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Ashworth has found a blend of contemporary newswriting, scholarly research, and personal observation that cunningly injects daunting quantities of information into an inviting prose style.--The Los Angeles Times

Twenty years ago, when Lake Erie turned opaque green and was pronounced dead, the environmental movement was born. The eutrophication problem has since been reversed, but Ashworth contends that Erie and the other Great Lakes are in far worse condition now than they were then. Five thousand miles of shoreline, one-fifth of the world's fresh Water supply and drinking water for 24 million people, industrial heartland of two nations, the Great Lakes basin encompasses Chicago, the Love Canal and vast wildernesses. The area's economy has always been based on resource extraction: fur traders were the first to arrive, then came timber barons, then the mining companies, whose ore still drives steel mills in Cleveland and Gary and furnishes raw materials for the auto industry in Detroit. According to Ashworth, America's North Coast faces a new generation of severe and intractable environmental problems. The lakes are laden with PCBs and other hazardous chemicals; bottom sediments are so toxic no one knows what to do with dredge spoils. Biologically important coastal wetlands have given way to development, and canals built for shipping have allowed invasive species like lampreys and alewives to flourish where whitefish, salmon and other prized native species have disappeared. Toxic precipitation has showered industrial poisons over even the most pristine stretches of vast Lake Superior. There is talk, too, of utilizing Great Lakes water for agriculture in Arizona and the arid Great Plains states. Ashworth uncovers no startling new toxic threats or corporate crimes here, but the book is, if unintentionally, an interesting glimpse of how far pollution control has come in the past 20 years - and how very far it has to go. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

William Ashworth, one of our leading writers on environmental subjects, is the author of several books on water-resource politics and the American water crisis, including Nor Any Drop to Drink (1982). Mr. Ashworth lives in Ashland, Oregon, and in 1982 received the first annual Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Oregon chapter of the Sierra Club.

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