$20 Billion Is Sought to Restore Great Lakes

The Great Lakes are ecologically ill, environmentalists told a Senate committee Thursday, pleading with lawmakers to help fund a $20-billion long-term effort to restore and protect the five lakes.

But the advocates won no support from Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He called the proposal too ambitious in the current debt-ridden fiscal climate.

Although conceding that the federal budget is stretched, the environmentalists said the money was a necessary investment in an ecosystem that constitutes 20% of the globe’s fresh water.

“If we don’t spend a little money now, we’re going to spend a lot of money later, which would be completely unnecessary,” said Andy Buchsbaum, a National Wildlife Foundation official who focuses on Great Lakes issues.

The Great Lakes Restoration Plan, among other goals, would halt sewage contamination of the lakes and clean up pollution.

“The amount of resources needed to complete this work is a fraction of the costs associated with devastation to the Great Lakes that Asian carp will cause if they move into Lake Michigan,” said David A. Ullrich, director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

He testified in place of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was absent with a bout of the flu.

President Bush’s 2007 budget contains about $2.2 billion for the Great Lakes, but that figure is about $220 million less than in previous years and is far less than what Bush’s own Great Lakes study group has recommended.

Proponents are comparing their efforts to nurse the Great Lakes back to health to the massive cleanup of Florida’s Everglades that began in the 1990s with a unified bloc of Florida-area politicians.

Lawmakers from Great Lakes states are following the Everglades example, said Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.).

“The Everglades effort took a number of years,” Kirk said. “For a project this big, it will take that long as well.”

Frank Ettawageshik, a Native American tribal chairman from Michigan, took a broader tack about the need for the $20-billion project, telling a crowd about his ancestors’ tradition of planning for seven generations in the future.

The need for the cleanup funds is real, he said, especially because many of the Odawa Indians he represents rely on fishing to make a living. Polluted waters have caused the size of the fish to shrink.

“Fishing -- it’s a way of life, it’s dealing with the elements of creation. It’s eating our traditional foods,” Ettawageshik said. “There’s a knowledge that goes with the lakes and the waters. It’s as much cultural as economic.”