Public outrage led to far-reaching laws aimed at cleaning up the Great Lakes. Boat trips, press releases and other events this past fall marked twenty-fifth anniversaries of two environmental milestones. The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in October 1972, aimed to stop toxic pollution of the nation's waters and make U.S. rivers and lakes safe for fishing and swimming by the mid-1980s. That same month, President Richard Nixon and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, vowing joint action to restore the health of the Great Lakes. Fish and wildlife have returned.
Kids ride their bikes along the banks.
Canoes ply its waters. Waterfront redevelopment in towns around the Great Lakes takes advantage of visibly cleaner beaches and swimmable waters. Deisner and other environmentalists cheer the progress as evidence that twenty-five years of effort have paid off. But they don't propose to stop there. The Sierra Club marked the anniversaries by warning that 97 percent of Great Lakes waters still don't meet Clean Water Act goals of being safe for fishing and fully supporting aquatic life.