Biden’s billion-dollar cleanup pledge puts Great Lakes back in environment limelight

So it was, then, that Biden found himself in Lorain, Ohio, last month, announcing plans to spend no less than US$1 billion on what he called the most significant restoration of the resource “in the history of the Great Lakes.”

The money is a small portion of the $1.2-trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which the White House has been promoting throughout 2022 after the pre-Christmas collapse of what was supposed to be the administration’s crowning achievement: the $2-trillion climate and social spending package known as the Build Back Better bill.

“Three decades ago we made this commitment,” Biden said. “There was a lot of talk, a lot of plans, but very little progress. It was slow. That changes today.”

The effort will target 22 of the 25 problem areas, known as “areas of concern,” on the U.S. side of the lakes — a level of commitment that experts, advocates and activists have been clamouring for since the 1990s and beyond.

“That’s a huge thing, you know?” said John Hartig, a U.S.-born conservation scientist who’s currently serving as a visiting scholar at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research.

Hartig, widely hailed as one of the world’s leading experts on Great Lakes remediation, grew up in Detroit before becoming the first graduate to earn a PhD at the institute more than 35 years ago.

“Money makes this go, right? You need resources to do it, you can’t just talk about it. So these are pretty significant investments.”

The same is true on the Canadian side — and hopes are high that the latest levels of ambition in the U.S. will increase pressure on the federal and Ontario governments to finally finish what they started.

It’s happening already: Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has a news conference scheduled Wednesday near Hamilton Harbour alongside Ontario counterpart David Piccini, Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger and Burlington Mayor Marianne Meed Ward.

He’ll announce that Randle Reef, long the single most polluted area of concern on the Canadian side of the lakes, is now fully contained inside a multimillion-dollar engineered containment facility, thanks to the combined efforts of the two governments.

Three other areas of concern — Collingwood Harbour, Severn Sound and Wheatley Harbour — have all been fully restored, while necessary remedial actions in Spanish Harbour and Jackfish Bay have also been completed.

The federal government is bound to protecting the lakes through the Canada-U.S. Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which dates back to 1972 but was renewed in 2012, as well as a new agreement with the Ontario government that took effect just last June.

That agreement sets a 2026 deadline for Ottawa and the province to shore up six other specific areas of concern in Ontario, including Nipigon Bay, Peninsula Harbour, Niagara River, Port Hope Harbour, the Bay of Quinte and the St. Lawrence River.

The federal government is also spending C$17.4 million over the next two years to work with provinces and territories, Indigenous Peoples and stakeholders in setting up a new Canada Water Agency that would backstop the cleanup effort.

“These actions will contribute to the long-term goal of delisting the remaining (areas of concern) and ensuring that environmental improvements achieved through the … process are sustained,” Environment and Climate Change Canada said in a statement.

Hartig cited a 2018 study that Biden also happened to mention: a University of Michigan examination of the impact of cleanup investments made between 2010 and 2016 by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a multi-agency task force established in 2004 by then-president George W. Bush.

The findings? Money well spent.

“For every dollar spent on those projects, you will get $3.35 in economic activity up through 2035, including economic redevelopment,” Hartig said. “That’s a pretty good return on investment — for anywhere, really.”

Canada has not been lagging the U.S., Hartig added, citing the $139-million project on Randle Reef and about $80 million spent since 1987 on habitat rehabilitation along the shores of Lake Ontario near Toronto.

The next step, he said, is the so-called “Action Plan to Protect the Great Lakes,” a 10-year, billion-dollar effort to protect the lakes from climate change, exposure to toxins, algal blooms and contaminated beaches.

Hartig said he’s hopeful that Biden’s investment, coupled with Canada’s progress to date, will make that a top priority soon.

“I think this is going to be an incentive to take a harder look at the action plan,” Hartig said.

“Investing in protection of the Great Lakes is investing in the communities of the Great Lakes, and it is such a precious resource, so yeah, I do think that they will take a good hard look at that as a result of it.”

In 2021, Ontario provided $1.9 million through the Great Lakes Local Action Fund to help advance 44 projects led by community-based organizations, municipalities, conservation authorities and Indigenous communities to protect and restore coastal, shoreline and nearshore areas of the Great Lakes.

Another $1.9 million in provincial money will be forthcoming to support additional local projects “to help protect and improve the health of the Great Lakes and their connecting watersheds for future generations.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2022.

James McCarten, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Biden’s billion-dollar cleanup pledge puts Great Lakes back in environment limelight

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