Chicago Illinois skyrocketed their sewage systems did not keep pace In the mid 1800s many of these cities built sewage systems that emptied untreated wastewater directly into the Great Lakes In the 1870s for instance Cleveland's dumping of sewage into Lake Erie made the city's water supply which came directly from the lake unsafe to drink The city tried moving IS IT A LAKE OR A POND the sewage pipes farther out into the lake When that Lakes and ponds are both bodies of standing water The water may come from glaciers did not help it began adding chlorine to its water rivers seepage of groundwater or runoff from supply in 1911 and filtering incoming water in 1917 surrounding areas So what is the difference Surprisingly it's not the size of the pool it's the This cut down greatly on diseases such as typhoid and depth Sunlight can reach the bottom of a pond but not a lake This affects the amount and type cholera but it did not improve the health of the lake of plants that can grow in each habitat and the animals that feed on them Chemical companies paper mills steel mills oil refineries and other industries also began dumping their waste into the Great Lakes and surrounding rivers during World War I 1914 1918 This waste contained high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen which are both natural chemical elements found on Earth along with other chemicals Perhaps because it was the shallowest and most heavily industrialized Lake Erie suffered the most The excess nutrients in the wastewater caused algae to grow rapidly As the algae died off they used up oxygen in the lake Much of Lake Erie's floor became a dead zone starved of oxygen The gooey algae made the lake water unfit for fishing swimming or drinking Mats of algae washed up on the beaches making them unappealing as well
A TURNING POINT By the 1960s people were beginning to complain about Lake Erie Activists started campaigns to save the lake and the media increased coverage of the issue Gradually the situation began to get the attention of state and federal officials Lakes can be found on every continent on Earth even buried under the Antarctic ice sheet Seventy percent of lake water is found in North America Africa and Asia For many the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire was the last straw National outrage over this and other environmental issues prompted Congress to pass the National Environmental Policy Act NEPA on January 1 1970 The Environmental Protection Agency EPA was founded as a result of this act In 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act It required that all US rivers be clean enough for swimming and fishing by 1983 and that discharge of pollutants be ended by 1985 In 1978 the United States and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement Its purpose was to restore and maintain the chemical physical and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes Under this agreement the two countries began working together to reduce the amount of phosphorus in the lakes and thus reduce algal blooms With the new legislation in place and the public's growing awareness of pollution issues change began to happen The US Justice Department sued a number of major polluters of the Great Lakes and forced them to stop dumping their waste into the lakes
The Clean Water Act's goals of making every lake fishable and swimmable have not yet been achieved but progress has been made The proportion of US lakes rivers and coastal waters deemed unsafe for swimming or fishing dropped from two thirds in the 1970s to one third in 2014 While several sections of the Cuyahoga River are still considered Areas of Concern or AOC by the EPA due to their poisoned river bottom muds and damaged riverbanks the river has improved significantly It hasn't caught on fire since that fateful day in 1969 and the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has spent more than 3 5 billion on cleanup and improved sewer systems More than 60 species of fish can now be found in the Cuyahoga River Beavers burrow into its banks and bald eagles nest nearby Lake Erie is no longer the scummy smelly mess it once was either By the early 1990s phosphorus The Cuyahoga River went from a river that caught on fire to a river that people could row down
