On 10 December 1968, 280 birds killed by oil were found on ten miles of beach at Presqu’ile Park on Lake Ontario. Two years later, almost to the day, six commissioners of the International Joint Commission signed Pollution of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the International Section of the St. Lawrence River. The finding, dated 9 December 1970, answered a question the two governments had asked in October 1964. Those waters were being seriously polluted on both sides of the boundary to the injury of health and property on the other side. Contaminants originating in one country, the Commission wrote, do move across the boundary and degrade the quality of the waters in the other country.
The Treaty already named the injury
Article IV of the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 put the obligation in one sentence. Boundary waters and waters flowing across the boundary “shall not be polluted on either side to the injury of health or property on the other.” Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the international St. Lawrence are boundary waters under that Treaty.
The Commission had said as much before. In 1912, typhoid fever prompted the two governments to request the Commission to determine to what extent the boundary waters were polluted so as to be injurious to public health. The 1918 report found pollution “very intense along the shores of the Detroit and Niagara Rivers,” and concluded that “conditions exist which imperil the health and welfare of the citizens of both countries in direct contravention of the Treaty.” It said it was feasible, without an unreasonable burden, to prevent or remedy that pollution, and advisable to confer ample jurisdiction on the Commission. In 1920 the Commission drafted a convention. The convention was never concluded. Chlorination of municipal supplies, and a belief in an inexhaustible supply of clean fresh water, made large spending on treatment look less urgent.
A 1946 study of the connecting channels produced Water Quality Objectives in 1950, the first of their kind on an international basis. Eight years after the governments approved them, industrial phenol discharges had fallen from 13,000 to 2,500 pounds a day, cyanides from 9,000 to 4,000, oil from 18,000 to 2,500 gallons, and suspended solids from 3.1 million to 1.6 million pounds. The Objectives were still not being met in all reaches. Treatment had not kept pace with population and industry.
The 1964 Reference asked three questions. Were the waters polluted on either side to an extent causing, or likely to cause, injury on the other side? If so, to what extent, by what causes, and in what localities? What remedial measures were most practicable, and at what probable cost?
The Commission established two boards on 2 December 1964 and called their work the most extensive water pollution study undertaken anywhere to date. Several hundred experts. Nearly 450 man-years. More than 100 cruises on Lake Erie and 200 on Lake Ontario, with samples and data at 13,000 stations. The Ontario Water Resources Commission, at various times, put as many as 12 vessels on 50,000 sampling locations. In all, 600,000 samples. The boards delivered an 800-page report in three volumes.
A First Interim Report in December 1965 told the governments that Lake Erie was deteriorating at an accelerated rate, and that “a similar process, though less advanced, was taking place in Lake Ontario.” Phosphorus was named as an essential nutrient in that deterioration. The boards’ summary went public on 8 October 1969, about 4,500 copies. A Third Interim Report in April 1970 brought oil, eutrophication, and watercraft to the two governments as a matter of urgency.
Housewives, detergents, and eight hearings
Hearings on oil were held in Toronto and Cleveland on 2 and 3 December 1969. Hearings on the pollution report ran through the winter of 1970 in Erie, Pennsylvania; Toledo, Ohio; London, Ontario; Hamilton; Rochester; and Brockville. About 180 witnesses. More than 200 written statements. The League of Women Voters and Pollution Probe were prominent. A number of housewives testified.
The report printed the sense of that testimony without attaching names. One line said housewives wanted phosphorus removed from detergents and did not care as much about snow white shirts as about cleaning up the Lakes. Another:
“Detergent manufacturers have mounted an intensive campaign to induce housewives to believe that ‘whiter is better’.”
The soap and detergent companies were represented at six of the eight hearings and gave testimony at four. Their spokesmen said consumers demanded high performance, and that phosphate builders were an essential ingredient. They did not concur with removing phosphates from detergents. They supported nutrient removal at sewage treatment plants. They said there was no satisfactory substitute, and that it would require years of research to develop one.
Officials from federal, provincial, and state agencies supported the boards. Several said phosphorus removal had to be a two-pronged attack, from detergents and at the plants. One official said polluted effluents crossed from the United States to Canada and vice versa, and that the only way to control the pollution was to establish standards that applied equally on both sides. Several said the Commission should be strengthened. An Ontario official was critical of Ohio’s programme, especially in the Cleveland area, and of New York’s programmes at Buffalo and Niagara Falls.
The Commission was reminded of the old practice of keeping a small bird in a cage in the mines. Fish in these waters were dying. It was a warning, the report said, that must not be ignored.
The water did not stay on one side
“There is no doubt,” Chapter VIII begins, “that contaminants entering Lake Erie and Lake Ontario from one country move across the boundary and affect the water quality in the other country.” Current metre surveys, drift objects, and the uniform distribution of chemicals attested to that fact.
Ninety percent of the inflow to Lake Erie came from the heavily polluted Detroit River. The dominant outflow from the Western Basin was through Pelee Passage on the Canadian side. There was strong evidence that materials originating in the United States were transported to the Canadian side by bottom currents.
Contaminants from the densely populated and industrialized United States shoreline were added to the load already carried through Lake Erie. “There is no doubt that the heavily polluted waters of the Niagara River are thoroughly mixed by the turbulent 37 mile journey from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.” About 80 percent of the total inflow into Lake Ontario came from that river. It accounted for 56 percent of the phosphorus and 76 percent of the chloride. The Niagara discharge stayed chemically distinguishable about 30 miles to the east.
Lake Ontario’s net surface flow circulated counterclockwise. During westerly winds, contaminants from the Toronto-Hamilton area moved toward the Niagara River and then along the United States shoreline. During easterly winds, “the major component of the Niagara River outflow moves directly across the lake to the Canadian shoreline.”
The Commission illustrated the mixing with chlorides. If there were no transboundary movement, Canadian waters of Lake Erie should have held about 10 milligrams of chloride per litre, and United States waters more than 30. Analysis of thousands of samples found about 25 milligrams per litre, remarkably uniform, across the Central and Eastern Basins.
Nutrients were a total-lake problem. Each country’s share of the cause, the Commission wrote, could be viewed as roughly proportional to its share of the nutrient inputs. Improvements could be expected only when both countries reduced those inputs. The chapter closed on the sentence that became the finding:
“It follows that these boundary waters are being seriously polluted on both sides of the boundary to the detriment of both countries.”
Phosphorus, Cladophora, and closed beaches
In 1966, 30 million people lived on or near the Great Lakes, one of every three Canadians and one of every eight Americans. The Canadian waters of the lakes, the connecting channels, and the international St. Lawrence all lay in Ontario. United States waters of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence lay in New York. The Lake Ontario basin held 2.3 million people on the United States side and 3.8 million on the Canadian side. Municipal withdrawals from that lake served 2,600,000 people in Canada and 302,000 in the United States.
The Niagara River contributed over half of the contaminants discharged into Lake Ontario. Between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, phosphorus in the Niagara increased 71 percent. Most of the wastes introduced directly to the river originated in the United States, in the stretch from Buffalo to Niagara Falls. In most cases, municipal treatment there was limited to sedimentation and chlorination. Rochester and Toronto discharged large quantities directly to the lake. Combined storm-sanitary sewers in Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, Rochester, Hamilton, and Toronto bypassed untreated waste in heavy rain.
Table 3 put 1967 phosphorus inputs at 60.2 million pounds to Lake Erie and 27.3 million pounds to Lake Ontario. United States municipal sources sent 35.7 million pounds to Erie, 25 million of that from detergents, and 7.7 million pounds to Ontario, 5.4 million from detergents. Canadian municipal sources sent 7.0 million pounds to Ontario, 3.5 million from detergents. “Detergents are by far the greatest single source of total phosphorus input into the Lakes.” In United States sewage, 70 percent of the phosphorus originated from detergents. In Canada, about 50 percent originated from each of detergents and human excreta. Municipal and industrial sources accounted for 70 percent of the phosphorus supply to Erie and 57 percent to Ontario.
The Western Basin of Lake Erie was clearly eutrophic. Mean summer phosphorus there was 60 micrograms per litre. Lake Ontario’s was 14. Actual loading was 1.1 grams per square metre per year for Erie, against a permissible 0.13 and a dangerous 0.28, and 0.7 for Ontario, against 0.13 and 0.75. Collectively, the Commission placed Lake Ontario between oligotrophy and mesotrophy. Accelerated eutrophication was already occurring there.
Cladophora grew in a continuous band along the shoreline between Hamilton and Toronto in summer. About one-third of the inshore area between Toronto and Presqu’ile Point near Kingston was badly affected. Large amounts washed up east of the Niagara River and east of Rochester. At Toronto, phytoplankton doubled between 1923 and 1954, then doubled again in ten years. Between the Niagara River and Rochester in 1965 and 1966, sturdy mats two or three feet thick extended 25 to 50 feet from shore. Bathers refused to swim in the fouled waters near Rochester. Bathing beaches had been closed at Toronto and Rochester. Fecal coliform counts at the mouth of the Niagara ran 250 and 350 per 100 millilitres, against Ontario and Michigan standards of 100.
The blue walleye, unique to Lakes Erie and Ontario, was apparently extinct. Mayfly nymphs, Hexagenia, had become extinct in the Western Basin of Lake Erie since 1950. White perch was now a dominant species in many parts of Lake Ontario. Mercury in water samples from the St. Clair-Detroit River system was below the detectable level. Some fish from Lake St. Clair carried as much as 7 parts per million. Restrictions had been imposed on fish from Lake Huron and the waters downstream.
If all phosphorus inputs were eliminated, the Commission estimated a 90 percent reduction of phosphorus concentration in Lake Erie waters in less than five years. Lake Ontario “might well return to an oligotrophic state” if loading were cut to 0.17 grams per square metre per year. That target, and Erie’s 0.39, would require eliminating phosphorus from detergents plus 95 percent removal of the predicted 1986 municipal and industrial load, limiting annual input to 22 million pounds for Erie and 7 million for Ontario. Even more stringent control would not make Erie oligotrophic. Before World War II it was probably already mesotrophic.
What the Commission asked the two governments to do
The estimated capital cost, in 1968 dollars, was $211 million for the required municipal and industrial treatment facilities in Canada and $1,373 million for those in the United States. For Lake Ontario, including the Niagara and St. Lawrence, New York’s share was $658 million and Ontario’s $156 million. For Lake Erie, including the Detroit and St. Clair Rivers, the basin total was $770 million, of which Ontario’s share was $55 million.
The Commission wanted the two governments to adopt its General and Specific Objectives as a matter of urgency. The General Objectives were five “freedoms”: waters free from putrescent sludge; from floating debris, oil, and scum; from colour and odour nuisances; from toxic concentrations; and from nutrients that create nuisance algae. Phosphorus loadings were to be limited to 0.39 grams per square metre per year for Erie and 0.17 for Ontario.
Recommendation 3 called for an integrated phosphorus programme: immediate reduction of detergent phosphorus to a minimum practicable level, with complete replacement by environmentally less harmful materials by 31 December 1972; at least an 80 percent reduction of remaining phosphorus in municipal and industrial effluents to Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, their tributaries, and the international St. Lawrence by 1975; and a reduction of phosphorus from agricultural activities.
Recommendation 10 asked Canada, as a matter of urgency, to develop a detailed and fully coordinated contingency plan for major spills. Current methods of confining, removing, dispersing, and cleaning up a major oil spill were primitive and inadequate. Canada did not yet have such a plan. There was no formal plan for international cooperation on oil spills.
Recommendation 22 asked the two governments to confer on the Commission the authority, responsibility, and means for coordination, surveillance, monitoring, implementation, and reporting, and to authorize it to establish an international board or boards.
The six signatures on 9 December 1970 were A. D. P. Heeney and Christian A. Herter, Jr., the two chairmen, then Eugene W. Weber, Charles R. Ross, A. D. Scott, and Bernard Beaupré.
Unless the remedies, particularly waste treatment facilities and phosphorus control, were undertaken as a matter of urgency, the Commission concluded, the waters of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the international St. Lawrence would be further degraded.
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Source Documents
International Joint Commission. (1970, December 9). Pollution of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the international section of the St. Lawrence River. Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971. Catalogue No. E95-1970.