Our Great Lakes: Sustaining life across a globally unique region

The Great Lakes are home to more than 6 quadrillion gallons of fresh water, or nearly 20 percent of the world’s surface supply, and span more than 1,000 miles from Minnesota to Quebec. In 1972, the United States and Canada signed the first Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a voluntary commitment to protect and restore the ecological values of the lakes. One eventual outgrowth of the Agreement was the Areas of Concern (AoC) program, under which the countries designated 43 coastal and riparian sites. The AoCs are home to some of the worst contamination in the Great Lakes region, including chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls and dioxin. After many years of community-level planning, the U.S. federal government authorized spending to clean up the AoCs for the first time in the early 2000s. Eventually, this work under the Great Lakes Legacy Act was incorporated into the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), which today stands as the largest regional watershed restoration program in the country. Despite this initiative, the region grapples with massive problems concerning agriculture, infrastructure, and microplastics.

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  • Accession Number: 01885751
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Files: TRIS
  • Created Date: Jun 22 2023 9:49AM