
	Chapter 2


	Introduction

	Policy Response

	Scale of the Restoration Challenge

	The Need for a Restoration Strategy

	Conclusion

	Recommendations

Policy Response

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement has two purposes, "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem." Some restoration has been achieved by maintaining common water quality standards. By the late 1960s, for example, Lake Erie had become known, infamously, as a "dying" lake. Choked with algae, and with large and growing deoxygenated zones, the lake was rapidly moving through an aging process called eutrophication caused by an overload of nutrients. In the early 1980s, regulations in both Canada and the U.S. to control the nutrient phosphorus successfully restored the lake from the worst effects of eutrophication. Vigilance is essential, however, since phosphorous concentrations in Lake Erie are again on the rise (See section 3, Further Matters of Importance).

In the case of persistent toxic substances, product bans and source controls led to dramatic declines of such substances as PCBs and DDT in wildlife from the high levels of the early 1970s. Yet problems remain because a legacy of contaminants continue to enter food chains. Although contaminants enter the lakes from leaking hazardous waste sites, and also from the atmosphere, polluted sediment is the largest source of contaminants to the Great Lakes food chain.⁷ This contaminated sediment amounts to an ongoing source of pollution, steadily releasing residues of pollutants that might have been discharged into the ecosystem years or decades ago. Cleaning up the contaminated sediment remains a major challenge.

Experience shows that progress can be made in remediating contaminated sediment. Notable examples of successful remediation include the Niagara River, the St. Lawrence River at Massena, New York, and Waukegan Harbor in Illinois. Other progress has been achieved in the U.S. under the Superfund Program. In Canada, Thunder Bay serves as an example. These successes demonstrate that knowledge and experience are available in the region to successfully address this problem.

Yet failures to address the magnitude of the problem and to allocate adequate resources blunt progress. The Commission continues to find that, after more than 15 years of planning and incremental activity, restoring the Great Lakes through remedial actions remains elusive and difficult.⁸ Time frames of 10 to 20 years from problem identification to remediation of contaminated sediment are not unusual. Clearly, much more needs to be done, and much more quickly.

The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of the U.S. and Canada identifies severely degraded geographic areas within the Great Lakes basin. To date, 43 Areas of Concern (AOCs) have been identified. The Agreement envisioned that a Remedial Action Plan (RAP) would be developed for each of these problem areas, including considerable local public participation. Lessons resulting from more than a decade of experience with this work illustrate many difficulties in developing and adopting a strategic approach to Great Lakes restoration. These difficulties include:

failure to link priority work to the need to prevent injury to human health
lack of government accountability
inadequate planning for many sites
loss of focus on restoration of beneficial uses, particularly for those sites where there is no dedicated coordinator for RAP implementation and where community groups are expected by some agencies to lead RAP implementation
lack of delisting targets identifying when beneficial uses will be recognized as restored
limited tracking of the effectiveness of implementation actions in terms of removing beneficial use impairments
inadequate funding for many sites that have completed plans
not identifying responsible parties or requiring them to participate
limited pre- and post-remediation monitoring to document environmental, human health and economic benefits
lack of leadership for RAP implementation plans
lack of a dedicated RAP Coordinator
protracted planning efforts that diminish public participation in the decision-making process; and
delays caused by lack of agreement on clean-up levels.

Many of the issues discussed in this chapter were noted in recent reports by the Canadian Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development and the U.S. General Accounting Office. These reports contain useful recommendations for more rapid implementation of programs called for under the Agreement.⁹The Commission will be issuing a report evaluating unmet challenges in the Areas of Concern in the fall of 2002.