My Ten Cents: Article 'In the Front Door and Out the Back Door - Getting to Know North America’s Great Lakes'

I wrote this brief article for the upcoming issue of Water Resources IMPACT,  guest-edited by Lisa Beutler. It's not a technical paper.

PDF: Download IMPMar22-Campana_FINAL

 

In the Front Door and Out the Back Door: Getting to Know North America’s Great Lakes

Michael E. Campana

Like any kid growing up in New York, I was familiar with the Erie Canal from a young age. We learned all about the canal, which was built between 1821 and 1825 to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie, in our fourth-grade state history class. The proposed canal would bypass Niagara Falls, finally allowing ships to pass from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie.

At the time of its construction, many were unconvinced that the canal was a prudent investment for the state. Some went so to far as to dub it ”Clinton's Folly” or “DeWitt's Ditch” to mock Governor DeWitt Clinton, who had lobbied hard for its construction. In retrospect “DeWitt's Delight” might be a more appropriate nickname. When completed, the Erie Canal became the front door to the North American Great Lakes (NAGL). Stretching 363 miles, it was the second-longest canal on Earth and was instrumental in turning New York City an international port.

Though I grew up intimately familiar with the idea of the Erie Canal, I would not see the real thing until 2015—and then by accident. I was driving east on Interstate 90 to meet friends at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Shortly after turning south onto a state highway, I noticed a sign: “Erie Canal.” As a water scientist, I could not resist stopping for a look. I pulled over and walked along the canal, amazed to be standing at the front door to the Great Lakes after 60 years of hearing about it. The experience piqued my curiosity about the Great Lakes, the so-called Mediterranean Sea of North America.

As I headed home from Cooperstown, I decided to drive along Lake Erie and then take a detour into Canada to see Lake Ontario. When I mentioned to the Canadian immigration officials that I was a water scientist, they jokingly warned me not to take their water as they gestured toward Lake Erie. They could keep Lake Erie, I said—Lake Ontario had better water! They feigned sadness, then waved me through, cautioning me in jest that they would check any water bottles on my way back across the border.

As I reflected on this experience, I realized that though the Great Lakes loom large both literally and figuratively, the average North American likely knows relatively little about them. And misconceptions about these lakes abound. It is time we looked past the “front door” of the Great Lakes and got to know them better.

Peeking through the Front Door
Until my 2015 whirlwind tour of Lakes Erie and Ontario, my closest connection to the Great Lakes was my scolding those who claim that the they hold about 20% of Earth’s freshwater. That is a common misconception. It is half true, with an important qualification. The Great Lakes do, in fact, hold around 20% of the Earth’s liquid surface freshwater. But most of Earth’s freshwater is underground (around 30%) or locked up as ice in glaciers and icecaps (about 69%).

Even at 20%, the Great Lakes do not make up the largest body of fresh liquid surface water by volume. That honor belongs to Siberia's Lake Baikal, which holds more water than all five Great Lakes combined. At about 5,670 cubic miles, Lake Baikal inches ahead of the Great Lakes by a few hundred cubic miles. Lake Baikal is also much deeper than the Great Lakes. At its deepest, Lake Baikal is over a mile deep, while the deepest point of the Great Lakes, in Lake Superior, reaches only 1,333 feet deep.

The Great Lakes outdo Lake Baikal in at least one respect. They have a total water surface area nearly eight times greater than that of Lake Baikal—94,250 square miles compared with Lake Baikal’s 12,248 square miles. In fact, Lake Superior alone—at 31,700 square miles—trumps Lake Baikal in terms of surface area.

Replacing the Front Door and Opening a Back Door
The Erie Canal was the first front door to the Great Lakes and lasted for well over 100 years. In many ways, however, it was not very effective. Ocean-going ships, for instance, were too large for it to handle. To address this issue, Canadians and Americans teamed up to replace the front door. In 1954, they began construction on a larger canal, the St. Lawrence Seaway. Finished in 1959, the seaway was large enough to accommodate ships over 700 feet long.

The ability of ocean-going vessels to cross into the Great Lakes was a boon to trade, naturally. But as with all monuments to progress, it had a downside as well. Cargo was not the only thing that large ships would haul from the Atlantic to the Great Lakes—they also brought with them pernicious invasive species such as sea lampreys, zebra mussels, and quagga mussels.

Where there is a front door, there’s probably a back door. In the case of the Great Lakes, the back door is the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The city of Chicago opened the canal in 1900 through a triumph of technical prowess: engineers managed to reverse the flow of the Chicago River so that it flowed away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi Basin. But once again, as with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, such an impressive feat was not without drawbacks. That bit of engineering legerdemain kept the city’s sewage out of its drinking water supply—polluting the Mississippi Basin instead.

Water for the West?
Peoples of the hotter, drier Western United States have often looked with jealousy at the Great Lakes region. Years ago I saw an apt cartoon: a group of Westerners, including a skier, a cowboy, and a man in a sombrero, are using straws to suck the lakes dry. The perception on the part of Westerners: all that water is just sitting there, not being put to any real use.

At times, this perception has become politicized. In 2007, a field of Democratic candidates were jockeying to replace President George W. Bush—among them Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico. Referring to the “Club of Eight” (those states that are in the Great Lakes Watershed), Richardson commented that “states like Wisconsin are awash in water.” The outcry from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York could be heard as far as the American Southwest.

Richardson realized his gaffe, but it was too late to prevent the eight Great Lakes governors from expediting efforts to protect their water from other regions that might wish to take advantage of it. If the Great Lakes already had a front door and a back door, they would soon also have a legal barrier to block thirsty neighbors and their large containers from absconding with water from the Club’s backyard pool.

In early 2007, Club of Eight governors signed the Great Lakes Compact, an interstate agreement allowing the states to forbid the export of water outside the basin. The Compact was approved by Congress, signed by President Bush, and became law on December 7, 2008. The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec also agreed to adhere to the Compact as foreign entities. With such measures in place, it is doubtful that the Great Lakes will open a door to the American West any time soon.

Closing Time?
This brief tour of the Great Lakes—the front door, the back door, the nosy neighbors—would scarcely have been possible without the work of Dan Egan, the former Great Lakes beat reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who is now at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. In 2017 Egan wrote an award-winning book, The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, which I reviewed here (Water Resources IMPACT, 21 (1), 2019). My review is here. 

Egan opened my eyes to the wonder of the Great Lakes, which he depicts as a huge river that flows slowly downhill from Lake Superior, through the other lakes, and ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean. But the story of the Great Lakes is not only one of wonder, as Egan explains. The lakes are also under threat and have been for some time.

According to Egan, the Great Lakes have long been the object of political and economic interest. Indeed, long before the Erie Canal opened a front door for the lakes, he explains, George Washington envisioned a way to connect the lakes with the East Coast, lest the settlers out West lose touch with the East Coast elite and align themselves more closely with Canada or Spain.  

The environmental implications of achieving this connection would not have been clear in Washington’s day. But while the social and political realities have changed, the environmental impact of connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean remains. The St. Lawrence Seaway is still a vector of invasive species. But there are other threats as well: Think toxic algal blooms in shallow western Lake Erie. Nutrient-laden runoff, invasive mussels, and microcystis. Dredging woes. Climate change wreaking havoc with lake levels, lakefront property, and shipping. Thirsty Westerners reaching for their 1,500-mile straws.

As of 2019, Egan argued that it was time for the Great Lakes to close both their doors and reinforce their legal protections. Today, the challenges faced by the Great Lakes remain much the same, and I suspect Egan’s opinion on the matter has remained unchanged as well. There is hope for the future of the Great Lakes. But this hope hinges on education. Community members, policy makers, and business people must understand the very real threats the lakes face if they hope to protect and promote the lakes’ health for future generations. As Egan suggests, the biggest threat to the life of the Great Lakes may not be water profiteers or invasive mussels, but ignorance.

Michael E. Campana ([email protected]), aka. Aquadoc, is AWRA's technical director and editor-in-chief of Water Resources IMPACT. He also teaches, advises students, investigates managed aquifer recharge (MAR), and holds forth on assorted water and environmental issues as a professor at Oregon State University. He blogs daily at www.waterwired.organd tweets excessively @WaterWired.

Enjoy!

“A normal lake is knowable. A Great Lake can hold all the mysteries of an ocean, and then some.” - Dan Egan

Comments

[Michael Campana]

Thanks, Elaine. Same is true for your article on pluvial lakes. The magazine should be out next week. I will send you an e-copy (all we have these days).

[EJ Hanford, PhD]

Good bit of history and insight!!
Many thanks to you Michael for authoring the article.