5461
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Region 5
905R80001 !
f/EPA
GREAT LAKES,
AMERICA
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Region 5, Library (PL-12J)
77 West Jackson Boulevard, 12th ftoai
Chicago. IL 60604-3590
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GREAT LAKES, AMERICA
Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, Ontario The largest
system of fresh water on Earth, these Great Lakes are
North America's glue, binding East to West, giving
strength and vitality to the American way of life.
The United States and Canada have spent millions of
dollars in recent years in an effort to keep these useful
Lakes as clean and healthy as possible — for drinking
water, recreation, sport and commercial fishing; for
industry; and for shipping of the heartland's abundance.
Despite their problems, the five Great Lakes retain a
special beauty that is unique to our continent.
This exhibition of 62 photographic images, produced by
the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes
National Program Office, )S presented as a public
testament to one of North America's premier treasures
and resources. The images are those of photoessayist
B. A. King, who grew up along Lake Ontario and spent parts
of his summers along Lake Huron.
"Great Lakes, America" opens October 22, 1980 at the
Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and will tour
for two years after that. Its purpose is to heighten
appreciation of, and concern for, a vulnerable
national treasure.
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Introduction
In 1610 young French adventurer litienne Brule" and a
group of Huron Indians paddled their canoes down a
northern wilderness river and arrived at what is now
known as Georgian Bay in Lake Huron. Brule* thus
became the first European to see any of the Great
Lakes.
At the time, the Lakes were completely unspoiled.
Although thousands of American Indians lived on their
shores and fished in them and drank from them, the
Lakes were not abused. They were respected, honored,
even worshipped.
In the several hundred years since then, the area
around the Lakes has gradually changed from that of a
quiet wilderness to a region of enormous industrial,
commercial, and agricultural development.
Although that development has helped to raise our
standards of living, it has also resulted in a proliferation
of pollutants in the Lakes' waters. Their presence has
permanently altered the Lakes and now even threatens
the health of living creatures who use the Lakes.
Slightly more than a decade ago, the public began to
take a more active interest in the state of the Great
Lakes. It was a timely concern: Many beaches and
tributary rivers and sections of the Lakes had become
polluted with everything from industrial chemicals to
human waste.
Concern about the Great Lakes grew along with a
general public interest in the state of our Nation's
deteriorating environment. Laws were passed, and State
and Federal agencies—most notably, the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—created
programs to restore our water and air quality.
The momentum begun by that public interest resulted
in a national commitment to clean up the Great Lakes.
In the past decade, more than $5 billion has been spent
on the Lakes by the Federal Government, and at least
$1 billion more has come from local governing bodies
and industries.
That attention and those expenditures have brought
an improvement in water quality: The water in the
Lakes is clearer, and there are fewer oil slicks and
growths of algae and dead fish washing up on the
beaches.
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However, hundreds of toxic chemicals, pesticides, and
metals are still fouling the fish and waters of the
Great Lakes, and some areas of each Lake remain
severely polluted. Much work remains to be done.
But as the United States moves into a new decade,
its citizens are increasingly concerned about holding
down Government expenditures This and other problems,
including energy shortages and rapid inflation, are
coming into conflict with our environmental concerns,
which require further spending by public agencies and
private companies to continue the cleanup work started
in the 1970s.
It is hoped that a balance may be reached between
the needs of our society's industrial development and
what we require of the Lakes for our own good health
and the health of our children and grandchildren. We
haven't reached that balance yet—but we're moving in
that direction.
This brochure is intended to acquaint the reader with
the crucial role of the Great Lakes as the key water
system of mid-North America. It will also explain the
different kinds of pollution problems that are still facing
the Lakes, and what the EPA is doing about them.
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Geology
The five adjoining Lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron,
Erie, and Ontario—were formed by a two-billion-year
process that included volcanic emissions, shifts in the
earth's crust, and movements by glaciers through
several ice ages The last glacial withdrawal was about
10,000 years ago.
The levels of the Lakes stabilized some 2,500 years
ago, the geologists tell us. The Great Lakes now extend
850 miles from easternmost point to westernmost point
and 700 miles from north to south, with a total water
surface area of 94,710 square miles—one-fifth of all
the fresh water on the planet Earth. Their total U.S.-
Canadian shoreline measures 9,402 miles, including
islands. Of that figure, 4,530 miles is the U.S.
shoreline—longer than the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico
coastlines combined.
Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, is 350 miles
by 160 miles. It is 1,333 feet deep at its deepest point,
with an average depth of 489 feet, and contains 2,935
cubic miles of water.
Lake Michigan, with a deepest point of 923 feet, has
an average depth of 279 feet and holds 1,180 cubic
miles of water. Huron is 750 feet deep at its deepest
point, has an average depth of 195 feet, and has 849
cubic miles of water Ontario, with a deepest point of
802 feet and an average depth of 283 feet, has 393
cubic miles of water. Erie, which looks larger than
Ontario on a map, is actually smaller: It has a maximum
depth of 210 feet, an average depth of only 62 feet, and
116 cubic miles of water
Although each of the Great Lakes has its own
separate characteristics, it's important to understand
how they all fit together into one massive, integrated
water system.
The Lakes all act as drainage for their tributary rivers,
of which there are hundreds throughout the Great
Lakes Basin, and each Lake's water moves through the
Lakes' system to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the five Lakes,
Lake Superior is the highest above sea level Its water
flows through the St. Marys River into Lake Huron.
Lake Michigan's water moves slowly into Huron, too,
through the Straits of Mackinac. Huron's water passes
through the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and the
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Detroit River into Lake Erie, and Erie's water flows into
the Niagara River and then over Niagara Falls into Lake
Ontario. Ontario, now with the water from the four
other Lakes and its own tributary rivers, rushes into the
St. Lawrence River. And from the St. Lawrence River,
all that water moves into the Gulf of St. Lawrence and
finally enters the Atlantic Ocean between Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland.
"All that water" means just that: The Great Lakes
system moves nearly 61/2 billion gallons of water
every hour into the St. Lawrence River. Yet, despite their
awesome capacity, the Lakes are fragile.
Lakes are different from rivers. If you dump garbage
into a river, the flowing water will eventually wash it
away. Flowing water, compared with standing water, is
easier to clean up.
It doesn't work that simply with lakes. If you stood on
the western shore of Lake Superior and threw in
something nonbiodegradable—say, an unopened
aluminum soft-drink can—it would take about 200 years
before that can slowly drifted through Lake Superior and
into Lake Huron. Your great-great-great-great-great-great
grandchildren, more environmentallly conscious than
you were, could pick it out of that Lake for you
But if they didn't, and assuming that the can kept
drifting, it would take another 50 to 75 years before it
found its way through Lakes Erie and Ontario into the
St. Lawrence River. If the can found its way into Lake
Michigan and floated down to Chicago and back again
to the Straits of Mackinac, that would add another 100
years to the journey.
Once in the St. Lawrence River, your soda-pop can
would no longer be a Great Lakes pollution problem.
After a relatively short ride in the river, it would then
become an Atlantic Ocean pollution problem.
What this demonstrates is that the Lakes have a long
"flushing" period. It would be as if you filled a bathtub
with water and then punched a tiny pinhole in the
bathtub drain stopper.
The Great Lakes are a very, very big water system.
But it's a finite system. There's only so much room in it
for fish, people, boats, ships, and wastes, and the
problems don't go away by being ignored. This means
that the Lakes are what we make them: clean or dirty.
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History
The first humans to see the Great Lakes were
American Indians. Dozens of tribes lived along the
Lakes hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years
before Western exploration and development pushed
them away. There were the Ojibway (also known as
Chippewa), Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menominee, Sauk,
Fox, Kickapoo, Miami, and Winnebagoes to the south
and west of the Lakes, the Erie, Seneca, Onondaga,
Mohawk, Oneida, and Cayuga to the east; and the Hurons
and Neutrals to the north of the Lakes.
All five of the Lakes were "discovered," in the
Western sense of exploration, by the French. The stage
for this was set when Jacques Cartier sailed a ship
from the Atlantic Ocean up the St. Lawrence River in
1535 to the site of the future city of Montreal, which at
the time was an Indian village called Hochelaga As
with many other explorers of the era, Cartier was
searching for a route to the Far East.
He got no farther than Hochelaga, but Cartier set an
important precedent.
During the period of the late 1500s and early 1600s,
the normal route in further exploration of the region
was to follow the St. Lawrence River to the Montreal
site; then, instead of continuing up the St. Lawrence, to
turn and journey up the Ottawa River, which feeds the
St. Lawrence from what is now Canada. That was
Huron Indian territory, and the Hurons were generally
friendly to white explorers. Looking at a map you will see
that the Ottawa is pointed roughly at Lake Huron, by
way of Lake Nipissing and the French River. It's not
surprising, then, that Lake Huron was the first of the
Lakes to be explored by white men.
In 1610 famed explore^ Samuel de Champlam sent
one of his young aides, Etienne Brule, to live and travel
with the Huron Indians. Following the above-described
route on a lengthy canoe trip, Brule eventually arrived
on the shore of what is now Georgian Bay in Lake
Huron.
Five years later Champlain decided to see the Lake
for himself and took an expedition of men there. He
returned by way of Lake Ontario, accompanied by Brule,
who acted as his interpreter with the Indians.
Champlain is often credited with the first sighting of
Ontario, although it's likely that Brule, who had by then
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spent years living with the Huron Indians, had scouted
ahead of Champlain and seen the water first.
Brule' was also the first European to see Lake
Superior, which he did around 1629, and in his
wanderings with the Hurons he may have run across
Lake Erie as well, although it's not recorded. For all his
accomplishments, the busy Brule came to an
ignominious end: He was killed in a drunken brawl in
Huron territory in 1 632, and eaten by the Indians.
Lake Michigan was discovered in 1634 by explorer
Jean Nicolet, who was sent by Champlain. After
passing through the Straits of Mackinac and crossing
Lake Michigan before landing on Green Bay
Peninsula, Nicolet is recorded as being disappointed
that he hadn't landed in China when he was met by
Winnebago Indians instead of by Chinese.
Lake Erie was the last of the Great Lakes whose
discovery was officially recorded, by Louis Joliet in
1669. Little earlier exploring had been done around this
Lake because the land near it was controlled by various
tribes of the Iroquois Nation. The Iroquois were angry at the
French because of an earlier alliance by Champlain
with the Hurons m a Huron-lroquois war. The Iroquois
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had the courage and fierceness to back up their
hostility, too, so the white settlers kept away from
them.
All of the Lake names except for Superior are Indian
names or words. Huron and Erie were named for
nearby Indian tribes, and Michigan and Ontario mean
"great water" and "beautiful lake," respectively.
Superior was named "Superieur" by the French and
simply meant "upper lake," although the Indian name—
Gitchi Gummi, meaning "great water"— is more
appropriate for this largest of the Great Lakes.
Throughout the 1600s the French continued trading
and exploring with the Indians. Detroit was founded in
1701 as Fort Pontchartrain, and Fort Toronto was
constructed in 1749. But the French ceded all their
North American territory to the British as a result of
defeats in the 1754-1763 French and Indian Wars. The
British did not treat the Indians as well as the French
had, and a great chief named Pontiac led a massive
revolt against the British in 1763. This further
discouraged white settlement in the southern portions
of the Great Lakes system. It was not until
Revolutionary War hero Anthony Wayne defeated the
Iroquois, in the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers near Lake
Erie, that whites were able to settle safely in the lower
Lakes region.
Although the American colonists had acquired Detroit
and Niagara during the Revolutionary War, the British
isolated those cities from the growing development of
the region with their superior naval power on the
Lakes. That contributed to the start of the War of 1812,
during which naval battles were fought on Lakes Erie,
Huron, and Ontario, as well as land battles on the Lake
shores and on the Atlantic Seaboard. After several
inconsequential skirmishes, the Americans finally made
some significant land gains in the Great Lakes region
after a major defeat of a fleet of British warships by
Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the Battle of Lake
Erie, on Sept. 10, 1813. Perry's victory came despite
the near-sinking of his own flagship. "We have met the
enemy and they are ours," read his concise dispatch—
scribbled on the back of an envelope—to Gen. William
Henry Harrison.
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Commercial Development
Commercial development along the Lakes began in
earnest during the 1800s, as the white settlers'
population increased. Millions of acres of land were
cleared for farming. The lumber industry had thousands
of square miles of raw material in the forests of the
upper Lakes. Commercial fishing began, with a plentiful
supply of lake whitefish, trout, perch, and other species.
In 1839 Fort Dearborn on Lake Michigan was
incorporated as the city of Chicago, and it became a
major jumping-off point for further western exploration.
The Erie Canal, constructed to take shipping from New
York to Ohio, increased immigration and development.
The Illinois-Michigan Canal (later replaced by the Illinois
Waterway), linking Lake Michigan to the Illinois and
Mississippi Rivers, did the same for the Chicago area.
All of this development continued unchecked into the
20th century. The Lakes, already a tremendously
important means of transportation within North
America, took on greater significance in 1959 with the
completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The Seaway
made it possible for ships to travel from Lake Ontario—
until then the easternmost end of the Great Lakes
system—into the St. Lawrence River and the Atlantic
Ocean. Chicago, Detroit, and other cities that started
hundreds of years ago as wilderness outposts are now
world ports. The Seaway made it possible for ocean-
going vessels from around the world to enter the
Great Lakes system,and for ships from Great Lakes
ports to carry their goods into the open sea and to
nations everywhere. And in a fuel-conscious economy,
Great Lakes-rail combination shipping within the
United States is increasing
Thousands of cargo ships now travel through the
Lakes, carrying hundreds of millions of tons of freight a
year. Besides the nickel, copper, aluminum, bauxite,
and magnesium that are mined in the Great Lakes
region, 80 percent of the Nation's iron ore comes just
from the Lake Superior area. It's sent to steel mills in
Chicago and Gary and Cleveland, which produce more
than one-third of all U.S. steel; to Toronto, whose mills
make a majority of Canadian steel; and to mills
elsewhere in the region. Steel from U. S. mills is then
shipped to Detroit automakers, who in turn make
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two-thirds of all U.S. cars, and to appliance
manufacturers around the country. Twenty-five percent
of chemical companies in the U. S. are now located in the
Great Lakes region, and one-fourth of the Nation's
paper products come from manufacturers near western
Lake Michigan alone.
One-fifth of U. S. industry is now located on the
Great Lakes. Hundreds of industries and power plants take
billions of gallons of water daily from the five Lakes for
such uses as recycling waste discharges and cooling
their equipment and products
All these facts and figures may be surprising to those
who think of the Lakes mainly as recreational
playgrounds—although recreation is indeed a major use
of the Lakes. In Chicago alone, 20 million visits each
summer are paid to the city's beaches on Lake
Michigan. The Great Lakes shorelines collectively have
370 miles of public beaches and 1,220 miles of private
recreational areas. More than one million privately
owned small boats use the Lakes. Recreational uses of
the Lakes are constantly increasing: More people are
swimming, playing, water-skiing, and sport fishing in
them and camping and hiking alongside them.
Sport fishing alone is a major component of
recreation on the Lakes—it generates hundreds of
millions of dollars a year in the form of licenses sold,
sale of equipment, and related recreational expenses.
Just in Michigan—and only in its 18 counties that
border the Great Lakes—380,000 sport fishermen are
licensed. But sport fishing has been particularly hurt by
pollution in recent years, because pollution of the
Lakes directly affects the health of the fish in them.
Individual States have established warning systems on
the dangers of eating fish contaminated with toxic
chemicals.
Besides shipping, industry, and recreation,
commercial fishing remains a fourth significant use of
the Great Lakes. Although negatively affected in recent
years, along with sport fishing, by polluted water and
contaminated fish, enough commercial fishing firms
remain in existence to bring in $25 million a year
in revenues.
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Agriculture is another major use of the Great Lakes.
Of the 201,000 square miles in the Great Lakes Basin,
67,000 square miles is agricultural land, and 151
million gallons of water a day are taken out of the five
Lakes to irrigate that land. The end product of that
irrigation—millions of tons of wheat, corn, soybeans,
barley, and oats—is shipped from U.S. and Canadian
Great Lakes ports to nations overseas.
The final and perhaps most critical major use of the
Great Lakes is as a supply of drinking and washing
water. Nearly 24 million Americans, out of 44 million in
the Lakes' Basin, take billions of gallons of water a day
from the Lakes for their personal use.
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The Price We've Paid
There has been a price to pay for this ascension to
national prominence in commerce and industry. The
original environment of the Great Lakes system has
been permanently changed; the Lakes have become
polluted.
The first pollution of the Great Lakes isn't recorded,
although the United States and Canada were
sufficiently concerned about it in 1909 to sign the
Boundary Waters Treaty, in which each pledged not to
do anything to harm the Lakes. The agreement
established the International Joint Commission, with
members from both countries, to identify Great Lakes
pollution problems.
Despite the existence of the Treaty, industries and
municipalities in both countries contributed to the
deteriorating environmental conditions that existed in
the Lakes by the 1960s.
In response to the environmental movement, which
began around then, the Canadian and U.S.
Governments each held a number of local conferences
before jointly reaffirming their good intentions about the
five Great Lakes in the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality
Agreement, which was amended and again signed in
1978. This agreement set water quality objectives that
range from acidity of the Lakes' waters to levels of
mercury, pesticides, and other toxic substances.
Canada's federal agency. Environment Canada, and
the Ministry of the Environment of Ontario Province,
which borders all the Lakes except Lake Michigan,
handle Canada's responsibilities under the Agreement.
The U.S. EPA and its Great Lakes National Program
Office (GLNPO), as well as the pollution-control
agencies of the eight States on the Great Lakes, have
the job of carrying out the U.S. end of the Agreement.
The Agreement includes studying and carrying out
new pollution-control methods, awarding grant money
to State and local agencies to help pay for pollution-
control efforts, and taking legal action against
persistent polluters. On a more basic level, it also
includes monitoring the Lakes.
With its own researchers and subcontractors such as
State environmental agencies and universities with
Great Lakes research facilities, GLNPO studies water
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quality in five ways: by taking samples from the open
waters of the Great Lakes, studying samples of fish
taken from the Lakes, testing water from rivers to see
what's being dumped into them and thus into the
Lakes, testing river and Lake sediment, and taking air
samples to measure the pollutants settling into the Lakes
from the atmosphere
The task of monitoring water quality should not be
lightly regarded; the Lakes' pollution problems are highly
complex. Approximately 400 toxic chemicals have been
found in the Lakes, and there may be more. The effect
of these substances on humans and other living beings
requires sophisticated and lengthy scientific study.
Essentially, however, all of these pollutants are doing
one of two things: They're either accelerating the aging
process of the Lakes, or they're poisoning the water and
the fish. In both cases the end result is the same. The
various forms of life in the Great Lakes ecosystem-
humans, birds, and other animals—can get sick with a
variety of illnesses ranging from minor disorders to
cancer, either by using contaminated water or eating
contaminated fish.
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Types of Pollution
The remainder of this brochure will present
information on three general categories of substances
that are polluting the Lakes. Here's a description of
each problem.
NUTRIENTS. The excessive dumping of nutrients,
mainly phosphorus, into the Lakes causes a speeding
up of the Lakes' aging process, which is called
eutrophication. The nutrients act like a fertilizer for
algae and other aquatic plants, and they grow rapidly,
especially a blue-green algae called Cladophora. Such
overgrowth of plant life in the water reduces the
amount of oxygen available for fish and other living
organisms.
Advanced eutrophication causes a general
deterioration in water quality, and that directly affects
the water supply of the 24 million Americans who get
their drinking water from the Lakes.
Eutrophication is controlled by reducing phosphorus
in treated sewage that is released into the Lakes
(human waste and household detergents are major
sources of phosphorus). Most Great Lakes States have
banned the use of high-phosphate detergents and have
installed special phosphorus-removal equipment at
sewage treatment plants in order to reach the U.S.-
Canada Water Quality Agreement allowable level of one
part of phosphorus per million parts of sewage effluent.
At this level, the three upper Lakes generally can tolerate
the effects of pollutants they receive in wastewater
It is less certain whether the 1 part-per-milhon level
will adequately protect the lower Lakes, Erie and Ontario.
Control of phosphorus from land runoff is receiving
increasing attention, particularly in the lower Lakes
Except for localized problems in Lake Michigan's
Green Bay and Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay, the three
largest of the Great Lakes—Superior, Michigan, and
Huron—are able to assimilate thousands of tons of
phosphorus each year without reductions in overall
water quality.
Ontario has some eutrophication and water
deterioration because of the inability of cities such as
Buffalo, N Y , and Hamilton, Ont to reach the international
standard in their sewage treatment. Lake Erie has the
worst eutrophication problem among the five Lakes. In
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1978 Erie received more than 36,000 pounds of
phosphorus a day from all sources, with a good chunk of
that coming from the City of Detroit, whose massive
sewage treatment plant has had extreme difficulty in
meeting the international phosphor us standard Cleveland
is another major problem source
TOXIC ORGANICS. There are two main sources of
toxic organic pollutants: pesticides and industrial
wastes.
Pesticides have been used in the Great Lakes Basin
for more than 50 years. The earliest pesticides, no
longer in use, were arsenic-based. These early
compounds have become bound to soil particles in
abandoned orchards and may contribute to potential
contamination of the Great Lakes' waters if there is soil
runoff.
The chemical industry developed increasingly complex
pesticides after World War II. Some of these
organochlorine-type chemicals included DDT, aldrm,dieldrm,
chlordane, mirex, and heptachlor. Later investigations
showed that all of these are suspected of causing
cancer; some have been shown to cause reproductive
disorders if ingested, as through contaminated food.
After a process of EPA investigation and research,
many organochlorine-type pesticides were either
banned or their use was severely restricted. The
public's rising concern about pesticides, which had
begun with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring—a book about the effects of pesticides in
nature—helped encourage this research.
But, because they don't break down easily in the
environment, DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, and
heptachlor are still found in all five of the Great Lakes.
Mirex is a problem localized in Lake Ontario and the
Niagara River. (Unlike the other compounds, mirex was
released directly into the water from a chemical
company's wastes. The other pesticides were washed
into the Lakes from agricultural lands.)
One of EPA's main tasks now is to sample sediments
and fish throughout the Great Lakes and test for the
presence of pesticides. Levels of DDT—which were so high
in the early 1 970sthat a ban on commercial fishing in Lake
Michigan was imposed—have since fallen and now are
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within safe levels Dieldrm and mirex are still found at
levels that are of concern in the Lakes
Among industrial chemical wastes, much of the
EPA's concern is currently directed to one compound in
particular: PCBs
PCBs stands for polychlorinated biphenyls, which are
chemical substances—usually liquids in oil form—that
are used in electrical equipment, heat transfer fluids,
lubricants, plastics, and many other products. PCBs are
resistant to fire and water and can withstand
temperatures of up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit. That
means they are hard to get rid of; you can't get rid of them
permanently just by throwing them in the garbage,
flushing them down a sewer, or even burning them at
customary temperatures.
But until the late 1960s many companies had done
just that. And, because PCBs are a stable compound,
they weren't disintegrating (as some chemicals do).
Instead, they were being carried through sewage systems
or through the air from incinerator chimneys to that ever-
handy end of the line for waste disposal: the waters of
the Great Lakes.
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Once in the Lake water, PCBs bioaccumulate,
which means they store up in the systems of living
organisms. As fish pass water over their gills or eat
PCB-contaminated phytoplankton and zooplankton, the
PCBs enter their fatty tissues and stay there When
bigger fish eat smaller fish, they add new PCBs to the
ones already in their own tissues. The PCBs thus
move up through the food chain in increasing
proportions until they wind up in the creatures who
created PCBs in the first place: humans. In large
enough quantities, PCBs can cause various illnesses:
eye disorders, skin lesions, gastrointestinal problems,
jaundice, edema, and birth abnormalities.
After scientific testing had established the danger of
PCBs to humans, the 1976 Toxic Substances Control
Act called for a phaseout of the compound. In 1977
Monsanto Corp., the sole U.S manufacturer of PCBs,
stopped all production. An EPA ban on the production
and new use of the compound went into effect in 1979.
However, many of the earlier-manufacturered PCB
compounds are still around.
The EPA ban on PCBs and the resulting decline of
PCB use in industry has been reflected in fish samples
in the Great Lakes: PCB levels are coming down.
However, PCBs are still found in all five of the Great
Lakes and will be for many years, because of the
persistence of those millions of pounds of the
compound that were previously discharged into
wastewater or from smokestacks, and because of all the
PCB-contaming products that remain in use. Lake
Michigan faces the biggest PCB cleanup, due to a
combination of heavy industry on its shorelines and
its slow flushing period. EPA scientists are now
developing techniques to dredge or remove existing
PCBs from the Lakes and from Lake sediment without
releasing the PCBs into open water or into the
environment.
Besides PCBs, a variety of other industrial chemical
wastes is polluting some or all of the Great Lakes.
Additional EPA testing has shown that phenols, a steel mill
and petroleum and paper processing by-product,
hexachlorobenzene (HCBs), and polybrommated biphenyls
(PBBs)—more industrial by-products—can cause
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illnesses including nervous disorders. Phenols are
found in all five Great Lakes, HCBs are most noticeable
in Lakes Erie and Michigan, and PBBs have been found
in tributaries of Lake Huron and at the Canadian port
of Cobourg, on Lake Ontario.
But that only scratches the surface of the problem.
There are currently at least 40,000 chemicals used by
U. S. industry, with another 1,000 introduced every
year. EPA's research facilities, including its national
water quality laboratories in Duluth, Minn., and
Grosse lie, Mich., have been testing suspected toxic
substances. But just as the chemicals of industry are
increasingly complex, the testing is even more
complicated. For example, one mixture of chemicals
known as the pesticide toxaphene changes its
characteristics after it has been in the environment for a
short time The interactive effects of combinations of
chemical wastes are also just being explored.
In fact, there are so many compounds whose toxicity
isn't yet known that it will require an indefinite amount
of time for EPA to test them all. Thus, EPA must
rely on special reports from chemical firms—as required
by the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)—
that explain the potential harmful effects of new
chemical compounds. By requiring testing and analysis
prior to commercial use, TSCA is EPA's mam tool for
regulating the production of new chemicals.
TOXIC METALS. The use of heavy metals by industries
has resulted in the release of mercury, lead, cadmium, and
other toxic metals into industrial wastewater. Mercury is
the most worrisome mtermsof threatening human health,
since a natural process in water called methylation can
transform inorganic mercury in Lake sediment into a very
potent human nerve poison known as methyl mercury.
Fifteen years ago, after the families of some Japanese
fishermen had inadvertently eaten mercury-contaminated
fish, grave neurological illnesses including brain damage
and paralysis were reported, and mothers gave birth to
retarded children.
High levels of mercury have been found in the
sediment and fish of Lakes Erie, Ontario, and
St. Clair, which flows from Lake Huron into Lake Erie.
A ban on fishing in Lakes St. Clair and Erie was
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required in the early 1 970s because of the high
proportion of mercury in fish there. Although the
plant discharging mercury into Lake St. Clair was
closed at that time, mercury is still being washed from
Lake St. Clair sediment into Lake Erie.
Lead, which can cause brain damage, is not found in
the Great Lakes to the degree that mercury is—but less
is known about its exact levels of toxicity in humans, or
its ability to be converted to more toxic forms in the
environment. Cadmium, which can cause kidney
damage and metabolic disturbances, is also being
studied for its toxicity levels.
Other elements have also been identified in
the Lakes and are being studied for possible adverse
health and environmental effects' arsenic, iron,
selenium, copper, zinc, chromium, and vanadium
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Working on Solutions
Nutrients, toxic organics, and toxic metals—these are
the three categories of pollutants that are affecting the
Great Lakes.
These pollutants can get into the Lakes two ways:
from specific factory wastewater discharges or
municipal sewage plants, which are called point
sources; or from unspecified areas, such as the runoff
from agricultural land or urban streets, or from the rain or
air, all of which are called nonpoint sources. Nonpoint-
source pollution is considered one of the toughest
environmental problems remaining for the United
States and the world.
An example of nonpoint-source pollution is the lead
that is entering the Great Lakes at the rate of several
hundred tons a year. Almost all of this lead originates
in automobile exhausts and then enters the air as tiny
lead particles and vapors—where it remains until it
falls or is washed down by ram Urban streets, where
auto use is concentrated, also contribute substantial
amounts of auto-generated lead through storm runoff.
Acid rain is a well-known nonpoint-source pollutant,
although it doesn't particularly affect the Great Lakes
because of their large volume and chemical nature. In
smaller lakes, however, it can kill off aquatic life by
making water too acidic for fish and their food sources.
Acid rain results from the combination of sulfur oxides,
mainly from coal-burning factories and power plants,
and nitrogen oxides from automobiles, with rain, snow,
or sleet.
Another example of nonpoint-source pollution is the
air deposition of PCBs into the Great Lakes. The
sources of this pollution are thought to be combustion
in private or municipal incinerators, as well as PCB
vapor from transformers and old disposal areas. The
PCBs enter the air as vapor and microscopic particles
from smokestacks. It's estimated that more than half of
all PCBs in the Great Lakes originate from such
nonpoint sources.
One more example is agricultural runoff. Rain can
wash farm soil containing fertilizers or pesticides into a
creek or river, which then flows into one of the Great
Lakes. This is also considered a major method by which
phosphorus and heavy metals enter the Lakes.
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CONTROLLING POINT-SOURCE POLLUTION.
Controlling point-source wastes has been more
successful than controlling nonpoint-source wastes,
partly because the sources are more easily identifiable
and partly because a major effort has been under way
for years.
Under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination
System (NPDES), called for in the Federal Clean Water
Act, every industry or municipality that uses the Lakes
or their tributary rivers as an outlet for sewage or
wastewater must first obtain a permit from either the
EPA or the appropriate State agency. The permit is
issued contingent on the city's or company's ability to
meet clean-water standards and industrial-effluent
guidelines. The permit also requires periodic reports by
the discharger on just what it is releasing into the river
or Lake or public sewage system.
As called for in amendments to the Clean Water Act,
EPA is currently conducting a revision of industrial
permits, placing further specific limitations on the
amounts of organic chemicals and metals that can be
released into the Lakes. For those companies that
release their wastes into public sewage systems, a
pretreatment program is being implemented in all
States It will also require reductions in chemical and
metal wastes generated by individual companies
If the cost of installing new pollution-control
equipment is a problem, companies may be eligible
for various types of financial assistance that include
State bonds, Federal tax incentives, or loans from the
Federal Government. Cities are eligible for grants
under a special Clean Water Act program.
For example, EPA has helped to fund the cost of
constructing new sewage treatment facilities to
help cities meet the U S.-Canada phosphorus
standard In Detroit alone this has amounted to
more than $300 million in grants at the city's
giant sewage treatment plant. Nationally, such
EPA grants number in the thousands and have cost
billions of dollars They've become a crucial part of the
process of reducing phosphorus loads, because
most cities are unable to pay for new treatment plants
on their own.
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The Great Lakes National Program Office monitors
the Lakes to determine how effective these efforts are
in controlling phosphorus and other pollutants, and
whether more controls are needed.
The NPDES permits provide the basis for legal
action against those users of the Lakes who have
refused to clean up their wastes. If monitoring of water
samples by EPA determines that a permit holder is
releasing more pollutants into its wastewater than is
allowed, a series of actions begins that could eventually
lead to a lawsuit: notification of the appropriate State
agency by EPA, with a request that the State resolve
the problem; a Notice of Violation issued by EPA to the
violator if the first step doesn't work; and, finally,
turning the matter over to the U.S Department of
Justice for prosecution.
The vast majority of pollution cases never get this far
In fact, more than three-fourths of all U.S. industries
and three-fifths of all U S. cities are now completely
meeting their NPDES permits for discharging minimal
pollution into the Great Lakes In Canada, half of all
industries and nearly all municipalities are meeting
their abatement requirements Most of those not in
compliance are installing special equipment to bring
wastewater and discharges to within acceptable limits.
Of cases that have resulted in lawsuits, some
significant victories have been won in the last few
years-
•United States Steel Corp. was fined $4 million for
its failure to clean up the wastewater at its Gary, Ind ,
plant and later was fined $25,000 when it fell behind
schedule in finishing a treatment facility there.
• Scott Paper Co of Oconto Falls, Wise , was
fined $1 million for noncompliance with its NPDES
permit.
•The City of Detroit was sued and put under court
supervision for its failure to construct treatment
facilities in a timely fashion for its sewage effluent.
•American Can of Canada Ltd. in Marathon, Ont,
was fined more than $100,000 for a series of violations
in its wastewater treatment.
•Three former officers of Olm Corporation in Niagara
Falls, N Y , were tried and convicted of falsifying an
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NPDES report on the content of the firm's discharges.
All three received $2,000 fines and suspended jail
sentences. The company was fined $70,000.
•A $3 million penalty was levied against United
States Steel Corp. for air and water pollution violations
at its Lorain, Ohio, plant. The company was allowed to
credit the fine to pollution-control equipment purchases.
• EPA, the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and
Michigan, and several citizens' groups joined in a lawsuit
against Reserve Mining Company of Silver Bay,
Minn., which was dumping taconite filings
containing asbestos particles into western Lake
Superior—the worst pollution yet known in this
cleanest and largest of the Great Lakes. The asbestos-
like particles in the taconite, suspected of causing
cancer, were getting into local water supplies. After 10
years and millions of dollars spent by both sides
on litigation, a court ruledthat ReserveMming must dump
its taconite wastes in a landfill, which it is now doing
•Other significant lawsuits include an ongoing suit
against outboard Marine Corp. of Waukegan, III., to
clean up the PCBs it had previously released into the
sediment of Waukegan Harbor on Lake Michigan, and a
suit against the city of Gary, Ind., for incomplete
treatment of its sewage.
CONTROLLING NONPOINT-SOURCE POLLUTION.
You can't put a scrubber on a cornfield, or on the
wind. But progress has begun in the treatment of
nonpomt-source pollution.
A $1.8 million grant from the Great Lakes National
Program Office funded the first agricultural nonpomt-
source control project, at Black Creek in eastern Indiana
Pollutant-laden sedimet from the Black Creek Basin was
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being eroded heavily into the Maumee River, which in
turn flows into Lake Erie. Although the work was done in the
mid-1 970s, the project is still one of the best of its kind for
showing the impact of agricultural practices on water
quality.
The project's purpose was to test farming methods
that would reduce soil erosion and then communicate
test results to farmers. The tests showed that erosion
could be minimized with techniques such as reducing the
frequency of tilling soil, plowing with implements that
only break the soil for seeding and don't turn it over,
and leaving crop residue on the ground.
The Great Lakes National Program Office has used much
of its demonstration grant money to fund nonpomt-source
pollution-control projects. Morethan $3 million wenttothe
Red Clay Project in a five-county area of the western Lake
Superior Basin That area was suffering heavy erosion
and deteriorating water quality from the red clay that is
characteristic of the region. Federal and local officials
established special programs that included increased
livestock control, so that animal waste wouldn't get into
streams, and construction of earthen dams that slowed
stream velocity, reduced erosion, and captured
sediment. There, too, educational programs on soil
tillage techniques were presented to local farmers.
A $1.5 million grant from GLNPO paid for an urban
drainage study in the city of Rochester, N Y. In
order to prevent sewer overflows, officials developed a
special, porous pavement that allows water to filter into
the ground rather than run into sewers and carry
pollutants to the river. Other techniques tried in this
study included the increase of street sweeping and
alteration of sewer construction so that fewer pollutants
were washed into the sewers and more water was held
in the system.
Although Federal grant money has helped to start the
research, nonpoint-source pollution control is still in its
infancy. Major problems yet to be resolved include
controlling leaking chemical wastes from hazardous
dump sites, better control of sources of airborne
chemicals such as PCBs and elements such as lead,
and more thorough techniques in farmland erosion
control. And all of these studies will cost money.
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Stunmary
The environmental movement has changed since it
first began so earnestly in the late 1960s—it has
become institutionalized. Government agencies at the
local, State, and Federal levels have been created and
charged with the function of enforcing new laws that
protect the environment. Environmental agencies in the
eight States and one Canadian province bordering the
Lakes, hundreds of municipalities in those States, and a
dozen Federal agencies in addition to EPA—all have at
least some responsibilities in helping clean up the
Lakes.
The Lakes are huge, and their problems are huge as
well. To divide those problems into workable
responsibilities for all those different agencies requires
energy and time. And money.
More money. There have been several references to
money in this brochure, money for water sampling,
money for research, money for grants for municipal
sewage treatment, money for nonpoint-source
pollution-control projects, and money for industrial
bonds and loans.
The bottom line, of course, is that the taxpayers have
to pay that bill. Even cleanup projects funded totally by
private industry simply come back to individual citizens
in the form of higher prices for products from that
industry
But, as it was suggested at the beginning of this
brochure, citizens of the United States are increasingly
concerned about holding down Government
expenditures, not to mention their own expenses. As
individuals and as a Nation, we may have to make
choices about how much more environmental cleaning
up we can afford, or how much more development our
environment can tolerate.
Our environment has changed Just as the Indians
were a part of the Great Lakes ecosystem in the days of
Etienne Brule, modern human development along the
Lakes and the Lakes themselves are part of the
same ecosystem, too. And the health of the whole
ecosystem is affected by each of its parts.
The Great Lakes ecosystem is still being studied.
After the considerable Lakes cleanup effort of the
1970s—the permit program, the grants programs, Lake
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monitoring—a major EPA emphasis in the 1980s is
toward more investigations: into the increasingly
complicated toxic chemicals of private industry, into
the discovery and cataloguing of new pollutants, into
the design of new control mechanisms EPA
must examine and understand the responses of living
creatures to toxic materials, the sources of toxics and
just how harmful they are, at what levels they exist in
nature, how they accumulate, and the effect of multiple
toxics. This is increasingly esoteric work.
And, as scientific investigations become more
sophisticated and complex, they move away from the
public's understanding of pollution and pollution
control. Fifteen years ago, nearly everyone was
sympathetic to and involved with the issue of banning
DDT—but since then we have been plagued with PCBs,
PBBs, HCBs. How many alphabet-soup problems can
people be expected to decipher before turning off the
whole subject?
While technology is becoming more complex, the
pollutants harder to see, and their names harder to
pronounce, the central issue remains the same We must
balance our use of the Lakes and their tributaries with the
need to protect their quality To do this, we need
organizations to identify new contaminants, monitor
quality, and control Lake uses, especially for waste
disposal But above all, protection of the Lakes requires
public support from informed and concerned citizens.
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I I ^W'"—T^eiS? -
Bjr^SJK M • Jp' * • *^"
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1 Sun passes daily over the world's greatest
freshwater resource, the Great Lakes
2 Text
3 A snow-fed capillary of Lake Superior
4 Swift rivers deepen gorges originally dug by
ice-age glaciers in the Great Lakes Basin
5. Winter rapids near Hancock, Michigan
6 The Genesee River falls, suddenly, on its way
to Lake Ontario through New York
7 Icy surf has pounded White Fish Point,
Michigan since the Lakes were formed
8 Prevailing winds forced these pines to grow
stooped on a Georgian Bayisland, Lake Huron
9 Water erosion sculpted the rocky formations
giving name to Flower Pot Island near
Tobermory, Ontario
10 Constant winds send sands creeping over
trees at the Indiana Dunes
11 Visitors climb Sleeping Bear Dunes on the
Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan
12 Sun-pierced calm on Old Woman Bay near
Wawa, Ontario
13 Text
14 Cutting a wake on Lake Erie
15 Basking on a Lake Michigan shore
16 Riding in the surf of Lake Huron
17 Looking over Lake Superior from Grand
Sable Dunes
18 Sporting canoeists on Lake Ontario
19 Playing on the shore of Lake Ontario near
Oswego, New York
20 Gaming on a winter pond near Toronto,
Ontario
21 Landing geese on their way through New York
22 Visiting Point Pelee Bird Sanctuary, Lake
Erie,
23 Pondering a tourist scene near Pomte Au
Banl, Lake Huron
24 Bathing on the Georgian Bay, Lake Huron
25 Ascending Scarborough Bluffs on Lake
Ontario
26 Mackmac Bridge arches over the juncture of
of Lakes Huron and Michigan
27 On the St Lawrence River, connecting
America's inland seas with worldwide ocean
commerce
28 Breaking free of ice in the St Marys River
near Sault Samte Marie
29 A familiar cityscape at the center of the Great
Lakes megalopolis Chicago
32
30, A country church in Michigan, near Lake
Superior
31 Once-grand boathouse at Thousand Islands,
New York
32 Real estate promotion in Great Lakes
vacationtand
33 King Island, a private domain in Georgian Bay
34. A lighthouse perches on a point of Lake Huron
35 Scarborough Bluffs shield Toronto from Lake
Ontario
36 The industrial belt south of Lake Michigan
37 Over Gary, Indiana's refineries
38 Cargo transits the Soo Locks daily, at Sault
Samte Marie
39 Portrait of a woman near Ene,v Pennsylvania
40 An oil pump on the lower peninsula of
Michigan
41 One of the plants bringing power to the Lakes
42 Text
43 A fisherman guides his boat through the
Straits of Mackmac
44 Portrait of a Manitohan Island fisherman.
Lake Huron
45 A Lake Ontario waterman makes his point
46 Fishing boat returning to Door Peninsula,
Wisconsin
47 Part of the catch
48 Near Gary, Indiana
49 Near Rochester, New York
50 Near Lake Huron
51 Near Cleveland, Ohio
52 The bare essentials, along Lake Michigan
53. Conference on the shore of Lake Erie
54 Text
55. A landscape near Lake Huron
56 Northern Illinois farmlands
57 A farm near Kingston on Lake Ontario
58 A Door County farmer with his corn
59 A rural scene off Lake Ontario
60 A farmer waits for help
61 Portrait of Rodney Monague, an O|ibway
chief, Christian Island, Lake Huron
62 In the home of an Ojibway elder
63 An Ojibway Indian girl
64 An Ojibway mother and son
65 A milkweed sheds its seed to sprout again
along the Great Lakes
66 Credit text
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Region 5, Library (Pt,-l2J)
71 West Jackson Boulevard, 12th Floor
Cfiicago, II 60604-3590
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U S EPA, 5/Design Graphic Arts/1980
U.S GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1980 — 750-201
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