Sunday, August 14, 2005

Rescue requires tough choices

Experts urge land-use management as one of many strategies to save the Lakes.

By Brad Heath / The Detroit News

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MONROE -- There was a time when the idea of swimming in Lake Erie was almost laughable: Pollution fouled the water, and green slime coated the beaches. Even today, there are parts of the lake Florence Anderson avoids.

But on a recent Saturday afternoon, the lake here was fully alive. Boats rolled at anchor near shore; swimmers escaped the heat in the water; hundreds of people lounged along the length of the narrow beach, where the waves' hissing was punctuated by two girls who ran toward the water, screeched, and retreated, over and over.

"Look at this, it's great," Anderson said, gesturing around a grassy expanse near the beach at Sterling State Park. She still won't swim in the bay near her home in Toledo, Ohio: Too much algae, she said, too many reports of trouble in the water. So her family swims here.

Lake Erie used to be a sort of international emblem for polluted water. It got so bad by the late 1960s that the lake was pronounced ecologically dead and the Cuyahoga River, which pours into the lake through Cleveland, caught fire, sparking a generation of clean-water laws. The lake's still a long way from healed, but now it's also emblematic of the idea that harm inflicted on the Great Lakes can be halted, even reversed.

But unraveling the threats to the Great Lakes won't be easy and it won't be cheap.

It means finding ways to stop invasive species without scuttling the shipping industry, cut mercury pollution from power plants without driving up electric bills and prevent sewage overflows from contaminating beaches without flooding basements. And it means wrestling with the development that's transforming the land that feeds the lakes.

Environmentalists concede stopping that growth is impossible. "It's not a question of how to stop it. It's a question of how to guide it," said Hans Voss, executive director of the Traverse City-based Michigan Land Use Institute.

That will require changing the way subdivisions and strip malls are built, Voss and others say. It also will require communities to come up with better plans for where they can be built and which areas are so sensitive they should be ruled off-limits to growth -- a usually controversial proposition.

Environmentalists have encouraged planners to concentrate development in more tightly packed areas that take up less land, can be hooked up to existing sewers and other infrastructure, and require fewer new roads. A land-use task force appointed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm recommended in 2003 that the state seek ways to better cluster developments instead of developing more open spaces.

Other threats to the lakes pose more complex challenges:

• To keep more invasive species from reaching the Great Lakes, environmentalists say the government needs stricter standards for how and where ocean-going ships deal with their ballast water. But even that won't keep all invaders out, or stop the damage caused by the 180 invasive species already here.

• Preventing the sewer overflows that regularly foul beaches will take a massive investment in upgrades of older sewage plants.

• Environmentalists are pushing for tighter limits on industrial pollution, especially mercury emissions from power plants. Michigan is considering emission rules stricter than what the federal government requires.

All of this takes money. This year, a task force appointed by President Bush recommended a broad array of steps to begin fixing the major threats to the lakes. Its price tag: $20 billion.