The (Not Feeling So) Great Lakes
Written by: Sloane Murphy
Photography by: Ryan Draybuck
Design by: Joy Padua
The Great Lakes are the main reasons to live in the northern part of the midwest.
They’re large, powerful bodies with spiritual and economic power. They hold nearly 20% of the world’s surface freshwater. 23,000 cubic kilometers of fresh, life-giving water. 23,000 kilometers of water that’s being slowly poisoned by human beings, because we can’t have nice things.
The cities in the great lakes areas produce more than a trillion liters of waste a year.
That’s 1.2 million Olympic swimming pools of waste.
100 of those swimming pools would be filled with raw sewage. which is fun.
In the late nineties, it was reported by the EPA that eating trout from Lake Michigan was more harmful than drinking lake water for your entire life. These fish are still being eaten by wildlife, and further poisoning the food chain and the balance of nature in our area.
The Biodiversity of life is also in jeopardy, as the introduction of non-native plants and fish have eliminated certain native plants and fish. The Blackfin Cisco, a native fish similar to a trout or a salmon, used to be plentiful, but an invasive fish called the rainbow Smelt drove it to extinction. The last sighting of Blackfin Cisco was in 2006 in Lake Ontario.
There’s like so much algae in these lakes, dude.
Tons of it. It’s a real problem.
So, What are the GReat Lakes?
Become the solution
https://intlweloveu.org/
https://weloveuusa.org/
https://greatlakes.org/
If the water goes, we go. If this has depressed you as much to read as it depressed me to write, here is a list of charities that you can donate to and feel a little better about yourself while the earth boils. And just for me, here’s a little reminder that billionaires are destroying the earth and that the greatest human invention was the guillotine. Just sayin.