Scientists are just now beginning to appreciate the complexities of the emerging environmental problems facing the Great Lakes. The U.S. and Canada have forged a partnership under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Top officials from both nations–as represented by Ullrich and Mills–met recently in Chicago to discuss the future of the world’s greatest source of fresh water.
Q: What are the new, emerging problems facing the Great Lakes?
A: Ullrich: First, the toxic pollutant situation is a particularly difficult one because we are not dealing so much with major, direct dischargers. Some toxics are coming from sediments that have been down there for 100 years. Some are coming from air deposition, just falling out of the sky from hundreds or thousands of miles away.
The toxics get into the food chain, and whether they go up the animal side or ultimately get to the human side, they stay in the system for a long time. We have an agreement, signed in April 1997, between the U.S. and Canada to reduce these toxics.
Mills: Our countries recently agreed to continue a program that is looking at monitoring atmospheric deposition of toxics. For example, over 90 percent of the PCBs in Lake Erie are coming from the atmosphere. It shows that all of that stuff is not only coming from North America, but from all over the world. The kind of mechanisms we need to eliminate PCBs from the Great Lakes will have to come from beyond the Canada/U.S. context. It will be through multinational protocols.
Q: What about the zebra mussel problem?
A: Ullrich: The non-native or exotic species are a real, real tough one. Zebra mussels are probably the most dramatic, and it is interesting the way the problems are manifest. At first they were clogging up the water intakes and messing up all sorts of things. Now they are making the water so clear that the light is penetrating deeper and promoting different biological growth. Everybody looks at the water and says, “Hey, it is getting cleaner, it must be better.” In fact, that is creating some other problems.
Q: How big an impact does greater leisure time have on the Great Lakes?
A: Ullrich: That involves habitat destruction. We’re dealing with the fact of life that there are more of us, we are more affluent, and we are growing, particularly around the urban areas. People are having more resort and vacation experiences along the Great Lakes because they are cleaner and more enjoyable, but that is putting much more pressure on critical shoreline habitat.
Q: You (Mills) were trained as a meteorologist. What are the implications for the Great Lakes of global climate change?
A: Mills: Quite dramatic. With a doubling of carbon dioxide you can look to have a lowering of lake levels of 1 to 3 meters. That is a significant difference.
The implications are tremendous for transportation, for hydroelectric generation, for the availability of municipal water systems, which might have to rebuild the infrastructure further into the lakes to get at the water.
They are indications right now, not fact. They certainly would raise some serious questions that we better take notice of this, and any preventive measures we can take now, we better do it. That speaks to the issue of how we use energy and how we use water.
Q: The Great Lakes states and provinces have been protecting the fresh water resource for some 100 years. What kind of pressures can we expect on the Great Lakes as a water resource in the coming century?
A: Ullrich: I think the Great Lakes area will continue to increase in its attractiveness because of the huge volumes of clean surface water that we have. Even though there are continuing concerns, it is a heck of a lot cleaner than other sources in the world. It is going to be extraordinarily attractive, and every once in a while, there is a little blip and it appears that somebody appears interested in selling this water off to some other part of the world or some other part of the country.
Frankly, I think that is so closely watched and so closely governed that I am quite confident the water quantity issue will be managed effectively.
But there will be continued pressure for more access to the water, particularly as large urban areas grow. The more you get out on the fringe and pump out the ground water, the more lake water becomes attractive, and we will have battles on that.
Q: From Canada’s point of view, is the United States doing enough to protect water quality?
A: Mills: From an environmentalist’s point of view, no. We want to see more action. It is also important to recognize that there are limitations to how quickly we can do some of these things. But atmosphere and water do not respect political boundaries. So the emissions that are happening south of the 49th parallel are affecting people north of it.
Q: What about the flip side of that? Is Canada doing enough, from the U.S. point of view?
A: Ullrich: There is always more that we could do and they could do. We have a system that relies quite heavily on regulatory approaches–command and control and enforcement. We think that has served us very well. We are learning how to take more voluntary, cooperative approaches. Canada has led the way in those, but I think they could perhaps emphasize the regulatory approaches a little more which would help balance things a little bit across the board. But that is kind of a cultural and societal difference.
Mills: One of the things I have found in my association with the Great Lakes is that because we occupy the same space and speak the same language and we have many of the same personal goals and aspirations, there is a desire to find that the societies are the same. There are significant differences. How we organize ourselves and set ourselves up is different. The role that the federal government plays in the U.S. is very different from the role that it has in Canada.
So the mechanisms by which we make things happen is different, and I think a recognition of that is healthy. It is why I think it is very important that we focus on common objectives and not determine the mechanisms for getting there. Let’s set those common targets, and then use our own domestic tool boxes to get there.
Q: What about successes?
A: Ullrich: Probably one of the most dramatic success stories is Lake Erie. At one point, people thought we would be walking across it because of the excessive weed and algal growth. It had tributaries that caught on fire occasionally. From that to becoming one of the best walleye fisheries in the world is just an unbelievably remarkable turnaround, and certainly in environmental and global time an incredibly short period.
There were times in Chicago there were so many dead fish on the shoreline you couldn’t work your way out to the lake to swim even if you wanted to the smell was so bad. We don’t have those kind of things happening anymore.
Mills: In the Great Lakes, we do have a reason to celebrate. It is a significant success story from an environmental point of view. But we have done some of the easy stuff, and we can’t lose diligence to make sure the efforts continue.
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An edited transcript
