60 pages • 2 hours read
Dan EganThe Death and Life of the Great Lakes
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 8-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Future”
Chapter 8 Summary: “Plugging the Drain: The Never-Ending Threat to Siphon Away Great Lakes Water”
Egan states, “future fights will be about the one liquid that civilization literally cannot do without”—water (247). Although the U.S. is fortunate to possess 20% of the world’s fresh water in the Great Lakes, lawmakers are already concerned over squandering this resource; there are boundaries around the Great Lakes watershed demarcating which regions of the U.S. and Canada can use this water and which cannot. Cities inside the border may use this water for agriculture and drinking water; cities outside the border may not. The governors of the eight states surrounding the Great Lakes have, however, agreed to transport water outside the border so long as it goes to a town in a county that falls at least partially inside the border. Most people in the Great Lakes states don’t think about this line, but this border can be tricky for the residents in the area.
When surveyors in the early 1800s arrived to the wilderness between Tennessee and Georgia to delineate the official boundary between the two states, they botched the job. The boundary is off by more than a mile. Later in the 19th century, surveyors marked a spot for a railroad hub, which later became the city of Atlanta, Georgia. Despite receiving much rainfall, Atlanta is prone to droughts because of its unique geographic position on top of a ridgeline. Citing the earlier botched boundary job from the 1800s, Georgia elected officials assert legal rights to a water source just over the border in Tennessee, leading to clashes between the two states’ lawmakers.
In 1836, 18-year-old Chauncey Olin and his family migrated from New York to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Due to the presence of nearby freshwater springs, other white families flocked to Milwaukee and it became a significant city. The Olins’ settlement near Milwaukee is named Waukesha after a local Indian leader; Native Americans already lived in the area for some time prior to the arrival of the white settlers. There are tall tales of the Waukesha springs’ supposed healing properties.
In 1893, businessman James McElroy received a contract with the organizers of the World’s Fair in Chicago. He agreed to provide spring-fed water to the fair’s millions of visitors, because Chicago’s drinking water at the time was highly polluted with feces, leading to illness and death. He decided to import the water from a spring near Waukesha, Wisconsin by building a pipeline. However, Waukesha residents worried about the potential of their spring water running dry due to the pipeline.
Even though the city of Waukesha revoked McElroy’s permit, he secretly arrived with a group of men to build the pipeline and siphon the water. An armed militia of townsfolk confronted McElroy and his crew, leading to a violent standoff. Today, Waukesha has exhausted its water supply and gets its water from ancient wells tainted with radium. Waukesha is unable to use nearby Lake Michigan as a supply because Waukesha lies on the wrong side of a border that demarcates which counties can receive water from Lake Michigan. A controversial legal exemption was later passed that allows Waukesha to receive water from the lake.
The Ogallala Aquifer—a body of water the size of Lake Huron in Kansas—is quickly disappearing due to drought. A plan was hatched to shuttle water from the Great Lakes to the aquifer, but that plan was later scrapped. Another potential concern is that drought-affected areas of the U.S. will seek to use the Great Lakes as their own water supply dries up. The Chinese government invested billions of dollars to build a project to divert water from its water-rich areas to water-poor areas. Few U.S. lawmakers consider cross-country discussions on water, despite the increase in drought in populous states like California. Chicago is one of the few major cities outside of the Great Lakes’ watershed boundary allowed to draw upon its water; the city uses approximately two billion gallons of water from Lake Michigan per day.
The eight Great Lakes governors wield the authority to determine where water is diverted outside the Great Lakes. A man named John Febbraro threatened to disrupt their control. To provide water to drought-stricken countries in Asia, Febbraro applied for a permit in 2008 to transport freight ships with Lake Superior water down the St. Lawrence Seaway from the Canadian side of the Great Lakes. Although governors of the Great Lakes states on the U.S. side have the ability to veto requests to divert water from the lakes, Canadian lawmakers have no such authority. Leaders wondered about the precedent that Febbraro’s move would set—if one could export Great Lakes water to Asia, then why not to other parts of the U.S.? Febbraro agreed not to move forward with his plan, but the scandal exposed potential legal challenges to the veto power of the Great Lakes governors in the U.S. In 2008, the Great Lakes states formed an agreement that allows them to block most water diversions, with an exception made for the city of Waukesha.
Chapter 9 Summary: “A Shaky Balancing Act: Climate Change and the Fall and Rise of the Lakes”
Egan illustrates the declining water levels in Lake Michigan in recent years through the memories of a native resident who grew up playing around the lake. Although the Great Lakes’ water levels have historically fluctuated, they have reached record lows due to climate change. Hotter temperatures and warmer water cause more water to evaporate from the Great Lakes, but also cause more precipitation. This precipitation-evaporation has not led to equilibrium, however.
The “lakes are also, essentially, a giant slow-motion river that flows from the middle of the continent to the North Atlantic—and not entirely naturally” (279). Water drifts from Lake Superior to the St. Mary’s River, which tilts the water into Lake Huron. Water travels from Lake Huron to the St. Clair River, which then flows into Lake Erie. Lake Erie’s waters peter into the Niagara River and then over Niagara Falls. From the falls, the water pours into Lake Ontario and then the St. Lawrence River, from which it flows into the Atlantic Ocean. Two manmade choke points on the Great Lakes’ water system can adjust the speed of the flowing lake waters by manipulating the water levels in Lake Superior and Lake Ontario. Other manmade features like the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal also affect water flow.
In the first decade or so of the 21st century—even when they sustain higher-than-average levels of rainfall—the Great Lakes’ overall water levels are at their lowest point in decades. Not only have water levels declined, but so has ice cover; the amount of ice covering Lake Superior dropped by 76% between 1973 and 2011. An oceanographer finds that not only is warmer water in the summer leading to higher water temperatures, but that slightly warmer air temperature—due to climate change—in the winter also makes it more difficult for ice to form over the Great Lakes. Although warmer water is great for tourism, it also leads to greater evaporation, which could have a crushing long-term impact on lake water levels.
To complicate matters even further, another problem impacting water levels is dredging at the bottom of the St. Clair River for increased navigation. Egan describes the St. Clair River as a “drain hole for Lake Michigan and Lake Huron on their rush to the ocean” (286). In an effort to improve navigation around the Great Lakes and transportation of goods, the St. Clair River is dredged, which means excavating millions of tons of sand and gravel from the riverbed. However, this dredging contributes to the long-term decline in water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. In the 1960s, the U.S. Army Corps of engineers built a model for how they might repair the damage done by dredging. When water levels rose again, they abandoned the plan, falsely assuming the St. Clair River had reached a level of stability. Some residents are not entirely convinced that climate change is disrupting the Great Lakes and instead lay the blame solely on the dredging of the St. Clair River; they want to put in place mechanisms to control the water levels of the Great Lakes.
The International Joint Commission, which handles water boundary concerns between the U.S. and Canada, commissions a group of scientists to look into the matter. However, the Commission dismisses scientists’ advice, which is to accept the lower water levels and not to attempt to restore the riverbed in a futile effort. Some scientists see the focus on dredging as a distraction from the real impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes; they urge residents to instead adapt to the changing circumstances under a scientific principle known as “adaptive management.” Adaptive management is also more uncertain, as it does not provide a blanket prescription for a problem and advises observing nature to predict future patterns. Climate change is also inducing extreme weather events on the Great Lakes, like severe rainstorms that used to occur once in a century. Even some Army Corps researchers acknowledge that trying to maintain water levels within their historic range could be challenging.
Chapter 10 Summary: “A Great Lake Revival: Charting a Course toward Integrity, Stability and Balance”
Ken Koyen is the last commercial fisherman on Washington Island, on the northern edge of Lake Michigan. There is long tradition of fishing in his family dating back generations. Most other fishermen in the area gave up the trade due to the declining native fish populations like perch and whitefish. The decline in these native fish species can be linked to the invasion of quagga and zebra mussels in the 1980s-90s. Mussels are difficult for whitefish and other fish species to consume because they lack the jaws to crack open the shells. However, Koyen notices that the whitefish evolve over the course of a few generations and adapt their bodies to digest the mussels; the whitefish are bigger than they were prior to the onslaught of mussels.
In Lake Huron in the summer of 2008, the chinook salmon population that thrived in previous decades had greatly reduced in size. Due to the lake’s food chain, the smaller chinooks precipitated a drop in the number of alewives. The drop in the number alewives caused the phytoplankton population to plummet. The decline in phytoplankton lead to a boom in quagga mussels. However, the crash of Lake Huron’s dominant invasive fish species also provided a boon to the native fish species, who were able to repopulate the lake in the absence of the predatory alewives. The native fish were able to survive by adapting to bottom-feeder fish like gobies; the chinook salmon died off because they could not adapt.
Howard Tanner and Wayne Tody’s schemes led to the initial chinook salmon boom and a temporarily flourishing tourist industry on the Great Lakes. Tanner never intended to use the salmon to eliminate the destructive alewives, which he believed were vital to the ecosystem of the Great Lakes. Despite the turmoil in the ecosystem, some fishermen stay afloat by switching their business model to different types of native fish. This boom in native fish may not last long due to the invasive species that could arrive from overseas.
The EPA has recently decided to follow the Clean Water Act and require the installation of ballast water treatment equipment on all ships arriving to the Great Lakes. There is no timeline for implementation of this new regulation, so ships will come into the Great Lakes with untreated ballast water until 2021. Proponents of the shipping industry state that no new invasive species have been discovered since 2006, but this argument is unpersuasive given the potential for a new invasive species to wreak havoc on the economy and ecology of the Great Lakes. Egan says that the “front door” to the Great Lakes—the Seaway—could be shut down to overseas ships with little economic impact, since it receives fewer than 500 overseas freighters per year.
The “back door”—the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal—is a little trickier because it connects to the Mississippi River basin. The government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to eradicate the invasive Asian carp. Although the U.S. Army Corps conducts a 2014 study stating it would cost $18 billion to plug the canal system, these costs are grossly overestimated as an excuse to avoid plugging the canal. Moreover, statistics demonstrate the alarming domination of Asian carp in the Great Lakes. Both Canada and the U.S. have failed to react to this invasive species. Although Congress passes legislation implementing a restoration program on the Great Lakes, the bill focuses more on cleaning up toxic algae rather than providing meaningful steps to address the invasive species issue.
Ron Thresher is an American in Australia who champions a form of DNA-based pest control. Due to the threat that such DNA-specific poison poses to species—specifically in terms of causing a species to go extinct—there are immense security measures to prevent water and fish from escaping the research facility. Thresher’s partner in this operation, Rex Dunham, takes on responsibility for the carp invasion and begins breeding daughterless fish in Alabama. This technology could theoretically be applied to the invasive mussels, which both intrigues and worries key figures involved with the Great Lakes. These people try to ascertain who would have control over the poison, such as a single Great Lakes state or the federal government. Egan ponders the many divergent options for future management of the Great Lakes, such as reviving native species, maximizing commercial potential of the lake, and creating genetically modified algae.
Not everyone values native species like Thresher and other scientists. Howard Tanner cares primarily about converting the lake into a tourist hub for fishermen, resulting in his 1960s salmon scheme. Nevertheless, other experts Egan interviews believe in the value of a vibrant web of native species in order to counteract the influence of exotic invaders like the mussel or the carp. These scientists believe that the Great Lakes’ fishing industry can survive the decimation of the chinook salmon Tanner introduced. The government has to decide which species to prioritize. The personal connections of local residents and fishermen—particularly the young people—will shape the future of the Great Lakes.
Part 3 Analysis
In this final section, Egan forecasts future fights over water. The culprit is climate change, or rather “climate changed” (past tense) (281). Climate change is leading to droughts in many parts of the U.S., and it’s likely that the Great Lakes will become a battleground in these fights. Yet Americans and Canadians continue to take the accessible water of the Great Lakes for granted: “We have 20 percent of the fresh water (in the world) in the Great Lakes […] We’re blessed with a lot of water, but we cannot take it for granted,” says Canada’s former U.S. ambassador Gary Doer (248). Three-quarters of Americans don’t know where their water comes from. Americans largely don’t think about water, even if it the most essential resource needed for life. Water is usually out of sight—and out of mind—until the tap is turned on. As one Great Lakes region resident tells Egan: “But when you think about being on city sewer and water, you just always know it’s there” (249). Throughout time, people have been unable to foresee an end to the good times—to the constant availability of clean water. The people of Waukesha thought the same and marveled at their good fortune, only for their springs to dry up and for them to have rely upon radium-tainted water. Waukesha and Toledo, Ohio warned what could befall other American cities as drought and climate change wreak havoc upon water supplies. Although it seems unlikely now that the Great Lakes could dry up, the possibility is real.
Few figures in this chapter demonstrate the foresight required to tackle water issues across a large nation; one of them is Mao Zedong of China, who proposed diverting water from southern to northern China. “Mao was famous for taking the long view,” which few other leaders in this chapter seem able to do (269). However, not everyone thinks in terms of long-term repercussions. Egan rebukes the EPA’s nearsighted approach to handling the Great Lakes, which relies on short-term fixes like DNA-specific poison that cause the Asian carp to “breed themselves to oblivion” through fish that cannot have daughters to carry on future progeny (312).
This lack of foresight and national unity among leaders poses a great threat not only to drought-stricken states like California, but also the rest of the nation; California’s agricultural economy supplies the rest of the country with much of its produce. In a complex, interdependent economy, it’s not sufficient for one state with plenty of water to turn its back on another that has little. This idea of who receives access to these resources is not a new one. After all, the Native Americans lived in the Great Lakes region long before the arrival of white settlers, yet the colonists pushed the Native Americans off their homeland and seized the Great Lakes for themselves.
Additionally, human arrogance leads people to believe that they can also engineer a solution—as in when local residents and the Joint Commission continue to look for a way to repair damage to the erosion of the St. Clair River—even when the damage is irreversible. The water levels may never reach the same heights that they once did in the 1900s, but humans are unwilling to accept this, because they seek to control the natural elements around them. They are unwilling to adapt to the new circumstances and merely wish to reverse them through brute force, thus repeating the same mistakes of the past. This brute force method is one solution to tackling the issues facing the Great Lakes, but it’s one that Egan suggests may not be the most appropriate given the historical folly of this approach.
The executive director of the Great Lakes Commission said, “I’m damn sure people need to recognize that these are dynamic systems that need to fluctuate, and that we need to adapt” (295). This adjustment to nature is a principle known among climate change researchers as “adaptive management.” Adaptive management seems to be one that Egan tacitly endorses through his interviews with various sources. Ironically, it seems that local fish species are able to adapt better to the changing circumstances of the Great Lakes than the humans who reside there. This adaption reflects through the anecdotes of fisherman Ken Koyen and the transformation of the whitefish in Lake Michigan. It's demonstrated again in the resurgence of the native fish species in Lake Huron and the decline in chinook salmon, as the latter are unable to adapt their dietary needs.
Beyond shortsightedness, the politics around climate change—in the form of denial of human-induced climate change—also leads people to hold contradictory opinions and disregard the research of scientists, further jeopardizing the future of the Great Lakes. The lack of political will and a desire to carry on with business as usual (meaning no changes to the canals that enable the shipping industry) lead to roadblocks when tackling invasive species. Ironically, the government spends billions of dollars restoring the Great Lakes and dealing with the damaging side effects instead of trying to eliminate the major issue at the heart of the Great Lakes’ ecosystem. The EPA’s approach is a short-term solution.
Egan also alludes to the destructive potential of scientific methods, such as the tailor-made DNA poison which can be applied to a wide array of species. Human attempts to tinker with nature may have unintended repercussions; after all, people live in an interconnected system where manipulating one species can have unanticipated, cumulative effects that spiral up the food chain—no matter how hard Ron Thresher and other scientists try to control the scope of their experiments. These scientists are eager to try anyway, as Rex Dunham tells Egan, “To have the potential to rectify our past environmental mistakes, to me, it’s just intriguing and exciting that we could go back and do that” (315).
However, some fishermen are able to adapt rather than go out of business, especially if they see an economic benefit; Egan highlights the example of a fisherman who sees an opening for small-time fishermen to fish walleye—whereas they didn’t have the right boating equipment to fish chinook salmon—and still turn a profit. It seems that some fishermen are naturally turning to the scientists’ “adaptive management” principles. Egan adds a personal touch to underscore that, despite all his reasons to be pessimistic, there is one reason to be optimistic: the future generation. Egan’s hope for the future of the Great Lakes comes out in the lyrical prose of the book’s final passage:
You could see in the wrinkles on his nose and in his darting eyes that he wasn’t struggling so much as soaring […] It might have been a scrawny thing compared to one of Tanner’s Pacific beasts. But it was John’s fish, caught on John’s lake. And the hook was set (321).
