April 1, 1965
Page 6545
AGING LAKES AND OUR WATER POLLUTION PROBLEMS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the problems of water pollution control and abatement have been known for many years on our major rivers. Today, however, we are learning that pollution is affecting our lakes, creating mammoth problems which are far more difficult than those we have encountered on rivers and streams.
On Tuesday, March 30, the Washington Post carried an excellent article by Jean M. White, entitled "Five States Show Worry Over Aging Lake Erie," describing the impact of pollution on Lake Erie and the relationship of that situation to our water pollution control and abatement problem. This is one of the problems the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution will study later this year. It is one of the circumstances which has strengthened our resolve to press for enactment of effective water pollution control legislation this year. I ask unanimous consent that the article by Jean M. White. "Five States Show Worry over Aging Lake Erie" be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
FIVE STATES SHOW WORRY OVER AGING LAKE ERIE
(By Jean M. White)
Lake Erie is slowly dying of old age.
This is deeply worrying water supply and pollution experts, bathers, fishermen, and lake-shore property owners.
A lake gets older as it gets richer. Both are bad, at least for lakes.
Enrichment of a lake leads to biological excesses that defile the clear, clean waters. Manmade pollution, loaded with the fertilizing nutrients of nitrogen and phosphorus, is dangerously speeding up the natural aging cycle in many of the Nation's lakes.
One of the visible signs of an aging lake is an overgrowth of aquatic weeds and algae, leaving a green scum that turns clear blue water into split-pea soup. Odorous, slimy masses pile up an beaches and clog water treatment filters. Fish die. Insects breed. Unpleasant odors and tastes follow in the wake.
AGING FASTER THAN OTHERS
Lake Erie is aging faster than the other Great Lakes. But the others and many more lakes have shown signs of the degenerative disease of eutrophication (aging of water) parts of Lake Michigan, Maine's Lake Sebastioook, Lake Washington, Connecticut's Lake Zoar, Oregon's Lake Klamath, and Wisconsin's Lakes Monona, Waubesa, and Kegona.
The premature aging of Lake Erie has been a major part of a still-uncompleted, 2½-year study by Public Health Service specialists.
GLIRB (Great Lakes-Illinois River Basin) is one of eight comprehensive studies of major water basins in the United States being made by the PHS.
Today, community leaders from five States in the Lake Erie basin will meet in Cleveland for a 3-day seminar on land and water use sponsored by the League of Women Voters Education Fund.
So far, the premature aging of Lake Erie has not had any significant effect on the water supply for man and industry.
AGING IS SUBTLE THREAT
''But that is small comfort for the swimmer who finds beaches closed, the commercial fisherman whose business has disappeared with the walleyed pike, the cottage owner who finds stinking weeds turning his white paint to tattletale gray and the waterworks operator whose filters are fouled up.
When people talk about polluted waters, they are usually thinking of floating grapefruit rinds, domestic sewage and industrial wastes.
But pollution-accelerated lake aging is a subtler and more complex threat to clean water. In the end, it can be far more dangerous.
Even if man had never set foot on the shores of Lake Erie, the waters would have slowly aged. There are natural sources of enriching nutrients -- rainfall, the atmosphere and duckways from which nutrients are "bombed in."
But man has thrown in his pollutants and speeded up the cycle with long-term consequences for generations ahead. In some places, there has been so much acceleration that the effects can be seen in a life span.
Pollutants can put more fertilization in a lake than goes on upland crops. This leads to overproduction of aquatic plants and algae. This, in turn, depletes the supply of dissolved oxygen -- the most important single measurement of water quality. An adequate oxygen supply is needed for the best fish and for natural decomposition.
FISH CATCH DROPS
The President's call for a clean America and clean water has put emphasis on a new dimension in water pollution. The new tack goes beyond floating grapefruit rinds and disease prevention.
It takes a big view of water uses, including recreational demands for boating, swimming, skindiving, fishing and water skiing.
For Lake Erie's commercial fishermen, it is not so much a matter of recreation as one of economic survival. The commercial fish catch for Lake Erie has dropped from more than half of the Great Lakes total to less than the catch from Lake Michigan alone.
"Great harm has been and is being done to many waters, and nature's repair process is slow even after the underlying cause is partially or completely corrected," says Kenneth M. Mackenthun, a biologist on the staff of the Robert A. Taft Sanitary Engineering Center in Cincinnati.
But the outlook is not altogether pessimistic.
"It depends on what people want and how much they are willing to pay for it," says James B. Coulter, chief of water projects of the PHS's Division of Water Supply and Pollution Control.
STEPS NECESSARY
The first step, he points out, is to clean up the tributaries that are carrying nutrient-rich sewage and industrial wastes into the waters of the lake. This would slow down the aging acceleration, but that is about all. The second step would be to maintain the water quality at present levels.
This would mean cutting down as much as possible on the nitrogen and phosphorous going into the water. Sewage treatment would have to be stepped up -- at one-quarter to one-half over present costs -- to remove nutrients. Studies have shown phosphorous is the principal culprit, Coulter said.
A repair job -- perhaps lasting 10 years -- would involve dredging out bottom sediment high in phosphates and isolating those wastes in land dumps. It would involve harvesting of crops of algae and aquatic growths. It would involve massive catches of the "rough" fish in the lake, whose bodies contain phosphorus.
It would cost money, but it can be done.