Lake Erie Rehabilitated: Controlling Cultural Eutrophication, 1960s-1990s (review)

Lake Erie Rehabilitated: Controlling Cultural Eutrophication, 1960s-1990s. By William McGucken. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2000. Pp. xiv+318. $49.95/$29.95.

Can algae make history? Of course. But only when the algae bloom in question occurs in a body of water the size of Lake Erie, transforming it into a literal dead sea, do the imaginations of the historically minded become piqued.

In Lake Erie Rehabilitated, William McGucken tackles the algae question in that great lake. Beginning in the 1960s, increased amounts of phosphorous flowing into the water caused the lake's algae to grow out of control. The phosphorous came from two main sources: the fertilizers farmers used on the land and the detergents that U.S. and Canadian citizens used to wash their clothes. As more and more automatic washing machines were sold in North America, detergents eclipsed soap as the primary cleaning agent. Detergent makers discovered that adding phosphorous to these compounds helped them to clean better. People found their clothes cleaner, but their lakes paid the price.

As phosphorous-rich wastewater wended it way into Lake Erie, the algae had a field day. Once the huge quantities of green slime sank to the lake's bottom, bacteria went to work consuming it, causing the lake's supply of dissolved oxygen to decrease in the process. The algae's gain became the mayfly's loss. This winged insect, formerly the most abundant species in this aquatic environment, was wiped out in places. That was bad news for fish such as walleye pike, which feed on mayfly larvae. The addition of phosphorous, in other words, led to a chain of ecological consequences, eventually transforming Lake Erie into an oxygen-scarce environment inhospitable to many species of fish, a process limnologists refer to as cultural eutrophication.

After the problem was diagnosed, policymakers set out to clean up the mess. The Canadians, McGucken points out, had by the early 1970s mounted a successful campaign--which included limiting the amount of phosphate in detergents as well as in wastewater itself--to rid the lake of phosphates. Progress proved slower in the United States, where the detergent industry continued to deny the problem. As late as 1969, one industry expert testified to Congress that "a causal relationship between detergent phosphate and the level of algal growth has been postulated, but has not been established" (p. 124). But over the course of the next two decades--because of the dedicated efforts, McGucken tells us, of the U.S. and Canadian governments, local intervention, and activism on the part of the scientific community--cultural eutrophication was brought under control. The algae declined as the phosphate problem was made to go away.

The story McGucken tells is important if only to counter the denial that most historians engage in, conducting their research as if the natural world were of no consequence. For making algae interesting and relevant, McGucken must be commended. That said, the book suffers from two flaws. First, there is not much of an argument. McGucken offers a detailed rendering of the development and evolution of this serious ecological dilemma, but does not offer a thesis to explain to readers the larger meaning of the case in question. The book is long on description but painfully short when it comes to analysis. Second, McGucken's approach, focusing on phosphorous and the attempt to get it under control, limits the interpretive breadth of the study. A more ecologically oriented approach would perhaps have allowed him to construct a persuasive argument, assessing the environmental health of the lake now that the phosphorous is under control but the zebra mussel, an exotic species introduced from abroad, is wreaking havoc in this very same ecosystem. Lakes are not great environments for those with an affinity for Whig history.

Ted Steinberg

Dr. Steinberg is the author of Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America (2000). He...