How Clean is Clean in Great Lakes Areas of Concern? Report from the 1988 IAGLR Symposium

Abstract

Forty-two Areas of Concern have been identified in the Great Lakes by the eight Great Lakes states and the Province of Ontario. These are areas where failure to meet the general or specific objectives of the Canada/United States Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) has caused or is likely to cause impairment of beneficial use or the area's ability to support aquatic life. The International Joint Commission's Water Quality Board has identified the need for a precise set of criteria to list and delist Areas of Concern. This paper summarizes the results of a symposium held as part of the 1988 International Association of Great Lakes Research conference to address this need. Consensus from the symposium was that the historical approach to identifying water problems and beneficial use impairments (e.g., violations of chemical objectives) is too limited and must be expanded to include more data and information on biological effects. No one test will suffice in identifying water quality problems and beneficial use impairments. Rather, a suite of tests will be required to identify problems more consistently with the GLWQA's systematic and comprehensive ecosystem approach. Such a suite of tests, based on the 14 use impairments in Annex 2 of the GLWQA, is proposed, including a definition for “How Clean is Clean?” for each use impairment.