Great Lakes Officials Sign Restoration Accord

Great Lakes Officials Sign Restoration Accord

Federal, state and local officials as well as tribal representatives signed a new accord Friday that aims to protect and restore the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes Declaration is an intergovernmental pledge of support for the development of a strategy to combat the array of environmental problems that plague the lakes.

"This is the largest formal collaboration of its kind focused on the environmental and economic health of the Great Lakes Basin," said Mike Leavitt, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Today, we are committing our collective organizations to protecting and improving this national treasure."

The signers pledged to collaboratively work together toward a common goal of protecting, restoring and improving the Great Lakes ecosystem in order to address new and continuing challenges and ensure a healthy ecosystem for future generations.

Accomplishing that mission, estimated to cost upwards of $8 billion, will not be easy and the new declaration contains no funding promises.

Water quality is poor across much of the Great Lakes, which are besieged by pollution from urban and agricultural runoff, including raw sewage, and by air pollution from vehicles and industry.

Invasive species pose a major threat to the ecosystem, which is also suffering from heavily contaminated sediment and increasing demands from cities, farms, and industry.

The Great Lakes are the largest system of fresh, surface water on Earth, containing roughly 20 percent of the world's fresh water supply, and are a source of drinking water for more than 30 million people.

The five lakes also support the cultures of native communities and the ecosystem is a major economic engine for the region.

More than 150,000 Americans work in the lakes' multi-billion dollar shipping industry, which handles some 180 million tons of cargo annually, and recreation alone in the lakes is valued at some $6 billion annually.

There is no shortage of programs that aim to restore the Great Lakes, but there is ample evidence that this massive effort is failing for lack of resources and a clear overarching strategy.

Several reports by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, have repeatedly found that there is no clear authority to set priorities and no agreement on indicators to measure the health of the ecosystem or the progress made to restore it.

The new effort, prompted by an executive order signed in May by President George W. Bush, is intended to cut through an increasingly complex jurisdictional network that includes two countries, multiple Tribes and First Nations, more than 140 U.S. federal programs, eight Great Lakes states, and numerous city programs - all dealing with the five lakes.

The agreement sets up strategy teams, made up of government, quasi-government and other regional stakeholders, as the working bodies responsible for drafting action plans that will be used for the draft Great Lakes strategy.

This strategy will be presented to the members of the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration for resolution of final issues and adoption at Summit I, scheduled for the summer of 2005.

Source: Environmental News Service (ENS)