Issue Position: Great Lakes - Water Quality

Issue Position

Issue Position: Great Lakes - Water Quality

The Great Lakes are a tremendous natural resource that millions of people rely on for drinking water, and ensuring water quality is a priority.

A generation ago, the Great Lakes were a huge reservoir of persistent toxic substances. Our fisheries were yielding significantly less than historic highs, and our fish were contaminated with DDT and PCBs. The Great Lakes have definitely improved, but we have been unable to keep pace with the needs of the Lakes. There are still hundreds of fish advisories issued every year, and the number of beach closings has been increasing. Lake Erie is once again experiencing a "dead zone" from high levels of phosphorus.

In 1990, Senator Levin authored the Great Lakes Critical Programs Act, which strengthened the water quality standards in the Great Lakes region and required that the worst polluted areas in the Great Lakes be cleaned up using the Remedial Action Plan process outlined in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. The EPA estimates that this law reduces direct toxic water discharges by millions of pounds per year.

In order to address the "dead zone" or hypoxia in Lake Erie, Senator Levin worked with the Senate Commerce Committee to amend the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Amendments Act of 2003 (S. 247) to include language that would provide for research in the Great Lakes to uncover the cause of hypoxia and to initiate a planning effort to address the cause of the hypoxia.

Source