A wave of woes for Great Lakes

Scientists gather here to assess multiple threats to complex ecosystem

By DAN EGAN
degan@journalsentinel.com

Posted: Nov. 1, 2006

More than 300 Great Lakes experts are gathered in Milwaukee this week for what is essentially a two-year checkup on the health of the world's largest freshwater ecosystem.

Ecosystem Conference

Quotable

As much as I love the Everglades, I have to acknowledge that I look at that (restoration program) with a little jealousy. - Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee

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The diagnosis: not good.

The three-day gathering of Great Lakes decision-makers from federal, state and tribal governments, academia, industry and recreational groups, as well as sport and commercial fishers and health professionals, on Wednesday kicked off with an overview of some of the major issues facing the Great Lakes basin, which holds about 20% of the world's surface freshwater and is a source of drinking water for about 40 million people.

From the rise of invasive species to the prospect of falling water levels to the paving of coastal habitats and the apparent - and perplexing - meltdown of the bottom of the food chain in Lake Huron, most all the news was grim.

Val Klump, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Great Lakes WATER Institute, confessed to feeling a little punk after the first session.

"If I was a patient, and this was my doctor giving me my prognosis, it wouldn't be too encouraging," Klump said.

But the biennial State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference, hosted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Environment Canada, isn't supposed to be a cheerleading camp for researchers who have devoted their careers to understanding one of the world's largest and most complex ecosystems. It's a chance for scientists to share their most recent work and to take a hard look at where the lakes are headed.

And in a way the assessment made Wednesday is old news; the lakes have been suffering for more than a century for a number of reasons, including historic overfishing, the industrialization of their shorelines and massive engineering projects to open the previously isolated waters to oceangoing vessels - and invasive species.

Among the most alarming of the problems detailed Wednesday is the disappearance in many areas of Lake Huron of tiny species that are a critical source of nutrition that most every fish in the lake directly or indirectly depends on.

The drop is likely tied to the arrival of invasive mussels, though the direct link has yet to be established. The result, however, is a dramatic loss in biomass from the bottom of the food web. Lake Huron is, according to a presentation by Carri Lohse-Hanson of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, beginning to resemble the much less productive waters of Lake Superior, the biggest and coldest of the Great Lakes.

Similar declines have been documented in Lake Michigan, though they are not as dramatic.

The news isn't all bad for the lakes. The latest studies show that concentrations of some of the nastiest chemical pollutants have dropped substantially since the 1970s. And, thanks largely to water treatment facilities, the lakes remain a healthy source of drinking water.

Projects to remove toxic sediments are also under way.

In the United States, for example, from 1997 to 2004 more than 4.5 million tons of contaminated sludge was treated. The downside: More than 75 million cubic yards remain, and the cost to take care of the problem could be as high as $4.4 billion, according to Lohse-Hanson.

That's a lot of money. But it's not nearly as much as has been committed to restoring another U.S. treasure - the Florida Everglades. That fact was not lost on Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who spoke at the conference opening.

"As much as I love the Everglades, I have to acknowledge that I look at that (restoration program) with a little jealousy," Barrett said.

"I'm a fan of the Everglades, too," said UWM's Klump. "But I'm more than just jealous. I'm irritated. We need to pay more attention to this ecosystem."