One way to keep an arm’s length from the vapid Earth Day sales pitches, TV ads and junk mail circulating this month is to remember that the Great Lakes not only had a role in the creation of that event – but, more importantly, a role in the advent and continued
development of the modern environmental era.
Few natural resources can compete with the lakes and the 6 quadrillion gallons of fresh water they hold, enough to submerge the continental United States in five feet of water. With 20 percent of Earth’s fresh surface water and 40 million U.S. and Canadian residents living within their basin, they collectively serve as one of the planet’s greatest living laboratories.
An evolving experiment
The way we treat them is, indeed, an unprecedented, evolving experiment in how humans interact with nature. Consider that the Great Lakes region’s largest population is the heavily industrialized area between Detroit and Cleveland. The way we develop and use that shoreline, plus all of the tributaries flowing into western Lake Erie, leaves a huge human footprint on what just also happens to be the warmest, shallowest and most ecologically fickle part of the lakes.
No wonder many of the nation’s sewage regulations and laws governing what industries are allowed to discharge into water grew out of controls first tried in the Great Lakes region. The landmark Clean Water Act of 1972 is rooted, at least in part, out of concern for the Great Lakes.
So, obviously, is the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement signed that same year by former President Richard Nixon and former Premier Pierre Trudeau. Although it
is in the process of receiving its first substantial facelift since 1987, the latter agreement is one that continues to serve as a model of international cooperation on environmental issues.
Living laboratories
The lakes serve as a living laboratory when strengthening other landmark laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Makes sense. What falls from the sky has long been overlooked as a source of water pollution.
The lakes also boast some of North America’s most diverse wildlife, with their abundance of water and globally rare habitat. The latest success story is the recovery of gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this month announced plans to remove them from the federal endangered and threatened wildlife list now that more than 4,000 wolves populate Minnesota (2,922), Wisconsin (690) and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (557). Comments on the plan to delist gray wolves are being taken through June.
The Great Lakes also are now one of the most studied sites for climate change, with the lakes again serving as a barometer for what could be in store elsewhere. Our interaction with land, air and water in this region is a fascinating experiment, if you think about it. The Industrial Revolution took hold in the Great Lakes region, where automobile, steel, and glass manufacturing impacted water quality along with paper mills, lumbering, drug manufacturing, refineries, aluminum smelters, chemical plants, and energy produced by coal, nuclear, hydro and natural gas plants.
More recently, concerns have risen about heavy agriculture, which now has a denser impact with the proliferation of mega dairies and other farms large enough to be classified as confined animal feeding operations. The U.S. population, with 310 million people and growing, is 55 percent greater today than it was when 200 million Americans were alive during the first Earth Day.
Rachel Carson’s legacy
All of those people are greater stressors on the land, the air and the water – yet the lakes, through the years, have shown their resiliency. Scientists fear they are backsliding in terms of ecological health, but agree they are overall stronger now than they were 41 years ago.
Why? Because of people like Rachel Carson. Whether or not you agree with the banning of DDT, the evidence is pretty strong Carson’s epic 1962 book, Silent Spring, revolutionized the way scientists approach environmental investigations. While not entirely focused on the Great Lakes, Silent Spring makes references to robins dying on the Michigan State University campus after elm trees were sprayed for Dutch elm disease in 1954.
Not far from the MSU campus, Illinois-based Velsicol Chemical Corp. produced PBBs (polybrominated biphenyls), DDT, cattle feed additives, and various other chemical products at its plant in St. Louis, Mich. Velsicol was the sole manufacturer of chlordane and heptachlor, two pesticides that have been banned since the book came out. Dozens of cattle were destroyed in 1973 after accidentally being fed food that had been contaminated by PBBs at the mid-Michigan plant.
A resilient ecosystem
The lakes have been resilient because of people like Gaylord Nelson, a former U.S. senator and Wisconsin governor who founded Earth Day in 1970. Though he had plenty of material to work from within his own region – including the Cuyahoga River burning near downtown Cleveland in 1969 and Lake Erie being declared almost dead from pollution – Nelson’s final straw was actually the devastating oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. that year.
Over the years, the Great Lakes have factored heavily into research of pesticides, child neurology, asthma, mercury exposure, breast cancer, farm chemicals, toxic algae, invasives, brain tumors, birth defects, fish and bird diseases, hormone imbalances, dioxin, PCBs (industrial lubricants known as polyclorinated biphenyls), chlorine and countless other issues.
They’ve yielded clues as to how the Earth likely evolved, what happened as glaciers retreated. Their shorelines have served as resting spots for tiny songbirds migrating from as far as South America to Canada. They’ve been an important link to the continental migration patterns that have held up over time for anything from monarch butterflies to hawks, eagles, and osprey.
So celebrate the Great Lakes region for Earth Day – and remember one of our own, former Detroiter J. Sterling Morton, founded Earth Day’s lesser-known cousin, Arbor Day. Morton started Arbor Day’s annual plant-a-tree theme in 1872, after moving to Nebraska and being disappointed by the lack of trees there.
Editors note: Earth Day is Friday