A Los Angeles Situations Publication Prize Finalist

Winner from the J. Anthony Lukas Award

A landmark work of science, history and reporting on the past, present and imperiled future of the Great Lakes.

THE FANTASTIC Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario and Superior—keep 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fresh new water and offer sustenance, function and entertainment for tens of an incredible number of Americans. But they are under threat as never before, and their problems are spreading over the continent. The about The Loss of life and Existence of the Great Lakes Death and Lifestyle of the Great Lakes is definitely prize-winning reporter Dan Egan’s compulsively readable portrait of an ecological catastrophe occurring before our eye, mixing the epic tale from the lakes with an examination of the perils they encounter and the ways we are able to restore and preserve them for generations to come.

For a large number of years the pristine Great Lakes were separated from the Atlantic Ocean with the roaring Niagara Falls and through the Mississippi River basin with a “sub-continental divide.” From the later 1800s, these obstacles were circumvented to attract oceangoing freighters from the Atlantic and to allow Chicago’s sewage to float out to the Mississippi. These were anatomist marvels in their time—as well as the adjustments in Chicago arrested a deadly routine of waterborne health problems—however they have had horrendous unforeseen implications. Egan provides a chilling accounts of how ocean lamprey, zebra and quagga mussels and additional invaders have made their way into the lakes, decimating native species and mainly destroying the age-old ecosystem. And because the lakes are no longer isolated, the invaders now threaten water intake pipes, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure in the united states.

Egan also explores why outbreaks of toxic algae stemming through the overapplication of farm fertilizer have left massive biological “deceased areas” that threaten the way to obtain fresh drinking water. He examines fluctuations in the levels of the lakes due to manmade climate switch and overzealous dredging of shipping stations. And he reviews on the persistent dangers to siphon off Great Lakes water to slake drier regions of America or to be sold abroad.

In an age when dire problems just like the Flint water crisis or the California drought bring ever more attention to the indispensability of safe, clean, common water, The Death and the life span of the fantastic Lakes is a powerful paean to what is arguably our most precious resource, an urgent examination of what threatens it and a convincing call to arms about the relatively simple things we have to do to protect it.