Great Lakes Report to Congress 1994
REPORT TO CONGRESS ON
THE GREAT LAKES ECOSYSTEM
Chapter
8
Aspects of Ecosystem Health
The Great Lakes Program is guided by its five year Strategy. Within this context, some future endeavors
are discussed in the following subsections.
Pollution prevention will continue to be the preferred means to reduce emissions and discharges of
environmental contaminants. States and EPA will continue to implement their pollution prevention action
plan for the Lakes. This will supplement EPA's national initiative, the 33/50 Program, to
encourage voluntary reductions of 17 priority contaminants through 1995.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), States, and EPA will continue nonpoint source pollution
prevention programs. Many of these programs will focus on tributary watersheds in which nonpoint source
problems are pronounced, such as Saginaw Bay, Lake Erie, and Green Bay. In addition to education and
incentives for environmentally-kind agricultural practices, these agencies will invite the public via
"clean sweep" campaigns to dispose of pesticide stocks.
Implementation of the Binational Lake Superior Program will aim to achieve "zero discharge" of bioaccumulative toxicants to this Lake.
Proposed Great Lakes Water Quality Guidance will be finalized, after consideration of public comments.
USEPA anticipates publication of the final Guidance by March, 1995. The Agency will seek to achieve
water quality criteria set forth in the Guidance through reductions in both point and nonpoint sources
of contaminants.
States, in consultation with the Food and Drug Administration, will develop regional guidance
regarding human health advisories for consumption of contaminated Great Lakes fish and wildlife. This
will foster consistency among States in their advisories, which will help the public better understand
the risks associated with consumption of contaminated sportfish and game.
Nationwide implementation of the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act will significantly cut toxic
emissions by U.S. firms by the end of this century. EPA and States will give priority to implementing
its provisions for suspected sources of critical pollutants to the Great Lakes.
States and EPA will continue cleanup of priority abandoned hazardous waste sites and oversight of
active ones, focusing cleanups and corrective actions on sites suspected of loading bioaccumulative
contaminants to the Lakes.
States and EPA will continue to inspect oil facilities in order to review their spill prevention
measures and readiness to respond to accidental spills.
EPA and its partners in the Assessment and Remediation of Contaminated Sediments (ARCS) program will
complete field demonstrations of contaminated sediment treatment technologies. EPA will complete an
inventory of contaminated sediment sites in six Great Lakes States and start to assess and address
priority sites.
EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and States will continue to phase-in a comprehensive monitoring
system of ecosystem health. Elements that focus on toxic contaminants will be open-lake monitoring of
critical pollutants in the water column, monitoring of tributaries to prioritize active sources of
contaminants, monitoring of endpoint levels of contaminants in the tissues of birds and fish high in the
food web, and monitoring of the atmospheric deposition of critical pollutants.
The Agency will report to Congress on the extent and effect of atmospheric deposition of contaminants
to the Great Lakes.
The Agency for Toxics Substances and Disease Registry will evaluate the adverse effects of water
pollutants in the Great Lakes system on the health of persons in the Great Lakes States and on the
health of fish, shellfish, and wildlife. Findings will be reported to Congress in 1994.
USEPA will work with partners, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, States, Tribes, and the Nature
Conservancy, to develop a strategic conservation plan to identify high quality habitats for protection
and restoration. Habitats to be inventoried include wetlands, fish spawning and nursery areas, old
growth forests, prairies, dunes, savannas, and areas needed by endangered and threatened plant and
animal species.
EPA, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and States will work together on demonstration projects to restore
important Great Lakes habitats.
The Fish and Wildlife Service will support States in planning the renewal of Areas of Concern by
identifying the habitat requirements of various fish and wildlife species in these areas. The Service
will similarly work with EPA and States to identify the habitat needs of species on a lakewide basis.
States and EPA will pursue Advance Identification projects that identify wetlands of high ecological
value and inform landowners of this information.
The Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, and Michigan will continue their administration of the primary
Federal program regulating the physical modification of wetlands and others waters. Pursuant to Section
404 of the Clean Water Act, they administer a permit program to regulate the discharge of dredge or fill
materials into the waters of the United States, including most wetlands.
The Fish and Wildlife Service will work with its partners to the
North American Waterfowl Management
Plan
to protect, enhance, and create critical waterfowl habitat. The Service will add protected acreage
through its Private Land program and increase surveillance for illegal dredge and fill activities.
The Soil Conservation Service will continue to promote the protection of wetlands that are privately
owned through incentives to restore previously converted wetlands and correctly farmed wetlands; to
establish vegetative filter-strips along streams; and to protect wetlands.
States, EPA, and the Soil Conservation Service will implement programs to reduce human exposure to
harmful bacteria in Great Lakes waters. One focus will be ending the discharge of untreated human wastes
from combined sewer overflows by upgrading municipal sewer systems and treatment capacity. The Service
will promote adoption of waste management systems to reduce runoff from livestock facilities.
The Fish and Wildlife Service, States, Coast Guard, NOAA, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, and
EPA will work together to prevent further introductions of nonnative species and to mitigate the harmful
effects of ones that have already entered the Great Lakes. They will monitor the ecosystem for new
nonnative species and conduct research on environmentally-kind control techniques for disruptive
nonnative species. The Coast Guard will establish requirements governing ship ballast water, a common
pathway for the introduction of nonnative species.
The Fish and Wildlife Service will lead a comprehensive study of fishery resources to identify the
restoration needs of Great Lakes fish species, using the latest quantitative techniques to analyze the
causes of past disruptions to fish populations and to identify the physical, chemical, and biological
needs of important fish and wildlife species.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and States will continue to stock hatchery-reared fish, such as lake
trout, to bolster the abundance of important species. The Service will also continue application of
lampricides to tributaries where sea lamprey spawn in order to control the ravages of this nonnative
species upon sport fish. In addition, the Service and States will continue law enforcement efforts to
curtail illegal commercial fishing and waterfowl hunting.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and States will continue to take measures to protect and restore
populations of endangered and threatened Great Lakes species such as bald eagle, peregrine falcon,
Kirtland's warbler, eastern timber wolf, and lakeside daisy.
The Fish and Wildlife Service will implement the North American Waterfowl Management Plan's habitat
strategy aimed at restoring waterfowl populations to their levels in the 1970s.
The Fish and Wildlife Service and States will pursue Natural Resource Damage Assessments and Claims
against Potentially Responsible Parties for past harm to Great Lakes species.
EPA and States will continue activities to reduce phosphorus loadings to areas of the Lakes that are
vulnerable to nutrient over enrichment.
The partners to the Strategy will support its implementation by various steps, including:
- States and EPA will focus prevention, inspection, enforcement, and cleanup efforts on critical
pollutants and on geographic areas which have the highest ecological and human health risks. In so
doing, they will be targeting the strongest opportunities to restore the ecosystem and protect human
health.
- They will use the Remedial Action and
Lakewide Management planning processes to define ecological
needs and appropriate responses to these needs.
- EPA, in cooperation with the Fish and Wildlife Service, NOAA, other Federal agencies, and States, will
establish an environmental data storage and retrieval system relating to the Great Lakes, which will be
accessible to all agencies.
- The Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with other agencies, will establish data repositories on
habitat uses and on fisheries.
- EPA, working with its partners, will establish and maintain a Great Lakes ecosystem monitoring plan to
address program needs.
- EPA and its partners will establish and maintain research priorities to support management programs.
- EPA, in conjunction with its partners, will develop a joint report to Congress and to the people of
the Great Lakes region on implementation of their joint Strategy and progress toward their environmental
goals. EPA and its partners will adopt ecological objectives and measure progress with ecological
indicators.
- The partners to the U.S. Great Lakes Strategy will pursue opportunities to work with their Canadian
counterparts. For instance, the two nations will sponsor biennial conferences on the health of the
ecosystem.
In the years ahead, the Great Lakes Program will continue evolving to address ever-changing challenges.
One constant emphasis, however, will be to inform the public about the state of the ecosystem.
Individuals are vital to further environmental progress through their purchases of products, choices of
lifestyles, and expectations of their civic institutions, including businesses, environmental
organizations, universities, and governments. The Great Lakes Program will continue to promote public
stewardship through education and public participation. Though the region's human inhabitants have often
wrought harm to this extraordinary ecosystem during the last several centuries, they still hold its
future within their collective stewardship.
