A biology professor at the University of Windsor thinks the most troubling impact of a proposed U.S. federal budget cut for Great Lakes research is what we do not find out.
A draft White House budget calls for a 97% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency's initiative to restore the Great Lakes. It would represent a funding cut from $300-million to just $10-million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Dr. Jan Ciborowski and 49 other scientists across the basin monitor, study impacts and make recommendations.
"The scientists and the regulators, they are the doctors of the Great Lakes," says Ciborowski. "If you no longer had anybody that you could go to for checkups or when you're not feeling well, you wouldn't know what's going to happen."
He fears without the EPA's continued participation, the full impacts of algal blooms, invasive species, climate change and pollution will not be known until it is too late to prevent damage to the lakes.
"The Great Lakes are a success because Canada and the U.S. have worked really well together," says Ciborowski. "It's going to be really hard to work without the goodwill and the expertise of the U.S. EPA as well as Environment Canada."
Pointing to an algal bloom that forced the City of Toledo to ban tap water for four days in the summer of 2014, Ciborowski says it is not impossible to imagine a future threat putting public health at risk.
"There are new plans to decide what we have to do to get rid of those harmful algal blooms -- without these organizations we would just be walking blind," he says.
A coalition of mayors from over 125 cities in the Great Lakes basin has also blasted the proposed cut.
"Cuts of this magnitude would be devastating to the efforts of your two countries over the past five years to restore the resource," says David Ullrich, the executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. "This would be a major step back from the responsibility shared for this resource."