SOURCE:
By Barbara O'Brien - September 30, 2022
Lake Erie rebounded after being declared dead in the 1960s because of pollution controls that were put in place in the Clean Water Act.
But today, the assessment of the ecosystem for Erie, one of the smallest of the Great Lakes, is poor. And the State of the Great Lakes Report by the U.S. and Canadian governments deems Ontario fair, but improving.
“As a community we should all be mad. We should be demanding better for our region,” said Kerrie Gallo, deputy executive director of Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper.
On the 50th anniversary this year of the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States to restore and protect the Great Lakes, the health of the Great Lakes as a whole is deemed fair and unchanging.
The health of the Great Lakes is the subject of a forum held by the United States and Canada in Niagara Falls, Ont., this week.
And yet, there have been some improvements over the past five decades. The water is drinkable and the amount of toxic chemicals has declined.
“There's good news, but it is coupled with the sobering reality that we have significant problems that linger,” said Brian Smith, associate executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “We have much more work to do. We have to keep making these investments in restoration if we want to make the lakes fully, truly drinkable, fishable and swimmable.”
While western states are facing drought, Buffalo sits on the edge of about one-fifth of the world’s water supply. The five Great Lakes have 94,250 square miles of water, 10,210 miles of shoreline and make up 84% of North America’s surface fresh water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
More than 30 million people live on the Great Lakes, including about 10% of the U.S. population.
While chemicals such as mercury and PCBs have declined in the lakes, high concentrations of nutrients, mostly from agricultural runoff, are affecting them.
“There are still significant challenges, including the impacts of nutrients, especially in Lake Erie and localized areas, and the impacts of invasive species,” the Great Lakes report states, adding, “Climate change is already exacerbating some threats.”
The report looked at the safety of drinking water; swimming and eating fish; levels of toxic chemicals; wetlands and native species; nutrients; non-native and invasive species; groundwater; and land use changes.
The report states Lake Ontario is showing improvements with fewer beach closings and a decline in concentrations of contaminants in fish. It was given good assessments for drinking water and swimming, but it got a poor assessment on invasive species. All other indicators were considered fair.
Lake Erie scored a good rating in two categories: drinking water and ground water. Swimming, consumption of fish and harmful pollutants are rated as fair.
Erie got a poor rating for supporting healthy and productive habitats to sustain native species; being free from nutrients that promote unsightly or toxic blooms; and being free from invasive species and from other substances, materials or conditions that may negatively affect the Great Lakes.
“Harmful algal blooms resulting from high concentrations of nutrients occur regularly in the western basin of Lake Erie during the summer months. These blooms can produce toxins, which are harmful to humans and wildlife,” the report said.
“These are signs,” Gallo said. “We should be paying closer attention to what is happening in the western and central basins.”
Lake Erie is rated poor and unchanging for nutrients, and both Erie and Ontario are rated poor and deteriorating for invasive species.
“That’s extremely concerning. Where do you go from poor?” Gallo said. “Do we want to be dead again? Nobody wants to be dead when it comes to Lake Erie.”
But it’s not all bad. Lake Erie supports the largest self-sustaining population of walleye in the world, according to the report, and the number of invasive adult sea lamprey is below the target.
There has been close to $5 billion of investment to the Great Lakes, said Laura Rubin, director of Healing Our Waters Great Lakes Coalition.
“That’s huge, that’s really important,” she said, adding, “not everybody has benefitted equally from those investments.”
Rubin, who is one of the presenters for the Niagara Falls forum on the Great Lakes, said the coalition wants to make sure that future investments address impacts of climate change and are directed to communities that are most affected by the climate.
There have been improvements locally, such as the cleanup of the Buffalo River, and the improvements coming to Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park that include softening the shoreline to protect the park from high lake levels and severe weather.
And there is the opportunity to build on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative – which led to the Buffalo River renaissance – with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which triples funding to the restoration initiative.
“We have a lot of opportunity, but are we going to be able to make the changes and adjustments that are needed quickly enough to mitigate this declining trend we’re seeing?” Gallo said.
“We’re truly blessed to have the Great Lakes in our backyard. I think we’ve really recognized that by making those huge investments to protect them. We have to continue, otherwise we will have wasted our time and investment,” Smith said.
