Environment: Comeback for the Great Lakes

After decades of abuse, they are getting cleaner

"Lake Erie is a dead lake. Save the rest of the Great Lakes." So went the environmentalists' plaint during the 1960s. Lake Erie was not, in fact, quite dead, but it was suffering from a variety of serious disorders, including a seemingly uncheckable algae growth that, like a fast-spreading cancer, was choking off the other forms of life. Though the remaining four of North America's great chain of lakes—Superior, Michigan, Huron and Ontario—were less diseased, they too showed symptoms of serious, man-made illness.

The Cuyahoga...