Great Lakes Areas of Concern

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Great Lakes Areas of Concern are designated geographic areas within the Great Lakes watershed that show severe environmental degradation.^[1] The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the United States and Canada more specifically defines Areas of Concern as "geographic areas that fail to meet the general or specific objectives of the agreement where such failure has caused or is likely to cause impairment of beneficial use of the area's ability to support aquatic life." The goal of the agreement is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem through a concerted set of interventions that are targeted at the aforementioned Areas of Concern. Because each waterway has a unique set of characteristics that have contributed to its ecological impairment, a Remedial Action Plan has been developed to identify the causes of impairment which will be used to guide local actions that will restore the individual waterways. The goal of each Remedial Action Plan is to bring about the delisting of the waterway from the list of Areas of Concern.

There are a total of 43 Areas of Concern throughout the Great Lakes: 17 in Canadian waters ^[2] and 26 in U.S. waters^[3] (five Areas of Concern are shared by the two countries).

[edit] References

1. ↑ Great Lakes Information Network
2. ↑ Environment Canada
3. ↑ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency