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Cameron Weber

Prof. Myers

English 1201

20 January 2019

Pollution in Lakes

A few years ago my parents and I went on vacation to Cleveland, Ohio. I couldn’t wait

to see Lake Erie, I always wanted to go swimming in one of the Great Lakes, but once we got

there I was very disappointed that I was not allowed to go swimming. There had been an algae

bloom and the water was contaminated, so my parents did not allow me to go swimming. The

whole trip I would constantly look to see if it was safe to go swimming, but it just kept getting

worse with more algae appearing each day. One day we decided to go outside the city and look

at the surrounding area, that's when I finally saw how bad the algae really was, the water was

green and nasty looking. This began my interest in how a lake could have such a bad algae

bloom, which is pollution from runoff of fertilizers. Then I found out there is a lot of pollution in

all the Great Lakes and it was just getting worse. Since then I have not gone back to any of the

Great Lakes, but have found nicer and less polluted lakes to have fun in.

I am saddened by such beautiful lakes turning into a nasty polluted lake. The surrounding

area could have been great places to live with many more people coming to visit, but nope

people only think about what is better for them not the environment. For example, there are

billions of pounds of plastic in our ocean, because people are too lazy to recycle it properly. I

think if we reduce runoff and the amount of trash we create, we can return the Great Lakes and

other bodies of water to how there were before we polluted them. We can do this by properly
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disposing of trash and recycling. Also, we can reduce runoff by building walls/dams around large

farms that use harmful chemicals to grow crops, so the water doesn’t go into surrounding bodies

of water. Have the water go through filtration and use the water for the crops again. I believe

pollution of freshwater is a bigger problem than climate change caused by pollution since it has

only caused a slight change in the climate and the Earth’s climate has shifted many times before.

I do not know a whole lot about how polluted the Great Lakes are, but I do know that they are

polluted by runoff from local farms. Also, many bodies of water are plagued by tons of plastic,

killing the wildlife.

I am interested in finding out all the ways we have polluted lakes and the effects on us

and the wildlife. I would also like to find solutions to the problems, so we can make all lakes

more attractive and safe for the wildlife to live near/in.