Lake Erie Rehabilitated: Controlling Cultural Eutrophication 1960s-1990s

Preface

This book is an outgrowth of two of my previous books. In the earlier one, Scientists, Society, and State: The Social Relations of Science Movement in Great Britain, 1931–1947 (1984), I show that, during the 1930s, British scientists debated the question of who in a democratic society is responsible for the uses to which science and technology are put. During the summer of 1938, they concluded that not only scientists and engineers but all members of society share this responsibility. Accepting that as a sound conclusion, the question then becomes how this responsibility is met in actual practice. By the time that book was published, I had developed an interest in environmental issues, especially ones involving the interaction of technology and the environment. In particular, I became interested in the controversies concerning pollution by synthetic detergents, new technologies introduced during the second third of this century. A synthetic detergent consists of a mixture of chemical compounds, principally of an active cleaning agent, also called a surfactant, and a “builder,” which enhances the action of the surfactant. The most successful of the first surfactants, alkyl benzene sulfonate (ABS), was effective not only in washing machines, but also, unfortunately, in sewage treatment plants and receiving waters, often rivers, producing large quantities of undesirable suds wherever it went. I xiii Preface deal with this problem and its solution in Biodegradable: Detergents and the Environment (1991). Whereas ABS created a pollution problem by itself, the most effective of the first builders, phosphates, were but one of several contributors to a more serious environmental problem, namely, the enrichment of lake waters by phosphorus, which emerged as a worldwide problem during the 1960s. I explore the occurrence and control of the problem here by considering the most notorious case of enrichment, certainly in North America, that of Lake Erie. In doing so, I have engaged in traditional historical research, seeking out and critically examining voluminous relevant documents , from archival materials to published primary sources to other scholars’ work. I am indebted to numerous librarians and archivists in Canada and the United States for their assistance, particularly librarians at the University of Akron and the offices of the International Joint Commission in Ottawa and Windsor, Ontario, and archivists at the Public Archives of Canada, the U.S. National Archives, and the University of Vermont. I am also indebted to the University of Akron for a research grant to explore the topic and later for a semester’s leave to bring the study to completion, and to the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C., for a grant supporting research for my chapter on Canada’s regulation of phosphates in detergents. I am grateful to the editor of Environmental History Review for publishing an earlier version of the material in that chapter. Numerous other individuals have helped in various ways, for which I am most grateful. I must single out for special thanks my wife, Emilia, for her constant support and Professor William Doemel of Wabash College, who had begun researching the same general topic and, several years ago, generously shared his research materials and thoughts with me. xiv Preface Conclusion xv LAK E E R I E R E HAB I L I TAT E D This page intentionally left blank ...