Can the Great Lakes Survive?

Finding the Future - Innovations in Land Use and Sustainability

When the gales of early winter whip up the waters of the Great Lakes, rock formations and sand beaches take a beating and often give way to the force of these majestic water bodies. We’ve seen recent headlines announcing the fall of the “sea stack” on Minnesota’s north shore as a winter storm reduced this often photographed landmark to a pile of rocks below the waves. Similarly, lakeshore flood warnings have become common in places like Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago as they deal with record water levels on Lake Michigan.

Just beneath the surface lies a more insidious threat to the life of the Great Lakes which was largely created as a result of shipping and commercial fishing over many decades. Dan Egan, a news reporter and author has been covering the great lakes as “his beat” for almost 20 years. He is the author of The Death and Life of the Great Lakes. As Egan notes in his book, these threats affect more than 20 percent of all the freshwater in the world which is contained within the five great lakes.

For anyone who grew up on or near one of the Great Lakes, it’s hard to imagine life without the majestic blue expanse of these beautiful water bodies. Lake Michigan contains miles of sand beaches that rival the coast of Florida. Lake Superior holds vast amounts of wilderness on both sides of the border with Canada. Even Lake Erie has made a remarkable come back from the days when the tributary Cuyahoga River famously caught fire in 1969. In a bit of irony, the fire helped give a boost to passage of the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Egan’s book recounts the early days of commercial fishing, the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the invasive species that were unleashed with the dumping of ballast water from ocean going vessels. According to Egan, “Zebra mussels have gobbled up the plankton so critical to the food chain in Lake Michigan, resulting in a crash of many of the species of fish that have supplied stores and restaurants along the lake for decades.”