Back to the Dark Past for the Great Lakes? by Ken Westcar


Photo: www.free-picture.net


I made my first ever visit to Canada in the late 1960’s.


My hosts lived in Grimsby Ontario in a nice house surrounded by orchards bordering the Lake Ontario shoreline. “It’s just a dirty old lake”, they said, dismis- sively. The thought never really registered as I was more interested in artifacts of their apparent prosperity. But, they were right. The decades leading up to


the 1970s saw the Great Lakes being used as a sewer. Stories of rivers catching fire, would-be bathers being banned from swimming, deformed birds laying soft- shell eggs, acid rain and fish laden with persistent toxic compounds made it clear the lakes were in se- rious trouble. In retrospect it was not much different from other western countries that had experienced unbridled post-war industrialisation and the growth of consumerism. There was little awareness of environ- mental pollution and despoilment in the era of disco dancing and muscle cars.


The tide turns Increasing prosperity of those living in the Great Lakes basin allowed people and governments to devel-


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op greater environmental and social conscience. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was born of this in 1970. It spawned one of the greatest environmental cleanups ever. It was bi-national effort and eliminated or severely constrained human-induced pollutants en- tering the lakes ecosystem. Although toxic hotspots persisted, many of the more alarming symptoms of degradation faded as legislation and social responsibil- ity took hold and water quality improved. For the past twenty years or so all seemed well. Recent events have brutally dashed this apparent


complacency. Water levels, predicted to decline over the long-term, affect commercial shipping and annoy waterfront cottage owners. New invasive species such as Asian carp pose a potential ecological threat. Algal blooms and dead zones occur in western Lake Erie and the cormorant and Canada goose scourge lays waste to vegetation and fish stocks. These are physical mani- festations of renewed trouble for the Great Lakes and other bodies of fresh water. But more subtle ones are being anticipated by concerned people and organisa- tions. They will pit commerce against conservation and


May 2014


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