LAKE EUTROPHICATION AND PRODUCTIVITY 



The Great Lakes Fishery Labora- 

 tory has made evaluations of envi- 

 ronmental quality and fishery re- 

 sponses to environmental change ever 

 since it was established in 1927. Its 

 present laboratory facility and four 

 research vessels constitute the great- 

 est U.S. capability to provide guide- 

 lines and criteria for Great Lakes 

 fishery and environmental restora- 

 tion. At present, however, its efforts 

 are limited to partial studies on cer- 

 tain sections of Lakes Superior, Mich- 

 igan, and Erie, with token attention 

 to Lakes Huron and Ontario. Resto- 



ration of the Great Lakes environ- 

 ment will require full attention to all 

 lakes, and will need much more than 

 the present effort by the Great Lakes 

 Fishery Laboratory and the fragmen- 

 tary efforts of other U.S. Federal 

 water-related agencies that have 

 smaller capability and less compre- 

 hensive Great Lakes responsibilities. 



The Canadian government has 

 recognized fully the urgency for ac- 

 tion on the Great Lakes. It has started 

 the construction of a federal labora- 



tory on Lake Ontario which, when 

 completed in 1972, will house 250- 

 300 scientists and will be capable of 

 surveillance of all water-quality, bi- 

 ological, and fishery aspects of the 

 Canadian portion of the Great Lakes. 

 An even more substantial facility 

 would be required to meet the full 

 U.S. commitment on the Great Lakes, 

 since the United States has 64 per- 

 cent of the Great Lakes within its 

 boundary and contributes some 80 to 

 90 percent of the industrial, urban, 

 and agricultural contamination enter- 

 ing the lakes. 



Problems of Eutrophication in the Great Lakes 



One of today's pressing problems 

 is to formulate and execute a man- 

 agement program for the nation's 

 freshwater resources. These re- 

 sources are of tremendous value; 

 they are used for water supply (do- 

 mestic, industrial, agricultural), rec- 

 reation, navigation, hydroelectric 

 power, waste disposal, and food sup- 

 ply. Only a few of the nation's fresh 

 waters are used for multiple purposes, 

 and these few will be short-lived if 

 present practices are followed. The 

 underlying cause for this situation is 

 the use of these waters for waste 

 disposal, which results in chemical 

 enrichment, or eutrophication, jeop- 

 ardizing all other uses and producing 

 a general deterioration of the human 

 environment. Therefore, the over- 

 riding water-resource problem is not 

 water scarcity but water management 

 directed toward control of pollutants 

 at the source and means of ameliorat- 

 ing the eutrophic effects of existing 

 polluted waters. 



Among the numerous water bodies 

 in the United States and Canada, the 

 Great Lakes are the largest in area 

 and volume and rank as the most 

 important single water resource in 

 respect to economic, recreational, and 

 aesthetic values. They constitute 

 about 40 percent of the total surface 

 waters of North America, possess a 



drainage basin of 295,000 square 

 miles in which live nearly 40 percent 

 of this country's population. Accord- 

 ing to reliable projections, these lakes 

 lie in the pathway of the most rapid 

 industrial and urban development in 

 the United States and Canada. 



Despite their great value, there is 

 an astonishing lack of fundamental 

 knowledge about the Great Lakes. 

 This stems from their great size, 

 international and national political 

 fragmentation of their drainage basin, 

 need for an interdisciplinary approach 

 to their complex problems, and need 

 for meaningful, total system studies 

 of this mesoscale aquatic system. 



Furthermore, there has been little 

 sense of urgency in establishing 

 management procedures for these wa- 

 ters because of the misbelief that 

 this vast quantity of water is capable 

 of receiving almost unlimited quan- 

 tities of pollutants without producing 

 harmful effects. Inland communities 

 use streams entering the Great Lakes 

 to transport their waste without real- 

 izing that the lakes become the even- 

 tual receptors of this waste. Less is 

 known about waste assimilation in 

 lakes, especially large ones, than 

 streams, but we do know that the 

 residence time for pollutants is much 

 greater in lakes. In streams residence 

 time is on the order of days or weeks, 



while in the Great Lakes it is decades 

 or centuries. It is evident that the 

 Great Lakes environment is danger- 

 ously susceptible to pollution because 

 most avenues of waste disposal in 

 the drainage basin terminate in these 

 lakes. 



Physically, the Great Lakes drain- 

 age basin is one system; but politi- 

 cally it exhibits a pattern of frag- 

 mentation. This physiographic unit 

 is shared by eight states in the United 

 States and two provinces in Canada. 

 The heads of these political units 

 can speak only for their respective 

 units. There is no unified plan or 

 approach for the management or 

 utilization of their waters or the 

 solution of common problems in the 

 drainage basin. Within the United 

 States, a dozen or more federal agen- 

 cies are charged with Great Lakes 

 missions, each carrying out its mis- 

 sion commendably but none con- 

 cerned with the lakes as a complete 

 system. Superimposed on this pat- 

 tern are the efforts by each Great 

 Lakes state to deal with these waters 

 within the framework of its policies. 

 Only the International Joint Com- 

 mission attempts to represent the 

 international interests of the United 

 States and Canada; it, too, has a com- 

 mendable record of accomplishments 

 but its objectives are limited. 



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