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Pipe by Wade Lake5/18/2023 and Canada failed the Great Lakes by becoming complacent too soon after the pact’s early success. In my view, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was a watershed moment for environmental protection and an international model for regulating transboundary pollution. I study the environment and have written four books on U.S.-Canadian management of their shared border waters. Now, 50 years later, they have made progress, but there are new challenges and much unfinished business. and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a landmark pact to clean up the Great Lakes. In 1965, Maclean’s magazine called Lake Erie, the smallest and shallowest Great Lake, “ an odorous, slime-covered graveyard” that “may have already passed the point of no return.” Lake Ontario wasn’t far behind. By the 1960s, rivers like the Cuyahoga, Buffalo and Chicago were so polluted that they were catching fire. The lakes support a multibillion-dollar maritime economy, and the lands around them provided many of the raw materials – timber, coal, iron – that fueled the Midwest’s emergence as an industrial heartland.ĭespite their enormous importance, the lakes were degraded for well over a century as industry and development expanded around them. and Canada rely on them for drinking water. The Great Lakes cover nearly 95,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers) and hold over 20% of Earth’s surface fresh water.
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