Document RJ4V1QbyJaO2OKEqKL9M91VO8

San Francisco, CA (San Francisco Co.) Examiner (Cir. D. 158,722) m 2 51382 . By. Brian Tucker with other federal spending* TM ***---,- '.!$l#Ass6eiated Pi-ess . CLEVELAND -- Lakes Erie. Huron, Michigari,,;Ontario and Superior -- a And some officials, like Patricia .Bonner, spokeswoman for the International Joint Commission, theU.S.-Cnna- y We " ' gift Age glaciers -- are where dian agehcy that has overseen the ; | millions of North Americans work, boundary Waters since 1909, fear last- ; vf, plaWe-Vand discard their waste. ing harm. ~y " ` ' ,'i, lot For a decade, the United States and . "The lakes are cleaner than they i .................. Canatfq have been cleaning up these were 20 years ago and the water quail- frwr-d' :-Vilv v ' : natural^WOnders. It has cost billions ty has Improved," says William C. Son- .. V -- andsott(e major problems remain to be zogni, of the Great Lakes Envirohttieh- "4 <C" solved.BUt even so. the results are tal Research Laboratory in Michigan. An example 6f (the improvement is remarkable.. -V ''>. ` > 1 t-T "We've gotten this far. Let's not stop.",ri^the. Cuyahoga $!p"Which flows into kent'.Fuller, planning chief of the The '60s are not remembered with'"|$ke Erie. Ladpn With oil and the filth Uii.: Environmental Protection Agen- fondness by those who cy's'...$e|V Lakes ..National Program, ters. Fishing was at low ebb. Blue pike v:*n-Jttne.iKi-l!9. -Trhuen m bla*zme m*a*r<ke>d a callsworld-class example of a disappeared from Lake Erie. The rav dow point for Cleveland, the river ijhd pollution control effort." enous sea lamprey moved in from the the lakes. 4 . | Sln Jittianj;,respects, the lakes now Atlantic and devoured trout. Algae j W "I don't like to talk about how* it Was are doing yety well," he said. ".., In tlxe used up oxygen, choking fish. V-V- bnd I don't like people asking about the obviously, Visible stuff, wg really have 7 Tourists were turned off by pollu- fire," says Edith Crosby, hostess for 19 made g lot of pi`ogftes.,' i ;w "-v .> :'r lion. Beaches closed. Shallow Lake Eric - years at Jim's Steak House, a riverfront It lx.what canV bA seen .that has , ' w^eclafed dead. : , Jfestauraft. She remembers gray, dily environmentalists Worried today. Toxic 1 Finally,Tt got bad enough to make ` Water and sees a difference. ..... . substances such as cancer-causing poly- . somebody do something about it. "This river freezes, now and it chlorinated biphenyls', or PCBs, are still ' In the 70s. the United States and ."wouldn't back then. And the gulls getting into the lakes. EitvirnRmental- . Canada decided to stop the abuses., , ,come up here and feed, so there's fish. ists.say the danger may. be more seri-' With federal aid, cities built sewkg'e-S^Feople call here ancl demand a window ous than the pollution of the 19G0s. treatment plants. Willingly or under \$eat." ' " .. " But moriey to continue the battle to threat of lawsuits and fines, industry' ' ..CL The change is the result of one of clean up. the lakes is drying up, along cleaned up its act.' .,'jfoany projects, prompted by the 1972 mad* gents containing phosphates. Only Botts says there has been a change . Pennsylvania and Ohio declined to go , in attitude by industry. "Not only can alng. -f : - i. industry under the law not dump its Lee Botts, former chairwoman of wastes, I don't think they would if they the defunct Great Lakes Basin Com- could," she says. "They need clean mission and a research associate for . water, too.'ii"\;. , , the Center for Urban Affairs and Poli- One continuing worry of environ- cy Research at Northwestern Universi- mentalists is the presence of cancer- ty, says Lake Erie became a symbol causing chemicals and heavy metals .............. . . ... ;___ _ because its problems were so visible. buried in the lake sands. Another is lf * 'J" ' : . "There was no oxygen left," she runoff of pesticides and fertilizers. Clean Water Act, which grew out of a said. "Fish and other forms of life were from farmers'fields. ,,-'= - .. U.S.-Canadian agreement to do some- disappearing and massive amounts of But the critical threat to w ater and thing about pollution. algae was washing up. The idea that fish are PCBs, once commonly used in As a result, the United States built you could really do that with a lake as electrical insulation and other toxic $4.9 billion in new sewage plants from large as Lake Erie is what really compounds entering the Great Lakes 1972 to 1981 in the Great Lakes basin. grabbed people's attention." . through the air or groundwater. Canada has spent $1.2 billion on similar Industry has also undertaken mas- These potentially cancer-causing projects. , ;. ,> ... ... sive projects in the lakes' cleanup. One agents build up in the fatty tissue of.. Officials in. the EPA's Great pikes of the largest was in northern Minneso fish, then endanger humans w ho eat office estimate that industry spent an ta, where Reserve Mining Co. spent their catch. equal amount. -:H &.*?..r " more than $370 million to clean up its --. The pesticide DDT was banned af- Treatment plants reduced the , iron ore refining plant. ter it turned up in the food chain in amount of phosphorus that went into . Scientists found asbestos-like fibers the Great Lakes, and PCBs first were the iakes. Phosphorus is a nutrient that from the plant over hundreds of found in the. United States in Lake spurs algae growth. Fuller said phos- square miles of Lake Superior. Now, Michigan, Botts says, phorus discharge into Lake Erie was Phil Cook, a chemist at the EPA's Toxaphene. a pesticide that re cut from 8,000 metric tons a year in research lab in Duluth, can say, "I placed DDT but is little used in the 1975 to 3,000 tons six years later. think one could drink unfiltered water Great Lakes region, recently has been ! Also helpful were six state legisla- in the lake now and have nothing to tures that banned the sale of deter- worry about.". '> -- See next page, col. 1 , PCB-ARCH-EXT0376134 ~~i~ 1 - "Y -- " "' - Comeback oh the Great Lakes tsiMMu-Mnn Thunder Bay Minnesota Duluth Wisconsin Green Bay Michigan Ontario Milwaukee Toronto ___ . ! Illinois Chicago Examiner graphics Detroit Windsor Niagara Falls W8sr Buffalo New York Indiana I Ohio 1 , . ' , Pennsylvania Cuts in government -funds':cloud?: future of poSIutson-contrpI efforts .'"From preceding .page . . ' . found in Lake Michigan fish, she said. levels of the pesticide in the fish have exceeded the government's allowable limits for food. - Toxaphene Is most heavily used in the Dakotas and in the South, scientists say. Its presence in the lakes is "abso- lutely an airborne problem, Sonzogni says* . . The scope of the potential problem of toxic contaminants is staggering. Fifty-two chemicals, including Mirex, a pesticide, and suspected carcinogens like dioxin and PCBs are: being moni- tored in the Niagara River, which links Ontario with the upper Great Lakes. Acid rain, a more publicized envi- ronmental problem, is less significant in the Great Lakes because of their size and the fact that much of the lakes are buffered by a limestone base that counters acidity. y Madonna McGrath, director of the EPA's Great Lakes office, says scien- lists estimate 60 percent of the PCBs in the lakes come through the air, with that figure rising to 90 percent in Lake environmental organizations.' , Superior. ' - .. The reduction forced a virtual shut- | McGrath's office has established 35 down of the' EPA's Large Lakes Re-. ! collection sites to sample airborne pol- search Laboratory at Grosse lie, Mich.,! ! lutants, the first step toward deter- which had been responsible for find- ' mining the scope of the problem. ing toxaphene in fish. The EPA's Great - "With the air currents, some of this Lakes office- in Chicago has had its ,. might be coming from as far away as funding nearly halved from 7.5 mil- . japan," she said. "Why should the U.S. lion in 1978 to $33 million in the 1 and Canada spend a Lot of money on . proposed 1983 budget . - , controls if the problem is that long- The administration proposed elimi- ! range?" t: ? nating funds for the Great Lakes Envi-- The problem haunting any major ronmental Research Laboratory at . pollution-control project is money. Ann Arbor, Mich., where scientists, For example, the EPA estimates study how pollutants move about Di-, . separating sanitary waste systems from rector Dr. Eugene Aubert says legisla- ' storm sewers in the Great Lakes basin tion to restore funds for the lab, which,. would cost $8 billion. A tunnel-reser- received $3.4 million last year, is pend ' voir system in Chicago alone would ing in Congress. .... COst a projected $4 billion. , Meanwhile, the Great Lakes Basin " - But as the scope of the problems Commission, which for 14 years provid- . and the costs of the proposed solutions ed planning assistance and information . become known, government money is coordination to the federal and state , drying up. .. ` agencies working on the lakes, has. . Research into Great Lakes pollution been dismantled. f (-fO fjT has been cut from $30 millaon to $3 In Buffalo, N.Y., the Great Lakes , million by the Reagan administration, , according to a recent study by 10 -- See Page A19, col. 2,, PCB-ARCH-EXT0376135 V Cutbacks threaten to reverse cleanup efforts , --From Page A17 Laboratory, a non-profit research facil ity set up after the Buffalo River was declared one of the nation's three worst-polluted rivers, has lost 21 of 25 employees. Its $700,000 budget is now $90,ooo. "If people didn't monitor the Great Lakes, the Mirex problem, the mercury problem, .the PCB problem probably would never have been discovered," said V. Ray Frederick, assistant direc tor. *'1 think we've got to continue the search for exotic pollutants." mission, v". If responsibility for pollution pro U.S. Rep. James Blanchard, D-Mich., grams is to be handed over to the claims the Reagan administration is states by the Reagan administration, trying to cut federal support of Great environmentalists say little is likely to Lakes programs by 70 to 80 percent He be done, considering the financial has proposed legislation to set up a problems of states like Ohio and Michi /coordinating office for the 10 govern gan. . . . . j 'jp ment agencies and departments deal "How can we tell the (US. and ing with lakes-related issues, Canadian) governments what-to do if fv.;;'That proposal was sufipqi?S! in a the states can't provide us with the /General Accounting OfHee /report data?" asks Bonner of the International which concluded a more comprehen Joint Commission, which had relied sive approach is heeded to clean up the heavily on the Great Lakes Basin Com- . lakes. - PCB-ARCH-EXT0376136