1972 accord on water quality up for changes

Forty million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water. All benefit from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, even if they don't know what it is or fumble for words trying to describe it.

Signed in 1972 by President Richard Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the agreement is often hailed as a landmark pledge between the two countries to help the lakes recover from their legacy of pollution.

Along with the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and a number of other laws ushered in after the first Earth Day in 1970, the agreement became one of the driving forces behind the modern era of sewage treatment and industrial control. All combined to help rescue Lake Erie from the brink of death three years after the Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969.

Now, in light of climate change, Asian carp, zebra mussels, urban sprawl, and other issues that have become more prominent to U.S. and Canadian officials since the agreement's last update in 1987, the document is being modernized.

A six-week public comment period begins next week. A Web-based seminar - a Webinar - has been scheduled June 7-9 at binational.net. The outcome of the renegotiations could have special significance for the Toledo area, officials said.

That's because western Lake Erie is the warmest, shallowest part of the Great Lakes, with the most developed shoreline, where scientists have said they usually can detect biological impacts before they show up in other areas.

With some of the region's most productive farmland, refineries, and automotive plants, and one of the greatest concentrations of people between Detroit and Cleveland, researchers have said Lake Erie's western basin is like a living laboratory for examining the impacts of human activity on near-shore lake ecology.

Though the possibility of reopening the agreement had been discussed several times in recent years, the decision wasn't announced until last June. Work began in earnest in January.

Officials hope to have their update completed and signed by both countries at the end of 2010, according to Gary Gulezian, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago.

Besides identifying a new suite of issues, officials will re-examine the agreement's tone and role.

Mr. Gulezian said it's always been unclear how much authority the agreement should prescribe. "Generally, it's been more of a framework to harmonize and bring parties together," he said.

The two countries are not only balancing the concerns at the federal level, but also those of tribal nations, states, and provinces.

"We want to make sure anything we come up with for the agreement does not run afoul of states' wishes," Mr. Gulezian said.

He said officials recognize climate change as one of the most contentious issues. The agreement would not likely supersede climate legislation being considered individually by the two countries, he said.

"Climate change is not in the water-quality agreement, yet we know it is happening in the Great Lakes region," said John Haguland, a U.S. EPA official designated as the lead presenter on that issue.

He cited the region's loss of ice cover, its storm intensity, evaporation rates, and receding lake levels as signs under review by U.S. EPA scientists. Mr. Haguland said a warmer climate impacts the region in many ways, citing more fertilizer runoff, algae growth, and drier soil, plus changes in fish species.

James Weakley, president of the Cleveland-based Lake Carriers' Association, which represents cargo ships confined to the lake system, said his organization wants to ensure the agreement is not expanded in a way that creates a greater regulatory burden and more expenses.

Problems caused by invasive species are one of the issues being addressed in a bigger way. But Mr. Weakley said it's important to maintain a distinction between the lakers his organization represents and oceanic vessels. The ballast water of the latter has been seen for years as one of the greatest pathways for exotics.

The agreement isn't the first attempt the United States and Canada have made to mutually respect the Great Lakes. The 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty called for neither country to ruin or monopolize water that separated them; much of that is within the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes hold 20 percent of the Earth's fresh lakewater.

Contact Tom Henry at:

thenry@theblade.com

or 419-724-6079.