The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

by Dan Egan

this biological richness left Lake Erie particularly vulnerable to an ailment called “cultural eutrophication,” which is the condition of a pond or lake so overdosed with nutrients that have been put into the water by human activity (farming, sewage, lawn fertilizer, etc.) that the resulting explosion in algae suffocates other aquatic life. It is a condition that can, eventually, destroy a lake. As seasons, years and decades pile up, a body of water can be subsumed by all its accreting dead plant and animal life and eventually it turns into a bog, killed by all the things it gave life to. This pond-to-bog process happens naturally and is known as eutrophication; cultural eutrophication speeds the progression immeasurably, like throwing gas on a fire. On a lake the size of Erie, the immediate worry with cultural eutrophication is that the nutrient overdosing creates so much life that its inevitable decay burns up so much oxygen that almost nothing can survive.