Great Lakes! Less Spilling!

The Great Lakes. The world's largest freshwater system contains better than one-fifth of the globe's fresh surface water supply, and has the good fortune to straddle the world's longest unfortified, non-militarized international boundary. Two nations that largely agree and mostly like each other and generally get along well contain in tandem this remarkable system. They share responsibility for past poor management, and they have collaborated for decades to mend watery ways.

In awakening to confronting population losses and deformities in fish populations as well as in the birds and mammals that feed on them, not to mention fires breaking out where the Cuyahoga empties into Lake Erie, the United States and Canada forged The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.

This compact articulates the shared commitment of the two countries to address the causes of water quality deterioration and to chart a course toward reversing those trends that led starkly to that point at which they found themselves standing, aghast but resolved, in 1972.

Officially revisited by revisions in 1978, and again in 1987, the Agreement can boast of genuine successes as indicated by still-rebounding wildlife, and in markedly improved water quality data.

But with more work to be done, the United States and Canada have jointly announced plans to update the Agreement.

Part of the value of the re-freshening is based on our knowing more about the Great Lakes than we did two decades ago, as well as to the interrelated fact that our available analytical tools are now far more robust.

At the joint announcement she shared with Canada Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

“We have to recommit ourselves to strengthening this partnership. It’s crucial that we honor the terms of the Great Lakes agreement as it stands today, but we also have to update it to reflect new knowledge, new technology and, unfortunately, new threats.”

With Great Lakes come great responsibility and great opportunity. The commitment to take a fresh look at how to strive for improved shared management is, naturally, great news.