tornadoes touch down, power lines fall and floodwater pour through Central Ohio over the last few weeks, nobody here was exactly waiting for the government map to confirm things had gotten wet.

Two years ago we were asking where the rain went.

This month we found it.

All of it.

Trivia Answer C. No State Fish