On the Brink, Dave Dempsey

From history to the projection of future issues, Dave does a wonderful and well documented summary of the Great Lakes and its environmental issues.

There are insights like the following that precede an analysis of the locks and the canals that have done much more than increase transportation – think invasive species and chemical dumps and ballast waters.

"This river [St Mary's] forms at this place a rapid so teeming with fish, called white fish, or in Algonkin attikamegue, that the Indians could easily catch enough to feed 10,000 men." Rene de Brehant de Galinee - 1670.

‎”1797 the Northwest Fur Company built the first lock lock at the Sault. In 1855 the one mile predessor to the current locks was built by the St Mary's Falls Ship Canal Company.”

The invasive species issue is critical because we know what the lamprey did and we fear what the Asian carp can do.

“Alewives came up the Welland Canal to Lake Huron 1933, Lake Michigan 1949, and Superior 1954.”

“There are numerous examples of innocuous organisms in their native habitat becoming serious pests in a new habitat.  The absence of natural enemies and other environmental controls permit the introduced species to proliferate and develop into serious problem organisms…A number of nonendemic  aquatic organisms found in the ballast water samples and capable of establishing themselves in the Great Lakes are in this category.”  1981 Bio-environmental services Limited study of 55 ships.”

This is about all five great lakes so the citizens that fought for Lake Erie (a car salesman in Cleveland was a real citizen leader) and the ultimate symbol of the Cuyahoga River burning that helped pass the clean water act that is now under attack are part of a fascinating array of small stories that add up to a basin wide, uncoordinated citizen voice that has never truly been unified (something we observed on our hike). 

It is about international issues, countries suspicious of one another, sometimes doing something they know they should not because the other guy did too or they thing the other country might do something. It is also state versus state and delays in political action, lack of political will, and huge expenses to clean up the things that could have been prevented with a regulation or a lesser cost in the beginning.

I read this before the hike and needed to do it again now that I have had a chance to reflect.