The St. Lawrence Seaway connects Lake Superior, Lake Huron,
Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. The lakes and
connecting rivers, St. Mary’s, St. Claire, Detroit, Niagara and St. Lawrence,
have been a major artery for transportation, migration and trade. The Great
Lakes have been sailed for trading and commercial purposes since at least the
17th century. Approximately 6000 ships have sunk, killing more than 30,000
sailors and passengers. The linkage of Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River
has allowed Chicago’s wastewater to be disposed of into the tributaries of the
Illinois River and Mississippi River to avoid contaminating Lake Michigan, the
source of Chicago’s drinking water. An unintended consequence of linking the
Western Great Lakes basin with the Mississippi River basin was the creation of
the wet pathway (Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal) through which the flying
Asian carp is trying to use to get into the Great Lakes. An electric fish
barrier was constructed on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to prevent the
carp from migrating into Lake Michigan, the Great Lakes basin and the St.
Lawrence Seaway. The primary objective of this paper is to document the
environmental threats to the Western Great Lakes basin, which has only one
natural outlet, the Detroit River, which flows naturally into Lake Erie. These
environmental challenges which are starting to requiring mitigation including
the impact millions of people living in the Western Great Lakes basin,
navigation on the St. Lawrence Seaway, thousands of shipwrecks at the bottoms
of Lake Huron, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan, disposal of treated and
untreated industrial and urban waste into the lakes, pollution of the sources
of drinking water, land use change, shoreline erosion, building structures on
the shoreline banks, underwater oil and gas pipelines, invasive species
including Asian carp, and record high Western Great Lake water levels. The
Western Great Lakes shorelines are actively eroding partly because of the high
surface water levels. The high-risk erosion areas have been retreating at an
average rate of 30 cm per year for the last 15 years.
Author(s) Details
Kenneth R. Olson
Department of Natural Resources, College of Agricultural, Consumer, and
Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA.
Gerald A. Miller
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Iowa State University, Ames,
Iowa, USA.
Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/mono/978-93-88417-36-5/CH1
