Growing up, I always intently listened to my grandpa’s stories of adventures on the shores of Lake Ontario. His vivid descriptions of lush greenery, crystal waters and abundant marine life were distinct from the concrete jungles and expansive suburbs that populate other sections of America. This contrast shaped my view of the Great Lakes region as a symbol of American conservation efforts.
After all, the Great Lakes were the stomping ground of conservationist and former Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Mich, — the founder of Earth Day — and renowned nature poet Robert Frost. I came to Michigan expecting this stewardship to be an ongoing tradition, in spite of global pollution and environmental neglect. It was hard not to be disappointed when I instead discovered our heavily polluted Great Lakes were in dire need of help from government leaders.
Verbally, officials from Great Lakes-adjacent governments take firm stances against the degradation of natural resources. In 2024, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker stressed the need to manage our fresh water like it was as precious as diamonds. In 2022, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released the ambitious “MI Healthy Climate Plan,” which made bold promises to protect clean air and water.
Yet, in action, conserving the Great Lakes and their natural resources has been ultimately unsuccessful. For decades, the Great Lakes have faced a crisis of rampant phosphorus runoff from agricultural fertilizers. This pollution degrades water quality and produces toxic algal blooms, which deplete oxygen levels, threaten marine life and contaminate drinking water. The algal blooms also produce toxins that cause rashes, gastrointestinal issues and damage to the kidneys, liver and nervous system.
Great Lakes politicians have been vocal opponents of the pollution crisis for years. On June 13, 2015, in an act of committed conservationism, former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Mary Taylor, former Ohio Lieutenant Governor, and former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne signed on to a ten-year commitment to pursue a 40% reduction in Lake Erie phosphorus levels.
That deadline just expired, and the mission ended in failure: The decade-long struggle to reduce phosphorus contamination was unable to adequately curb farmland runoff, and only met reduction targets once.
More than 30 million people rely on the Great Lakes for drinking water. The total Great Lakes fishing industry is worth more than $5.1 billion annually and supports more than 75,000 jobs. Therefore, any pollutant-borne harm to the lakes and their ecosystems has direct second-order effects on the health and livelihoods of millions of people. If government leaders cannot lower pollution levels in Great Lakes waterways, laborers in the fishing and tourism industries will face economic hardship, while environmental hazards and contaminated food and drink will endanger local civilians.
In addition to the recent setback in phosphorus cleanup, increasing microplastic presence in local waterways poses yet another pressing concern. These tiny particles of broken-down plastic have ties to infertility, colon cancer and poor lung function. Lake Erie alone has a concentration of microplastics that rivals the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where microplastics are 8% of total mass.
In all five Great Lakes, researchers have found microplastics in drinking water and fish, with the levels in fish ranking as some of the highest quantities reported worldwide. The plastic presence in fish, paired with high levels of PFAS chemical contamination, prompted Michigan health officials to release sweeping “do not eat” guidelines to protect public health.
The root cause of these environmental crises is industry overreach. The agricultural runoff causing phosphorus pollution is the direct product of damaging conventional agriculture practices on large industrial farms. Large corporations drive a vast majority of plastic pollution, while representatives of the plastic industry continue to deny any dangers of excessive plastic consumption.
In the wake of these corporate abuses, the Great Lakes need decisive leadership to come to their defense and restore accountability. However, these mounting environmental disasters converged at a critical juncture: Widespread Republican victories in the 2024 U.S. elections have made the status of critical environmental protections uncertain.
In Michigan, Governor Whitmer’s successes in reforming environmental regulatory institutions and improving water quality will likely grind to a halt under the new Republican majority in the Michigan House of Representatives. Nationally, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has abandoned attempts at federally regulating PFAS chemicals in waterways.
The International Joint Commission — a binational treaty organization overseeing shared U.S. and Canadian waters — already lacked regulatory policies to assess or counter microplastic pollution. To make matters worse, recent tensions between the United States and Canadian governments have jeopardized future Great Lakes cooperation altogether.
That is not to say that things are hopeless.
In modern American history, the Republican Party has predominantly advanced the interests of big polluters; when in power, Republican politicians have historically slashed environmental regulation and shot down climate legislation. However, in light of the recent reshuffling of traditional political affiliations and the emergence of groups such as the American Conservation Coalition — a prominent nonprofit working to rally conservatives behind environmentalism — American conservatism may finally be ready to reclaim its naturalist roots touted by former Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, the respective founders of the U.S. Forest Service and EPA.
Just last year, Vice President JD Vance — then a senator from Ohio — joined a bipartisan commission to increase funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a government program to counter pollution and toxic substances and advance environmental restoration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services Secretary, and Tim Boring, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Director, are both in support of regenerative agriculture as well, a method of farming that reduces agrochemical usage and soil erosion.
The question is whether these sympathetic conservationist voices can beat out the old-guard polluter establishment in the fight for President Trump’s ear. Their success is critical, as it could save human and marine health from contamination and toxic poisons. As pollution continues to threaten more than a fifth of global freshwater, government officials have a humanitarian and patriotic duty to restore our waterways to the standard that my grandpa enjoyed.
Hunter Ryerson is an Opinion Columnist who writes about human health and innovation in his column “Human Vitals.” He can be reached at hryerson@umich.edu.
