The Death and Life of the Great Lakes

by Dan Egan

As with the phosphorus reductions demanded of cities and industries that brought sweeping, if short-lived, algae reductions on Lake Erie three decades ago, scientists say they know how to throttle these new toxic outbreaks. It will require a 40 percent reduction in the spring phosphorus runoffs into the Maumee River watershed. This won’t completely eliminate the outbreaks, but ecologists predict it will slash them by at least 90 percent. Don Scavia, director of the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute, notes that 40 percent also happens to be the percent of corn production in this country that goes toward ethanol. “We need,” he says with an irony that could be ripped straight from the pages of Dr. Seuss, “to stop putting food in our gas tanks.”