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00:00On a clear winter morning, a team of fishermen ventures onto the ice in the footsteps of their ancestors.
00:11They're descendants of some of the first people to inhabit one of the world's most extraordinary ecosystems.
00:18And while the technology they use may have changed, the method dates back millennia.
00:24They bore a line of holes, then pass a long board carrying a rope beneath the ice to stretch 200-foot sections of gill net.
00:54When the last is set, the fishermen check a net set the day before.
01:17Europeans first came to this place hundreds of miles from the nearest salt water more than 400 years ago
01:24and found native people using gill nets to tap impressive schools of fish.
01:31But fish were just one of many natural resources that drew wave after wave of settlers and immigrants here.
01:39Men named Astor, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford made their fortunes here.
01:47Many more came in search of a better life.
01:51Each played a role in transforming the region into the most powerful economic juggernaut the world had ever seen.
02:00Because of the nature of this unique place, fish have always played a special role in people's lives,
02:07even for people who never think about them.
02:12That's because more than 20% of the fresh water on the surface of the planet is here,
02:18and that water is fundamental to the health, prosperity, and quality of life of the region's more than 40 million inhabitants.
02:27Most of that water flows through five giant inland seas known as the Great Lakes.
02:55Since French fur traders first came to the Great Lakes region, wave after wave of settlers and immigrants followed.
03:06The Great Lakes ecosystem's unique abundance of natural resources fueled a population boom
03:12that culminated in the emergence of an industrial powerhouse.
03:17The region became the cradle of American consumer capitalism and the arsenal of democracy that helped win two world wars.
03:26After World War II, something changed.
03:29Thanks to high-wage manufacturing jobs and a booming post-war economy,
03:34people from all walks of life began coming to the shores of the Great Lakes not to make money but to enjoy it.
03:42Middle-class prosperity became a ticket to the countryside and a lifestyle that had previously been the sole domain of the well-to-do.
03:53They bought boats and campers and built cottages,
03:57and like Ernest Hemingway, the Great Lakes native who came to personify the rugged outdoorsman, they went fishing.
04:06This is outdoors country.
04:09From the protecting forests tumble clear and sparkling streams.
04:17Speckled trout gamely fight and sometimes get away, but most often they end up in the net.
04:24Lake trout, often 20 pounds in weight, are another kind of challenge.
04:32People that fished the Great Lakes, especially near big cities, were often disappointed.
04:38By the 1960s, a number of native fish species prized by people had disappeared from the lakes and others were nearly gone.
04:47Their absence was a troubling sign.
04:49Fish in general indicate the health of water itself, the quality of water in terms of temperature, chemical composition, toxic substances.
04:59Overfishing was partly responsible, but other human activities also took their toll.
05:07Not only did lumbering clear the land of trees, but it flattened and it made it smooth and it made it much more vulnerable to wind and water erosion.
05:15The waste products from lumbering were able to enter the rivers and other waterways and to clog the bottoms to fill up the fish habitat
05:24and to create a sort of sludge along the bottom that had a fundamental impact on the health of the aquatic species in those rivers.
05:31Farming increased the amount of sediment that washed into waterways.
05:37There are some fundamental changes to the quality of the water in terms of suspended sediment and the way that the bottom is shaped and the way that the fish are able to spawn.
05:49The wetlands at river mouths that filtered water flowing off the land were destroyed to create harbors.
05:57Rivers and streams were dammed to raise their levels for log runs and to power sawmills, gristmills and eventually hydroelectric plants.
06:06The rivers connecting the Great Lakes were dammed and turned into shipping channels,
06:11creating some of the most productive spawning grounds in the lakes and ending natural fluctuations in the levels of Lake Superior and Ontario.
06:19The Great Lakes, it was basically organized as a vast river.
06:27Now when we came along, we of course dammed the tributaries, we dredged out the lower parts of rivers to make ports,
06:36we built walls to break the storms near cities, built canals.
06:43The effect is to trim the living part off and isolate at least to some extent from the offshore open waters.
06:51That was one of the bigger shifts from a moderately riverine kind of system as a living system to a kind of a semi-artificial lake system.
07:03The transformation of the aquatic ecosystem went beyond the physical landscape.
07:17Niagara Falls had been an impenetrable barrier between the Great Lakes and the ocean.
07:25The opening of the Erie and Welland canals changed that.
07:30By 1950, a number of ocean species had migrated into the lakes via the canals.
07:38None was more lethal than the sea lamprey.
07:44The sea lamprey is an eel-like predator whose mouth works like a suction cup with rows of teeth that attach to fish.
07:53Once it latches on, the lamprey bores a hole and feeds on its prey's bodily fluids until the fish dies.
08:01No organism native to the Great Lakes feeds on sea lampreys, so there was nothing to stop them.
08:07The larger bodied fish in the system, lake trout among them, were the ones that were targeted by larger lampreys.
08:14The lake trout fishery once produced and shipped to market as much as 10 million pounds of fish annually.
08:22Lake trout were the natural top-level predator in the Great Lakes ecosystem and a prized commercial and sport fish.
08:32Top-level predators like lake trout, they tend to be much more indicative of the overall health of the ecosystem.
08:38So in the cold water systems of North America, the lake trout is the keystone organizing species.
08:46By the 1950s, overfishing and habitat destruction had reduced their numbers significantly.
08:53Then sea lamprey overwhelmed what lake trout remained in every Great Lake except Superior.
09:00During its adult life, the lamprey turns into a real vampire, feeding only on the blood and body juices of its victims.
09:08Delicate species like trout may be killed in eight hours.
09:13Economic losses have been severe.
09:16On Lakes Huron and Michigan, entire fleets have been tied up.
09:20Equipment and buildings have been abandoned to the elements.
09:24Lake trout were extirpated from virtually all of the Great Lakes except for a few isolated parts,
09:30embayments on the north side of Lake Huron and in some areas of Lake Superior.
09:35In the rest of the Great Lakes, lake trout are gone.
09:40The sea lamprey brought hard times to lakefront towns.
09:46Pressure mounted on politicians in the United States and Canada to solve the problem.
09:53In the 1950s, more than 400 years after European immigrants first arrived,
09:58the first large-scale effort to restore a part of the Great Lakes ecosystem was launched
10:04when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared war on sea lamprey.
10:09The trick was to find a way to stop them without further damaging the ecosystem.
10:15Finding adult lampreys in the lakes was impractical,
10:18so fishery scientists focused on a more vulnerable stage in their lives.
10:23Lewis King was part of the effort.
10:26The whole program is to either keep the adult lampreys out of the streams to spawn
10:32or if they have already created populations of the larval lampreys
10:37to find some way to get at these larval populations.
10:42Most sea lamprey lay eggs in stream beds.
10:45When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into the stream bed
10:49where they live for seven years feeding on microorganisms
10:52before migrating to open water to hunt for fish.
10:58Dams were built that blocked sea lamprey from entering streams
11:01but were low enough for spawning fish to jump.
11:05Barriers often failed when stream levels rose during storms and spring runoff.
11:12Fishery managers turned to chemicals,
11:14hoping to find a compound that would kill sea lamprey
11:18without harming other aquatic organisms, especially fish.
11:22The search for the chemical was a long, painstaking affair.
11:27We simply tested any chemical that would dissolve in water.
11:32About 7,000 compounds were screened before one group or one family of chemicals
11:39was found to be selective to lampreys.
11:44Four years into the effort, researchers found a compound called TFM that showed promise.
11:52Many, many tests had to be run on this chemical
11:56to determine its safety to non-target organisms
12:00like fish, insects, mammals, birds, dairy cattle.
12:05TFM proved to be selectively toxic to sea lamprey larvae in spawning streams.
12:11The U.S. and Canadian federal governments formed the Great Lakes Fishery Commission
12:16to oversee the use of TFM in more than 200 streams throughout the region.
12:23Within two years after those initial applications,
12:27the number of lampreys were reduced by about 85 to 89 percent.
12:32So it was shown within a very short time after that chemical went into the field
12:37that it was going to work.
12:39TFM made it possible for fishery biologists
12:42to tackle the problem of getting fish back into the lakes.
12:46In 1965, the Great Lakes Fishery Commission
12:50launched the effort to rebuild the lake trout population.
12:55where eggs taken from adult fish were used to produce offspring
12:59that could be released by the thousands into the lakes.
13:03The goal of lake trout restoration, or some would say rehabilitation,
13:08is to basically restore self-reproducing populations
13:12so that stocking would no longer be needed
13:15and to have those populations support viable fisheries for benefits.
13:20The key here is self-sustaining.
13:23But with lake trout largely gone from the lakes,
13:26the lack of brood stock proved to be a significant obstacle
13:30to restoring something resembling the natural lake trout population.
13:34We're starting from a very, very reduced state of diversity
13:37and then trying to rebuild something
13:39that was probably tremendously complex and unmeasured.
13:43That wasn't the only problem.
13:45By the 1960s, Lake Erie was in serious trouble.
13:50Right now, it's pretty bad.
13:53Well, how many dead fish are there out here now?
13:55There's 15, maybe 100 if you can't see them all,
14:00and all these weeds, and it certainly smells.
14:04So I've seen this place change quite a bit in 69 years.
14:08I've seen it so green already
14:10that you think you're out in the lake
14:12looking down into the green waters of the lake.
14:14You think you see it, but it's nothing but just pollution, that's what it is.
14:1830, 40 years ago, you'd go out fishing.
14:22We never carried drinking water.
14:25We'd have a cup on a string and we'd reach over
14:28and get the water out of the lake.
14:31If you do that now, you'd be taking slow poison.
14:35In the summer, one-fourth of the lake is dead, without oxygen.
14:40The fish are dying.
14:43As cities grew and more factories opened their doors,
14:47the amount of untreated sewage and industrial waste
14:51dumped directly into Great Lakes waterways swelled,
14:55reaching a crescendo during World War II.
14:58We really were a major part of building the arsenal of democracy,
15:03as we called it in World War II.
15:06And everything was hurry up and everything was get it done
15:10and very little attention was paid to pollution.
15:15The lower lakes, especially from the Detroit River down
15:19to through along the Ohio Line and onward,
15:22received a lot of untreated waste, some of it pretty bad stuff.
15:29The post-war economic boom
15:31prolonged the unchecked dumping of toxic waste.
15:34We used to come out here in Lake Erie and enjoy clean water.
15:38Our state's building thousands of dollars,
15:41hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of parks along the lakefront.
15:45And people come out in their cars
15:47for a Sunday afternoon recreation period,
15:50and what do they got? A cesspool.
15:57Lake Erie is an emblem of growth, of beauty.
16:01Lake Erie is an emblem of gross abuse.
16:04There are only a few other parts of the Great Lakes
16:07that were abused to an equivalent extent.
16:10I think Lake Erie became emblematic
16:13of how bad things can be when people are really stupid.
16:17In the 50s, and particularly into the 1960s,
16:20there were some very serious water quality problems going on.
16:24Kenan, United States, asked the International Joint Commission
16:28why was Lake Erie going dead?
16:30Why was there massive fish kills on Lake Erie?
16:33There were some very significant issues.
16:36The International Joint Commission
16:38is an independent, binational organization
16:41created in 1909 to resolve disputes
16:44between the United States and Canada
16:47about the use and quality of boundary waters.
16:50With tens of millions of people
16:52depending upon the Great Lakes for drinking water,
16:55the IJC turned to scientists for answers.
16:58Cleaning up the lakes was also crucial
17:01to U.S. and Canadian government efforts
17:03to restore Great Lakes fish.
17:05But that story took a surprising turn
17:08when a fisheries biologist made a bold move
17:11that focused public attention on the Great Lakes
17:14like nothing before.
17:25Howard Tanner grew up in Michigan
17:28and fell in love with fishing as a child.
17:31In 1964, he became director of fisheries
17:34in the Michigan Department of Conservation
17:37and was given a surprising assignment.
17:40I had a director who was a good leader.
17:43We had a long conversation,
17:45and he ended my conversation with, he said,
17:48do something, and if you can make it spectacular,
17:51please make it spectacular.
17:53It was a tall order.
17:55Although sea lamprey were being controlled,
17:58another aquatic invader was causing big problems
18:01in the Great Lakes.
18:03The alewife is a prey fish native to the Atlantic Ocean.
18:07Like the sea lamprey, it entered the lakes
18:10through the Welland Canal
18:12and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem.
18:14There were billions of pounds of alewives
18:17in the Great Lakes and not much else.
18:19They estimate over 90% of the weight of fish
18:22in the Great Lakes was alewife.
18:24Now that means that the system was almost all alewives
18:28and virtually nothing, nothing left.
18:30Alewives became so abundant
18:32that they probably preyed on the larvae
18:35of all other species of fish.
18:37Each spring, each June, each July,
18:40the alewives would die.
18:42There would be a pile of alewives
18:44a foot high and 300 miles long
18:47stretching from Chicago to Mackinac City,
18:50and they stunk.
18:51But Howard Tanner saw alewives
18:53as something more than simply a problem.
18:56He had an idea to turn the Great Lakes
18:59into a world-class fishing and tourism destination.
19:03There was just one problem.
19:05There were no fish.
19:08Tanner knew that simply restoring lake trout
19:11wouldn't help since they're hard to catch
19:13and don't put up much of a fight.
19:15We needed a fish that was high on the scale
19:19of desirability as far as the recreational fisherman
19:22is concerned and would provide the excitement
19:25to convince people to invest the time
19:28and the money that it would take
19:30to go out and enjoy a fishery on the Great Lakes.
19:33And we had a food supply that was just without limit,
19:37and that was the alewife.
19:39Before taking over Michigan's Fisheries Department,
19:43Tanner had worked for the Colorado Department of Fisheries,
19:47overseeing the stocking of fish in reservoirs there.
19:50He got to know fisheries managers throughout the West
19:53and became familiar with the region's fish.
19:56One afternoon, he received a phone call from a friend.
20:00They said, did you know that there's a surplus of coho
20:03in the Columbia River?
20:05Coho salmon were extremely popular
20:07with fishermen on the West Coast.
20:10And I realized that there was the tool
20:14that we could change the Great Lakes.
20:17It was a thrill.
20:19I mean, I couldn't contain myself.
20:22You want a fish that's big and beautiful and grows fast
20:25and eats alewife and is attractive to the sportsman,
20:28one that he likes to catch, one that fights well,
20:31one that's beautiful, one that tastes good.
20:33And I guess you'd have to ask one that's kind of dumb,
20:36because after all, you want the fisherman
20:38to be capable of outsmarting him and catching him.
20:42This opportunity, it's like a ripe plum on a low branch.
20:46It's been there, it's right there,
20:48but nobody has done anything about it.
20:51The state of Oregon gave Michigan a million coho eggs,
20:55but it meant introducing another exotic species
20:58into the Great Lakes ecosystem.
21:01After the disastrous impact of other exotics,
21:04Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota
21:06had agreed not to introduce exotic species
21:09into their waters without a waiver signed by all three.
21:13I was well aware of that compact,
21:17but there was not time to honor it.
21:21We felt opposition would build if we stalled,
21:25and so we said, okay, we're bad guys,
21:28we're violating the compact,
21:30but it's for the good of the cause,
21:32and it's going to be all right, so we did it.
21:35The Michigan Fisheries Department
21:37also decided to turn history on its head
21:40and ban commercial fishing in Michigan's waters
21:43to allow salmon to proliferate.
21:46We knew that if we were going to build a sport fishery
21:50on the Great Lakes, we were going to have to
21:53shut down most of the commercial fishing,
21:55and that wasn't going to be easy.
21:57We fought the federal government,
21:59they tried to keep us from getting money,
22:01they wrote our governor and said
22:03veto their appropriations, and they lost.
22:07The first coho salmon raised from Oregon's gift of eggs
22:11were released into streams along Lake Michigan's shore
22:15on April 2, 1966.
22:18There were lots of people, there were reporters,
22:21there was my family, there were friends,
22:23and then in the afternoon while we had more salmon
22:26to plant down in Bear Creek,
22:28so I followed the fish truck down to the Bear Creek,
22:32and I planted some salmon there,
22:35and it was kind of a special moment.
22:38I watched these little fish go down the stream,
22:41and they would mature in the fall of 1967.
22:47The following year was one of the worst for alewives.
22:51Dead fish littered Lake Michigan's beaches,
22:54keeping tourists away and infuriating property owners.
23:00When the summer of 1967 turned to fall,
23:03a buzz began to develop along the Lake Michigan shore
23:06as salmon began returning to the rivers
23:09where they'd been released the previous year.
23:12Fishermen lined the riverbanks,
23:15then traffic jams choked boat ramps
23:17as more and more fishermen arrived to be among the first
23:20to hook into what became a fishing frenzy.
23:24The coho fishery just exploded.
23:26They called it the coho coast,
23:28and it was a great excitement,
23:30and it was declared to be one of the most newsworthy items of the year.
23:34And lo and behold, the next year,
23:37there was no dead alewife on the beach.
23:40People knew the coho had eaten the alewife,
23:44and it wasn't true.
23:46The real reason there were no alewives on the beaches
23:49was because the previous year's die-off
23:52had drastically diminished the population.
23:55There were simply far fewer alive to reproduce.
23:58It happened because the alewife ran out of food.
24:01And so they came to us and said,
24:03You did it, you solved the alewife problem.
24:06And we knew that we didn't have enough fish out there to solve it.
24:10And we took credit for it.
24:12We must have argued a full minute before we said that.
24:15And then not only did we have the support
24:17of the people who were interested in the fishing public,
24:19we had the support of all those people
24:21who wanted the alewife problem solved.
24:23The coho are a smashing success.
24:27Salmon are so plentiful that patient anglers
24:30who present current 1970 licenses
24:33take home some of the surplus fish.
24:36Salmon fever brought people to the Great Lakes like nothing before.
24:40Fishing tackle and boat manufacturers
24:43introduced products specifically geared to Great Lakes salmon fishing.
24:49Well, if it wasn't for the salmon,
24:51there wouldn't be any charter boats in Manistee County
24:54or any other county as far as that goes.
24:56The introduction of salmon to this area
24:59has meant a great deal to us as business people.
25:02I think the salmon fishing in this area
25:04has built up the business at least 50%,
25:07motel business and all others.
25:09The frenzy was a culmination of Henry Ford's dream
25:13to create an affluent and mobile working class
25:16with the money and leisure time to enjoy the outdoors.
25:21It was the leisure time, it was the wealth
25:25that followed World War II
25:27and the crowding that began to occur in inland waters
25:30that clearly demonstrated that the time was ready
25:33to convert the commercial fishery to a sport fishery
25:37in order to make the most favorable allocation
25:40of this vast, vast freshwater resource.
25:44Other Great Lakes states followed Michigan's lead
25:47and began stocking salmon, spreading salmon fever
25:50throughout the region and beyond,
25:52drawing fishermen from around the world.
25:55But the boom in sport fishing and tourism
25:58shined a bright light on the troubled condition of the lakes.
26:04In 1968, a massive die-off of young salmon
26:08in Michigan's fish hatcheries
26:10was linked to persistent pesticides,
26:12primarily DDT, found in waterways
26:15where the previous generation of salmon had been released.
26:21Water pollution in the Great Lakes
26:23was moving beyond simply a matter of public health.
26:26It was becoming bad for business, and it was national news.
26:31The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland
26:33was one of the most polluted rivers in America.
26:36In June 1969, the river gained national attention
26:40and became a lasting symbol of the deterioration
26:43of the Great Lakes when it burst into flames.
26:46The conservation movement did find its roots,
26:50its beginnings, perhaps in the late 50s,
26:53but principally in the early 60s.
27:06The water used to be a lovely green.
27:08You could see around, and it never had this here foam
27:11and stuff floating around on top of it.
27:15What happens when tourists ask you about it?
27:18Well, I tell them the truth about it
27:20because maybe the public would put the pressure on the government
27:23and clean some of this stuff up.
27:25Public pressure mounted,
27:27forcing politicians in Canada and the United States to act.
27:31In 1972, Canada and the United States
27:34signed what I think is a revolutionary agreement,
27:37the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement,
27:39to reduce nutrient inputs into the Great Lakes
27:42and help solve some of the problems,
27:44particularly on the lower Great Lakes.
27:46By then, scientists had come to understand
27:49the problems plaguing Lake Erie.
27:52For more than a century,
27:54increasing amounts of fertilizers, animal waste,
27:57and raw sewage rich in phosphates
27:59had washed off the land or were dumped into the lake.
28:03These nutrient-rich pollutants
28:05fed an explosion in aquatic plant life.
28:08Each summer, tremendous blankets of algae
28:11and aquatic plants grew, died, and sank to the bottom.
28:15As the plant material decomposed,
28:18it sucked the oxygen from the lake,
28:20a process called eutrophication.
28:23Then the chemistry changes,
28:25and all of a sudden phosphates that had been precipitated out
28:29and were tied up in sediments indefinitely
28:32became liberated and charged back up.
28:34And so this dead zone, that early kind of a dead zone,
28:39brought phosphates back up,
28:41and it was a great huge feedback mechanism that got started.
28:45And this got started in the 50s.
28:48The initial goal of the cleanup effort
28:51was to combat eutrophication.
28:53The U.S. and Canada committed massive funding
28:56for wastewater treatment plants throughout the region
28:59and limited phosphates and laundry detergents.
29:02One of the big contributions of the International Joint Commission,
29:06actually going back many years,
29:08has been in being sort of a conscience
29:10for Canada and the United States in terms of sewage treatment.
29:13There was a particular emphasis on bringing sewage treatment
29:16up to a minimum standard around the lakes.
29:19It had a huge impact.
29:21But that success was tempered by other problems.
29:25In 1969, the public learned that fish
29:28caught in some parts of the Great Lakes
29:31were too contaminated with toxins to eat.
29:34In the war years, there was a tremendous increase
29:36in the number of organic chemicals,
29:38the range of chemicals that were produced for the war effort,
29:41and a sort of overly optimistic reliance
29:43on the potential for technology to solve all of human problems.
29:47One of the outcomes of that industrial activity
29:50was very free disposal of the waste of that industrial activity
29:54into the lakes and into the surrounding lands.
29:57The pollution from these plants
29:59reached the entire southern end of the lake.
30:02Scientists in the region became aware that there were chemicals
30:05that were causing quite disastrous results for fish and wildlife.
30:09We had cross-billed cormorants
30:11and bald eagles disappearing because of DDT.
30:15From Love Canal, New York, to Hamilton, Ontario,
30:19to Duluth, Minnesota, and Gary, Indiana,
30:22the price of progress shocked the public
30:25and the vast amount of toxic dumping that had occurred came to light.
30:29The character of industry reflects the people who run the industry,
30:33and most people are good people, most industries are good industries,
30:38but there are always those that will violate,
30:41and the violation was severe.
30:44In their natural state, ecosystems can take care of themselves reasonably well.
30:48They can persist a long time,
30:50even under relatively difficult circumstances,
30:53and those difficult circumstances come gradually.
30:56On the other hand, the way these ecosystems have been affected by us
31:00over the last 100, 200 years
31:02is very rapid and catastrophic by comparison.
31:06Whenever we interfere with these things
31:08the way we've conventionally interfered with these things,
31:11it's been harder to live with them.
31:13In lots of different ways, they've turned hostile to us.
31:16The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was revised
31:19to completely ban the dumping of persistent toxic chemicals.
31:23The Great Lakes became a leader globally
31:26in terms of addressing these kinds of toxic pollutants.
31:31When we started to look around to see what machinery we had
31:35to deal with this situation, we found there was none.
31:39The people are deeply concerned with the environment,
31:42that they are prepared to meet the higher costs,
31:45both as consumers and as taxpayers,
31:47for the programs that really we've got to have
31:50and in the Great Lakes Basin ahead of anywhere else.
31:53The pollution of the Great Lakes also prompted Congress
31:56to pass the U.S. Clean Water Act in 1972
32:00that included a permit system regulating pollution sources,
32:04including industries, municipal governments,
32:07and some agricultural facilities.
32:10In the Clean Water Act, the word integrity is specified as a goal,
32:14and the intent actually was to bring the waters of the U.S.
32:18to a state of integrity by 1985.
32:22So they mustn't have had much of a notion
32:25about what ecosystem integrity was about if they thought that.
32:28The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement was revised again in 1978,
32:33with the U.S. and Canada committing themselves
32:36to restoring, preserving, and maintaining
32:40the chemical, biological, and physical integrity of the Great Lakes.
32:45The revision also launched a revolutionary approach
32:48to solving Great Lakes problems.
32:51Rather than tackle problems in isolation,
32:54their relationship to the entire ecosystem would be considered.
32:58Some of our most brilliant scientists conceived of the concept
33:02of humans as being part of the ecosystem, not separate from it,
33:07that the ecosystem approach recognizes the interaction
33:10between humans, wildlife, air, land, and water as a cohesive unit,
33:16and that anything we do to protect water quality or ecosystem quality
33:20needs to look at humans' influence on the ecosystem
33:23and all those other physical, chemical, and biological components
33:27that comprise the ecosystem.
33:30The struggle to restore the lakes slowly paid off.
33:34We have seen some very good improvements in water quality
33:37over the last 25 to 30 years.
33:40We've had very good success primarily in the control of point sources.
33:43That work is largely accomplished, and we're now fine-tuning.
33:47Although water quality improved, decades of unchecked dumping of toxins
33:51left large segments of shoreline and lake beds severely contaminated.
33:56In the mid-1980s, the International Joint Commission designated
34:0142 locations as Areas of Concern and launched
34:05the Remedial Action Plan Program, or RAP, to clean them up.
34:10Environmental conditions were so severely degraded
34:12that some aggressive action needed to be focused specifically
34:15on those communities.
34:18Private industry and government agencies funded the removal
34:21of millions of tons of sediment contaminated with known carcinogens.
34:26But more than 20 years into the program,
34:28the results have been largely disappointing.
34:31Only a handful of the Remedial Action Plan sites
34:34have actually been removed from the list of RAP sites.
34:38And that to me says that in 20 years, more than 20 years of effort,
34:42the system is probably not working as well as it should.
34:45The Remedial Action Plan Program is just one example of the difficulty
34:50in undoing the harm done to the Great Lakes ecosystem
34:53over the past two centuries.
34:59The Spencer Baird is a one-of-a-kind ship.
35:03In the spring, she begins making her way through the lakes.
35:08Each morning, a fleet of trucks fills her deck tanks
35:12with thousands of lake trout fry.
35:24After steaming to an offshore reef,
35:27she releases her cargo in hopes that they might play a role
35:30in establishing a self-sustaining population
35:33of the lake's natural top predator.
35:38But after more than 40 years of stocking hatchery-raised fish,
35:42the goal remains elusive.
35:45We're putting 120,000 fish out today, is it Dave?
35:48Yeah.
35:50Lake trout are very, very vulnerable.
35:52They existed and they spawned successfully in those lakes
35:55when it was a far different environment.
35:57There weren't as many competitors, there weren't as many predators out there.
36:01Except in Lake Superior,
36:03lake trout are going to have to always be sustained by hatchery planting.
36:08Sea lamprey are still a persistent threat.
36:12Although sea lamprey control has diversified,
36:15TFM remains the key to having fish in the lakes.
36:19We are in the sea lamprey control game forever.
36:24From a basin-wide perspective,
36:26if we just walked away from sea lamprey control,
36:29they would once again steal away our fisheries.
36:33It probably should be thought of as a cost of doing business
36:37to have the ecosystem as healthy as we can get it.
36:44Recreational fishing is still big business on the Great Lakes,
36:48and since their introduction more than 40 years ago,
36:51salmon are still the big draw.
36:55Each fall, coho and chinook salmon
36:58return to the streams where they were released to spawn and die.
37:03Salmon have adapted well to the Great Lakes,
37:06and many reproduce naturally.
37:08But except in Lake Superior,
37:10natural reproduction doesn't produce enough fish
37:13to support the sport fishery.
37:16So a portion of the returning fish are herded into weirs.
37:21Where their eggs are harvested and fertilized.
37:27Then moved to hatcheries
37:30to support the ongoing stocking programs.
37:35But things are changing.
37:37In some of the Great Lakes,
37:39the main food supply, alewives, have dwindled,
37:42and so has the salmon fishery.
37:50Tom Nalepa is a biologist
37:52with NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab
37:55in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
37:57He's aboard the research vessel Lake Guardian
38:00to take a series of bottom samples in Lake Michigan.
38:04He's looking for a special organism.
38:06This amphipod, the genus is Diaperia,
38:10and this is a native species found in the Great Lakes.
38:14Fish feed very heavily on them.
38:17Probably there's no species of fish found in the Great Lakes
38:21that doesn't feed on Diaperia,
38:23or had fed on Diaperia at some stage in its life cycle.
38:28Diaperia are a key part of the diet of prey fish
38:32that lake trout and salmon feed upon, including alewives.
38:36But Diaperia have been disappearing from the lakes.
38:39That may explain the decline of alewives.
38:42But why are Diaperia disappearing?
38:45Tom is investigating the links
38:47between the disappearance of Diaperia
38:50and the spread of two more exotic species.
38:54Zebra mussels are filter feeders
38:56from the Baltic Sea region of Europe,
38:58thought to have hitched a ride to the lakes
39:01in the ballast water of cargo ships.
39:03They appeared in 1988 and quickly spread through the lakes.
39:07Then an even more prolific invader
39:10called the quagga mussel compounded the problem.
39:16We don't see zebra mussels deeper than 50 meters.
39:20They just don't have the ability to grow and reproduce
39:24at the deeper, colder temperatures that you get
39:27in the deeper waters.
39:29Quagga mussels can do very well.
39:31The numbers are much greater in the lake
39:35than we ever saw for zebra mussels.
39:38So the ecological changes in response
39:41to what all these mussels are doing
39:44is going to be much greater
39:46in response to quagga mussels compared to zebra mussels.
39:50Some of the most striking evidence
39:53of the explosion in quagga mussels
39:56can be found on shipwrecks resting deep below the surface.
40:00A few years ago, these wrecks,
40:03which lie deeper than 50 meters, were free of mussels.
40:07Today they're nearly completely covered.
40:11The lakes are troubled by a whole new set of problems
40:15of invasive species that have come in
40:17and balanced water principally.
40:19They really modified the biology of the lakes,
40:22particularly all of the lakes except Lake Superior.
40:26Salmon populations and fish populations in general
40:29have declined dramatically in Lake Huron.
40:32There's a threat that Lake Michigan will also decline.
40:41Water quality in many parts of the Great Lakes has improved.
40:45People now swim at beaches
40:47that 40 years ago were covered with dead fish.
40:50And native fish like the lake sturgeon and lake whitefish
40:54are spawning in rivers near industrial areas
40:57for the first time in nearly a century.
41:00This fish came from Buffalo, New York,
41:03225 miles all the way across Lake Erie
41:06and now up the Detroit River.
41:08Around 1910, there were tens of thousands of these
41:12caught in the Detroit River every fall.
41:15It was a big commercial fishery, very profitable.
41:18And these fish are starting to return to the river now
41:22after almost a century of being absent.
41:27In June 2009, President Barack Obama
41:30signed the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative,
41:33which dedicated 400,000 acres of land
41:36to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative,
41:39which dedicated $475 million
41:41to accomplish the long-term goals
41:43of ensuring that the Great Lakes ecosystem
41:46is safe and healthy for fish, wildlife, and humans.
41:49That means solving existing problems
41:51and taking steps to prevent new problems from occurring.
41:58One persistent problem
42:00has been the contamination of Great Lakes waterways.
42:03Wastewater treatment systems played an important role
42:06in reducing nutrient loading to the lakes
42:09and preventing problems like eutrophication.
42:12But many cities surrounding the Great Lakes
42:15have what are called combined sewer systems.
42:18Combined sewer systems are just what they sound like.
42:21They're a large pipe that takes both rainwater and sanitary flow
42:25and combines them in one pipe.
42:27In Milwaukee, that single pipe moves wastewater
42:30to the city's Jones Island plant,
42:32where it's treated to federal standards
42:35and released into Lake Michigan.
42:37Combined sewer system is a really good piece of infrastructure
42:41because it protects our Great Lakes
42:43from a lot of the pollution that we don't think about,
42:46the stormwater pollution.
42:48Every once in a while, you'll hit a heavy rainstorm,
42:51and we'll have a combined sewer overflow from that system.
42:54In big storms, the amount of runoff
42:56can be much more than the sewer system
42:59and treatment plant can handle.
43:01When that happens, millions of gallons of wastewater
43:05are released untreated into the lake.
43:08Like Chicago, Milwaukee draws its water supply from Lake Michigan,
43:13so combined sewer overflows threaten drinking water
43:17and the city's lakefront parks and beaches.
43:20To help prevent contamination problems,
43:23Milwaukee built a deep tunnel to help manage overflows.
43:28Prior to this deep tunnel coming online,
43:31we had 50 to 60 combined sewer overflows a year.
43:34We had a volume of overflow
43:36of around 8 to 9 billion gallons on average,
43:39so that was an average flow.
43:41And we built the deep tunnel, it came online in 94,
43:44and almost immediately we dropped the overflow volume in numbers.
43:48Since it's been operational for the last 14 years,
43:52we're averaging about 2 overflows,
43:55combined sewer overflows per year.
43:58Where we had 50, we're down to 2,
44:01and where we had 8 to 9 billion gallons,
44:04we still have overflows, but it's around 1 billion.
44:07Combined sewer overflows are a persistent problem
44:11throughout the Great Lakes region.
44:14Chicago and Toronto have also built overflow tunnels,
44:18and more cities are considering them.
44:22Restoring and maintaining the biological
44:25and chemical integrity of the Great Lakes
44:28continues to be a significant challenge.
44:31So does restoring and maintaining their physical integrity.
44:35Fresh water, the Great Lakes' defining resource,
44:39is becoming an increasingly scarce
44:42and valuable commodity around the world.
44:45Climate change threatens the water supplies
44:48of more and more people and increases pressure
44:51to tap into the most abundant concentration of fresh water
44:55on the surface of the planet.
44:58Proposals have been made
45:00to export Great Lakes water outside the region.
45:03In response, the governors of the 8 Great Lakes states
45:07and premiers of the 2 Canadian provinces
45:10signed the Great Lakes Charter,
45:13formalizing their commitment to refuse permits
45:16to anyone seeking to divert Great Lakes water
45:19outside of the basin.
45:23In 2008, that commitment was sealed
45:26by the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact,
45:30which was signed into law by President George W. Bush.
45:34One of the concerns was to prevent
45:37large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes,
45:40so the governors needed to enact
45:43some type of legislation to protect them from that.
45:47There was no consistency in the way the laws were being applied
45:51before the compact.
45:53But topography has presented some communities
45:56with a frustrating dilemma.
45:58Waukesha, Wisconsin, is a quiet bedroom suburb of Milwaukee,
46:02a 15-minute drive from Lake Michigan.
46:07Waukesha has been a city since 1896.
46:11Its claim to fame was in 1868.
46:15Colonel Dunbar, who was seriously ill,
46:18came and drank out of the Bethesda Spring
46:21and was miraculously healed.
46:24And this started a period from the 1870s
46:28to the early 1900s
46:31where Waukesha's nickname was the Saratoga of the West.
46:35We had beautiful hotels and spring houses.
46:39Waukesha's abundant groundwater came from an aquifer
46:43that runs along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan.
46:47The deep sandstone aquifer is being depleted.
46:50It's being, water's being pumped out of it
46:53about, on a regional scale here,
46:55about 2 to 3 times faster
46:57than it would have been naturally replenished
47:00under natural conditions.
47:02But that's not Waukesha's biggest problem.
47:05What is prompting them to look to alternative sources right now
47:09is radium.
47:11The EPA has now required that they have to meet
47:15the current radium standard in drinking water,
47:18and several of their wells don't meet it.
47:21So the radium has to be removed,
47:23and that's a fairly expensive process.
47:26Radium is a naturally occurring substance toxic to humans.
47:31Faced with the prospect of running out of usable drinking water,
47:35Waukesha looked to the Great Lake just 15 miles away.
47:39It's crucial for the health of our city
47:42that we make sure our residents have safe water
47:46and that we have a source of water that will help us grow
47:50and continue to be a vibrant, exciting city like we are today.
47:55But there was a problem.
47:57Waukesha lies one mile outside the Great Lakes drainage basin,
48:02so technically it wasn't eligible to access Great Lakes water.
48:07Because of Waukesha and communities like it,
48:10the Water Compact includes provisions
48:13for what are termed straddling communities
48:16to apply for Great Lakes water.
48:18Waukesha became the test case for the provision.
48:21The biggest obstacle that we faced was not setting a precedent
48:25where you would be opening up the doors for anyone
48:28in Western United States or Southern United States
48:31to have access to the water.
48:33What we needed to do was work with a lot of different groups
48:37that looked at how we could create an application
48:41that would set the bar high so that when somebody else wanted to apply,
48:45they would have to meet the same criteria that we had to meet.
48:48One of the key elements of the compact is the requirement
48:52that any water drawn from the Great Lakes
48:54be replaced with an equal amount of treated wastewater.
48:58Right now, Waukesha releases wastewater into the Fox River,
49:02which runs through town.
49:04But the river flows towards the Mississippi River,
49:07not the Great Lakes,
49:09so Waukesha faces the expensive prospect
49:11of reconfiguring its wastewater system.
49:16It remains to be seen how Waukesha's experience
49:19will influence other efforts to divert water from the Great Lakes.
49:23We have water issues within our basin.
49:26They may not be as extreme as they are in Western United States
49:30or Southern United States at this point,
49:32but some point down the road, they will be that extreme.
49:35How do we address this, and how do we make sure the Great Lakes
49:38is here and sustainable for the long term,
49:41for the generations to come,
49:43that it's not something that deteriorates
49:46and is depleted to a point where it's not usable anymore.
49:50The Great Lakes Compact can be a model for other parts of America
49:55as well as other parts of the world
49:57that are really struggling how to solve water problems
50:00in the 21st century.
50:07Fresh water is the defining element in the Great Lakes ecosystem.
50:13Nowhere on Earth is there a greater concentration,
50:16and that water has played an outsized role
50:19in determining the fortunes of people here throughout history.
50:26The indigenous people that first populated the region
50:29invented ways to survive,
50:31learning to navigate the lakes and rivers
50:34and use the abundant natural resources.
50:37Native people shared that knowledge with Europeans,
50:40whose descendants harvested the region's fur animals to near extinction
50:44while spreading European civilization
50:47across a large portion of the continent.
50:51More immigrants came,
50:53drawn by stories of limitless natural resources free for the taking.
50:58Rich soil fit for tilling,
51:01forests filled with timber,
51:04and rich veins of copper, iron, and nickel
51:07drew speculators keen on making fortunes
51:10and laborers seeking better lives.
51:13Their rewards financed the transformation
51:16of the region's rivers and shorelines,
51:19making the Great Lakes into a maritime highway
51:22that carried unprecedented quantities of raw materials,
51:25fueling the emergence
51:27of the most powerful manufacturing center in the world.
51:31Those great agricultural and industrial enterprises
51:35that really built America and Canada
51:38and powered our agro- and industrial revolution
51:41were all created here in the Great Lakes region.
51:44The auto industry, aviation industry, the chemical industry,
51:48and so much more really defined the economic might
51:52and created tremendous wealth, tremendous jobs,
51:55and tremendous economic opportunity.
51:57The water was so critical to that as a key input
52:01into making really the industrial revolution,
52:04which was centered around the Great Lakes.
52:12Lake steamers still fill their holds with iron ore
52:16at ports near the Minnesota and Michigan iron ranges.
52:20But their cargo doesn't feed factories in Detroit
52:24or other Great Lakes cities like it used to.
52:27A new chapter in the history of the relationship
52:30between people and the Great Lakes ecosystem is being written,
52:34and no one is certain how it might end.
52:44With globalization, with new markets opened up worldwide,
52:48new competition, some of the great products
52:51that we invented here in the Great Lakes
52:54from our steel industry to our auto industry
52:57come under new foreign competitions.
53:00Like the fur, timber, and copper mining industries before it,
53:05the glory days of heavy manufacturing are fading into history.
53:09Millions of manufacturing jobs have moved overseas,
53:13forcing the Great Lakes region
53:15to adapt to new realities in the 21st century.
53:18Communities are struggling,
53:20and young people raised and educated here
53:23are seeking opportunities elsewhere.
53:26That's another particular challenge for us in our region,
53:29is to make ourselves an attractive place that people want to stay,
53:33as well as create a more diverse set of employment opportunities
53:37beyond the auto and heavy industry that is our reputation and defines us.
53:42The success in making that transition
53:45may once again depend upon the Great Lakes themselves.
53:49We've got to leverage unique assets we do have.
53:53Today, water matters most powerfully to the economy,
53:56not as a conduit, not as an input,
53:59but as an amenity, as a place definer.
54:02Our water now is more important to our economy
54:05as a place that makes us a choice location
54:08for people to live, work, and do their business.
54:12But capitalizing on the Great Lakes in the new economy
54:16will require confronting the legacy of the old.
54:20We made a big mess inventing the Industrial Revolution.
54:23We have more brownfields and polluted industrial land.
54:26We have more toxic hot spots in our rivers and lakes
54:29historically and currently than other parts of the country.
54:32We've got a lot of cleanup to do of our waterfronts.
54:36We've got to make sure our water, our Great Lakes,
54:39are available for enjoyment, for swimming, for boating.
54:43If the beaches are closed during the summer,
54:46it doesn't leverage this incredible and spectacular
54:49natural asset that we have.
54:52The Great Lakes region is an environmental asset
54:55and it's an economic asset,
54:57and one is integrated with the other.
55:00They are inseparable.
55:02In order to maintain the quality of life that we have
55:05in the Great Lakes and the output,
55:07the economic output of the Great Lakes,
55:09we have to have good environmental quality.
55:12We've got a spectacular freshwater coast here.
55:15Anyone who's been around or seen the Great Lakes
55:18appreciates their majesty, their grandeur,
55:20their vital power to transport you away from your day-to-day life.
55:25So if anything, the magical property of living, working,
55:29and seeing and being near the water that we have
55:32is as valuable or more valuable
55:35than any of our other economic assets.
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