This was the view toward the stern of the 730-foot Canadian Leader, a Great Lakes bulk freighter, as it passed from Lake Erie to Lake Huron on its way to Thunder Bay, Ontario. Detroit is on the right. (George Tombs)
Great perils of the Great Lakes
Invasive species, sinking water levels, and pollution are worrisome trends. But there’s also grandeur to be seen aboard a bulk freighter.
By George Tombs | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor/ December 2, 2008 edition
George Tombs
Load: The Canadian Leader takes on 28,000 tons of wheat at Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Correspondent George Tombs talks with CSMonitor.com's Pat Murphy about his Great Lakes trip aboard the Canadian Leader.
Correspondent George Tombs
Aboard the bulk steamer Canadian Leader
On a starry night, the 730-foot Canadian Leader, the last bulk-carrying steamship built on the Great Lakes, slips silently past illuminated buoys near Montreal on a five-day voyage up to Thunder Bay, Ontario, on Lake Superior.
After unloading titanium ore at the St. Lawrence River port of Sorel, the ship is proceeding empty toward the upper lakes. With the recent economic downturn, there is less demand for her typical upbound cargo of iron ore pellets. Capt. George Wheeler, a 40-year veteran of the sea originally from Northern Ireland, has taken on freshwater ballast from the river, to maintain the ship’s stability and maneuverability.
Taken together, the Great Lakes are a vast inland sea representing over one-fifth of all surface fresh water on the planet. More than 40 million Canadians and Americans draw their drinking water from the lakes, which play a vital role in public health, the environment, industry, commerce, and leisure.
But there are causes for concern: invasive species, declining water levels, uncertain quality of drinking water, and pressures to divert water from and into the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence basin. Signed into law by President George W. Bush Oct. 3, the Great Lakes Compact takes effect Dec. 8. The binational agreement, the fruit of regional initiatives, obliges eight American states and two Canadian provinces to work together to protect the lakes system.
“The Great Lakes Compact is an awesome victory,” says Jeff Skelding, national campaign director for Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition. “No one predicted it could have happened so quickly. We can’t protect the Great Lakes if there’s no water in them…. The cocktail of assaults may be pushing the Great Lakes toward a tipping point, an irreversible change in the food web.”
Part of this assault is the introduction of 182 invasive species such as the zebra mussel, which began disrupting the food web on Lake St. Clair in 1988 and has clogged many water intake pipes since, at an annual cost running in the billions of dollars.
Typically, “salties” (oceangoing ships) reaching the Great Lakes from overseas via the St. Lawrence River have discharged invasive species along with their saltwater ballast once they reached lake ports. Lakers have unwittingly transported these invasive species in their freshwater ballast, from one point on the lakes to the next.
Zebra mussels have made lake water look cleaner than before. But for Mr. Skelding, the clarity of water is a problem. “Sure, zebra mussels filter water,” he says, “but when the water is clearer, sunlight penetrates deeper, and organic material proliferates and absorbs much-needed oxygen in the water that is needed by fish and microorganisms.” The result: “Dead zones.”
Now a new pest is closing in on the lakes: Asian carp from the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers have nearly found their way through the Chicago River to Lake Michigan.
“What gets into the Great Lakes can work through the country like a computer virus and dismantle the biology of systems,” says Cameron Davis, president of the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes (AGL), a citizens’ group of 6,000 professionals and volunteers working for clean water in the Great Lakes. The choke point is a 10-mile stretch of the Chicago River, the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal. “The bad news is,” Mr. Davis continues, “even if we know where the choke point is, we are having a hard time taking action.”
The Great Lakes Compact is expected to give federal, state, and provincial governments more muscle to take preventative action against invasive species.
Storms and surges a danger
Venturing “light ship” (without cargo) across the stormy lakes of autumn can be unsettling. When 50-knot northerly winds lash the surface of Lake Erie, sending some lakers into sheltered anchorages, Captain Wheeler decides to maintain course. Lake Erie is shallower than the other great lakes and more likely to be whipped up by storms. Ships at anchor off Toledo, Ohio, may suddenly find themselves aground when a short-term natural effect called “seiching” (pronounced “SAY-shing”) drives surface water towards Buffalo, N.Y., at the eastern end of Lake Erie.
Despite a few seasonal blips, a 30-year trend shows that water levels are declining. This is one of the main reasons the Great Lakes Compact was rushed into law. Canadian and American entrepreneurs alike had been seeking ways to commercialize the freshwater resources of the Great Lakes, hoping to send it by pipe or ship to thirsty markets in the US Southwest and overseas.
Still, the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition predicts that lake levels could drop this century by one foot on Lake Superior, three feet on Lakes Michigan and Huron, 2.7 feet on Lake Erie, and 1.7 feet on Lake Ontario.
Water levels are also a challenge for American ship operators, the largest of whose vessels are “1,000 footers” designed to carry 70,000 tons. The largest Canadian bulk carriers, like the Canadian Leader of the Upper Lakes Group, carry only half that much.
“Water levels are very important to us,” says Glen Neksavil, vice president of the Lake Carriers Association, a trade association based in Rocky River, Ohio, which represents 16 American companies operating 63 vessels exclusively on the lakes. “When water levels were high back in 1997, some of our ships were carrying 70,000 tons of cargo per trip. This year, they are carrying 66,500 tons…. Our largest ships lose 270 tons of cargo for each inch in draft caused by lower water,” he says.
“The US Army Corps of Engineers estimate they have a backlog of 17 million cubic yards of sediment in virtually every US port on the Great Lakes,” says Mr. Neksavil. “That would cost $230 million to dredge. The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund is funded by a tax on cargoes, and currently has a surplus of $4.8 billion, which I think the government is using to balance its books.”
Drinking-water safety an issue
The Canadian Leader slows at Ambassador Bridge, on the Detroit River between Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, long enough to pick up mail for the crew. Tundra swans and snow geese laze on the sparkling water.
Detroit draws its drinking water from the river, and the concentration of ships, steel mills, and car plants here reminds one how dependent Great Lakes communities are on freshwater resources.
“Drinking water from the Great Lakes is the envy of the world,” Davis says.
But a series of scientific reports has raised concerns about drinking water in Detroit and other communities. Trace amounts of pharmaceuticals flushed down toilets have found their way into river water. Byproducts of chlorine treatment and disinfection, coliform bacteria, and lead also pose health risks. Canadian petrochemical plants at Sarnia on the St. Clair River are also a concern.
Sewage overflows are a major problem. “During heavy rainstorms,” Davis says, “it’s easy for treatment plants to risk being overwhelmed. There are two things we can do to help: conserve water, so that we’re not using as much, and use ‘green infrastructure,’ like rooftop gardens, to cut the amount of stormwater that needs to be treated.”
On to Thunder Bay, Ontario
Under cover of night, the Canadian Leader transits the Soo lock on the St. Mary’s River between Michigan and Ontario, passing a huge windfarm on the Canadian side. Then it’s 18 hours of steaming out of sight of land, across glittering Lake Superior, before docking at a grain elevator in Thunder Bay to pick up a 28,000-ton load of durum wheat.
Lake Superior’s temperature is rising, says Jay Austin, an oceanographer at the Large Lakes Observatory of the University of Minnesota at Duluth. “Temperature is the most important environmental variable” in a lake, he says. It determines “the chemical reaction rates, the metabolism rates of fish, phytoplankton, and zooplankton, and the spawning rates of fish.”
Mr. Austin and his colleague Steve Colman are deploying an array of moorings at different depths in Lake Superior, from just below the surface to some 1,300 feet down, just above the lake bottom. “Surface water in Lake Superior is warming faster than the air temperature,” he says. “Lakes Michigan and Huron also seem to be experiencing the accelerated warming phenomenon, although not Lake Erie.”
Less ice cover in winter means more evaporation, which in turn lowers water levels, stressing ecosystems. Austin says change on this scale is hard to imagine, much less control. The warming of the Great Lakes is its latest challenge, he says – perhaps its most serious one.
( More stories )
Comments
2. Barry Wightman | 12.03.08
Nice piece. My family has owned a bit of property on Lake Michigan for over 100 years and lake levels have been rising and falling over long cycles well documented by the Army Corps of Engineers. The last long stretch (25 years or so) of high water ended in the late ’90s leaving huge sandy beaches, which are nice for summer folks. But so what? Have these natural cycles been permanently disrupted by larger global climate change issues? Sure hope not. I’d trade that beach for a healthy lake.
3. George Tombs | 12.03.08
Regarding the comment by Martin Weiss, There are quite a few native species of carp in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. However, the presence of Asian carp in the Illinois River, not far from Lake Michigan, is currently a cause for concern. The US Environmental Protection Agency, the Great Lakes Sport Fishing Council (based in Elmhurst, Illinois) and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans all consider Asian carp to be an unwelcome invasive species that could have a destructive impact on the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. The following web links provide more information on the subject. Regards, GT
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/invasive/asiancarp/index.html
http://www.great-lakes.org/carp.html
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/Publications/article/central_arctic/asian_carp_e.htm
4. Joel Brammeier | 12.03.08
“Asian carp” is a bit of a general term that includes bighead, silver, grass and black carps. Sometimes the term is used to refer to common carp as well. There are definitely common and grass carp in the Great Lakes, but no breeding populations of bigheads or silvers, which are the ones traveling up the Illinois River toward Lake Michigan. And they jump.
5. Christopher Bieda | 12.03.08
“[I]n 1988 I caught five twenty-pound Asian Carp from my canoe in Lake Michigan, in about twenty-five feet of water near Great Lakes Navy Base.”
During the first BUSH Administration? And Bill Clinton didn’t protect the Lakes with a Compact during his tenure? Impossible. Surely during the negotiations for NAFTA he could’ve found time for a little Great Lakes action.
If any lesson may be drawn from the history since 1988, it is that during a time of alleged “war profiteering and fear mongering,” the Great Lakes COULD be protected with a landmark agreement, while in a period impliedly free of “war profiteering and fear mongering,” it was not, both historical facts.
The cautionary of the “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” error in logic can be used to dissociate “war profiteering and fear mongering” from the success of the Compact, but there exists no logical argument that its absence is conducive to a Compact.
What are Bush’s unhinged (to logic and history) critics going to do for their Bush Derangement Syndrome come January 20? Does it go into remission, or refocus on a new bete noire?
6. richard johnson | 12.04.08
@ martin weiss–
Fishing from a canoe in 25 feet of water — on Lake Michigan? The pull exerted by one average carp, let alone five 20-pounders, lends another layer of implausibility.
I commend you. You combine the foolhardiness of a Darwin Awards winner with the balance of a Circ du Soleil performer!
@ Christopher Biede — AND mr. Weiss,
We’re talking about different species of carp. See above.
Other species of carp are native or were already in the Great Lakes. The specfic exotic carp species expanding up the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers were not an imminent threat during the Clinton Administration. Obviously it was incumbent on the Bush Admin to take preventive action, when that action mattered. Clinton-era officials may have become aware of that eventual possibility—but that doesn’t relieve Bush-era officials of taking responsible action. Does it?
7. Felix | 12.04.08
@George Tombs
@Christopher Bieda
Thanks for the insight. More of us would do well to be so well informed and articulate.
8. J Landon | 12.05.08
If Weiss had caught that Asian Carp he would not have a hand or arm left.
Ask anyone who has happened to catch one.
9. Kevin Keck | 12.05.08
One interesting aspect of this Compact is the establishment of the Great Lake’s watershed as a spatial limit for the distribution of Great Lakes freshwater.
The implications for this rule has grave implications for one Wisconsin Community. Waukesha is located close to Milwaukee, but just over the sub-continental divide. Rain that falls in Waukesha drains towards the Mississippi. (Akron, Ohio is another community that straddles the basin)
The residents in scrawling Waukesha County have a history of resisting regional transit initiatives that would tie their suburban communities closer to Metropolitan Milwaukee. Unfortunately, the Waukesha area has also mismanaged its once pristine groundwater (Waukesha spring water was pumped directly to the 1893 Chicago Exposition). The water table in Waukesha has been depleted so that new deeper wells extract radium contaminated water that does not meet federal requirements.
In order to obtain Lake Michigan water, Waukesha has argued that its underground limestone deposits channel water towards the Lake Michigan basin. It also recently proposed pumping its effluent through a 10 mile pipeline to Underwood Creek so that its wastewater would drain into Lake Michigan.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/waukesha/34430914.html
It’s ironic that this pipeline could be built under an abandoned railroad right of way that could have provided an ideal regional transit connection.
10. Matt Schmerbauch | 12.08.08
@martin weiss
Asian carp, and more specifically Silver Carp are filter feeders, AKA they just eat the plankton and zooplankton in the water. They are very efficient at it, thus competing with other filter feeding fish, and nearly every juvenile aged fish. And seeing as their non-native and have no natural predators, they would become uninhibited eating machines sucking nutrients out of the lake. This species is the one that we are most concerned about, and the one that is getting closer and closer to the lakes. So although I don’t doubt you caught carp in lake Michigan in 1988, it was not the ones that are causing the most concern at the moment.
11. Alexander Jablanczy | 12.08.08
I am amazed that some Yanks are just as dumb as Canucks who politicise everything. Everything is the fault of Bush Harper and is connected to global warming. Or not.
Lake Superior is too cold for carp,they would freeze.
In lake Huron there is carp but not in this Lake. The real problem here is lamprey. A few years ago I caught a coaster, a beautiful silver speckled trout. All salmonids are silver in the lake.
only the pike are different.
We bought a camp on a rock in 1992 in Goulais Bay. On a clear day we can see the UP. I scraped my canoe on a huge rock I call Gibraltar and have been measuring and marking the water level every year of Lake Superior on the near vertical rock face. It was osciallating for 15 years but reached a level three feet below that of the mark of the canoe. I thought the end of the world or at least of Lake Superior was coming. Multiply 1 metre by the surface area of the Lake and you have got several cubic miles of water. Then all of a sudden two years ago it started to rise and almost recovered, being only six inches below 1992 peak level now, no longer three feet lower.
So the priamry brute fact about the level of Lake Superior is that it fluctuates wildly from season to season from year to year. They control the outflow at Sault Ste Marie, but the real control is snowfall rain and evaporation. Once there was scarecly any ice but another time supposedly the whole lake froze over completely. One year the shipping went on all winter but soem winters it!s closed for three or four months or more.
So there you have it. Variability fluctuation oscillating trends in all parameters.
Long term but that is in geological time of thousands of years it will disappear, but in human terms of length of civilizations it is eternal or permanent. So far.
The only time we see these ships is during the stormy season in November when
they come in and hide from the waves in Goulais Bay sometimes almost ten of these Leviathans far on the N shore. This year 2OO8 no storms no ships.
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1. martin weiss | 12.02.08
Sorry to bring reality into the study, (not really), but in 1988 I caught five twenty-pound Asian Carp from my canoe in Lake Michigan, in about twenty-five feet of water near Great Lakes Navy Base. You guys really should get out more. Only the Carp were biting that trip.
Of course the well-known Bush reality backlog was in effect during the last eight years. Perhaps the Carp were operating as weapons of mass destruction. Political considerations and science must, of course, take a backseat to war profiteering and fear mongering.