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Read our special report: Five Glacial Gifts From the right vantage point on a fine spring day, the gleaming waters of the Great Lakes can appear limitless and incorruptible. One-fifth of the world's fresh water is held in five giant basins with a surface area of 95,000 square miles. Together, they form a sweet inland sea. But in recent years, residents have learned that these lakes are a closed system as sensitive to disturbances as an aquarium. Only one percent of the lakes' water trickles into the Atlantic Ocean. The rest stays within the region, cycling endlessly from stream to lake to sky to land. In such an environment pollution builds up slowly but surely, and returns to plague locals in the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the fish they eat. The 4- million inhabitants of the Great Lakes area have learned this ecological lesson the hard way. Water pollution had become so ferocious by the late 1960s that oil and garbage burst into flames on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, and Life magazine declared Lake Erie dead. After 20 years of modern sewage treatment and stronger pollution laws, the lakes are visibly cleaner, but they are still far from pure. A century's worth of industrial muck lies at the bottom of the harbors in Gary, Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, and dozens of other hot spots. Air pollutants from incinerators and coal-burning utilities end up in the Great Lakes watershed, as do the pernicious poisons of the steel, chemical, and pulp-and-paper industries. It makes for a kettle of fish so foul that children as well as women in the child-bearing years are advised not to eat mature salmon, lake trout, and other fish. A few of the worst chemical culprits have already been banished, among them DDT and PCBs. The Sierra Club wants to lengthen the list with a ban on nonessential mercury in manufacturing and on chlorine compounds in pesticides and paper production. A U.S./Canadian water-quality agreement backed by the Club has the potential to curb an even broader array of pollutants. And, starting with Lake Superior, the Sierra Club is lobbying the EPA and Congress to require industries and cities to totally eliminate persistent toxic chemicals from their effluent. "Ten years ago government officials smiled at our 'naive' agenda," says the Sierra Club's Great Lakes Program Director, Jane Elder. "Today, the International Joint Commission [an agency devoted to managing waters in both countries] has recommended that the U.S. and Canadian governments make Lake Superior a binational demonstration site for zero discharge. Industry groups, aware of just how serious we are, have organized a coalition to oppose us." It's an uncompromising agenda for a dangerously polluted watershed. "As the cormorants, the terns, the eagles, and the fish keep telling us," Elder says, "our sparkling freshwater system is contaminated with long-lived poisons. These will plague us for years to come. Enough is enough." Key Objectives
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