WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

Nature was not always prized for its beauty. The wilderness, after all, was wild. Rivers, lakes, and seas were forces to be feared, more than admired. For every man who took his leisure waterside, others fought currents and waves to earn a livelihood. While it can still be deadly, most of us don’t see Lake Michigan as frightful. Rather, we revel in its shifting hues, dive into it on hot days, and fly across it when the wind is right. We take it for granted. We shouldn’t.

As mighty as they are, the Great Lakes are not invincible. Pollutants have long been a problem and now, invasive species and climate change are altering these inland seas. And they’d be in much worse shape if it weren’t for the efforts of The Alliance for the Great Lakes.

The Chicago-headquartered nonprofit has been active for more than 50 years. It grew from the efforts of Oklahoma- born activist, Lee Botts, who in 1970 established the Lake Michigan Federation and whose early successes included persuading Mayor Richard J. Daley to ban phosphates in laundry detergents. Botts, who died in 2019 at age 91, had been instrumental in the formation of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, went on to a position in the Environmental Protection Agency, worked as a researcher at Northwestern University’s Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, and in 1987, became a senior advisor in Mayor Harold Washington’s newly-formed Department of the Environment.

Today, the Alliance for the Great Lakes is powered by thousands of volunteers like North Shore natives Joyce and Charlie Solberg who grew up loving Lake Michigan. “Charlie learned to sail on the lake, and my dad had a motorboat that we launched at Lloyd Beach to waterski early mornings and evenings when the waves were smaller,” shares Joyce. “Our original relationship with the lake was all about fun, but as we grew older that evolved into appreciating the beauty of it and the importance of clean drinking water. So, my natural choice was to start volunteering for the Alliance.”

The Solbergs—who have participated in beach clean-ups and sat on the Alliance board of directors—passed on their enthusiasm for the lake and the organization to three of their children, all of whom have been active supporters. “It is an organization that would be difficult for me not to support,” states Joyce.

“Joel and his team do a great job.” “Joel” is Joel Brammeier, the organization’s president and CEO. Brammeier grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he enjoyed outings along the shore of Lake Huron with his family. He joined the Alliance in 2001 and took over its leadership in 2010, doubling its full-time staff and quadrupling its asset base.

Brammeier, who was front-and-center in sounding the alarm on the threat of invasive carp entering Lake Michigan, points to a particular event that shaped his greater understanding of how essential the Great Lakes are to the more than 40 million people in the U.S. and Canada: the city of Toledo’s loss of drinking water for more than 48 hours in 2014. Toledo draws its drinking water from western Lake Erie, which is plagued each summer by massive algae blooms caused by runoff from upstream agricultural lands. The bloom is so large that it can be seen from space and is a threat to wildlife and people. “The water from Lake Erie was so contaminated that they actually couldn’t treat it,” he recalls.

“This was unheard of, a whole city shutting down its drinking water supply. In addition to the water in the lakes themselves, the systems we have built to move water through cities and towns—pipes and concrete infrastructure—have a huge impact on whether people stay healthy or not.”

In addition to ongoing efforts to stop invasive species, reduce plastic pollution, and enhance infrastructure, the Alliance is working to improve water quality by drawing attention to the impact of agriculture on the Great Lakes. The organization is pushing Congress—which develops a farm bill every five years— to increase funding for Department of Agriculture conservation programs, step up efforts to combat polluted agricultural runoff, and reduce funding for concentrated animal feeding operations.

And then there’s climate change. “Changes in water levels are happening less predictably and in a more extreme way than they have historically. We are seeing shorter intervals between record lows and record highs. We are seeing more extreme storms that can cause a lot of erosion all at once, or a lot of pollution getting into the lake all at once. Part of restoring and protecting the lakes is treating the shoreline like the living organism it is,” notes Brammeier.

As its name indicates, the Alliance is not concerned solely with our own big body of water, but all five lakes. And so, as Brammeier stresses, an appreciation of interconnectedness must run through all the efforts protecting them. “We haven’t done a really great job of treating our coasts like the connective tissue that they are,” he observes. “We are trying to change that. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is working on a project that will look at the whole Great Lakes region to see what we can do collectively across these miles of shoreline to manage the system in a way that makes it more resilient to climate change impacts in ways that benefit everybody.”

Although the challenges are daunting, Brammeier remains enthused and committed to the Alliance. “I feel really fortunate to be involved in this work because the Great Lakes unify us in a way that very few issues, let alone environmental issues, do. We are all dependent on that water and we need to take care of it.”

For more information and to learn about how you can get involved, visit greatlakes.org.