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Climate change "amplifies the threat of other threats" along the vital water corridor, said John Hartig, a visiting University of Windsor scholar.

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Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge on 5437 W. Jefferson Avenue in Trenton on Sept. 29, 2020. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

The St. Clair-Detroit River system has come a long way from when the connected Rouge River, laden with oil and other industrial pollutants, caught fire in 1969, and from the 1970s, when mercury contamination closed fisheries on Lake St. Clair and western Lake Erie and bird- and fish-kills by the thousands were common, ugly sights.

But for all the progress made, large environmental issues still loom over the water corridor that drains the upper Great Lakes into the lower Great Lakes: phosphorus runoff creating choking, potentially dangerous algae blooms in western Lake Erie every summer, emerging nonstick PFAS compound contamination and more. Looming over it all: climate change, which makes solutions even harder to find.

Those are key takeaways from the 11th biennial report from the State of the Strait Conference, a joint U.S. and Canadian panel of scientists and other stakeholders with a 22-year history of assessing the regional water bodies and developing better strategies to address problems.

The latest report, released Tuesday, comprehensively evaluates the ecosystem's health based on data compiled on 61 indicators — "everything from wildlife abundance and water quality all the way up to human health and well-being," said Steven Francoeur, an Eastern Michigan University biology professor who has worked on the reports for more than two decades.

More: Whitmer signs executive order on climate change, aims for carbon-neutral state by 2050

Two bald eagles sit in a nest with their baby on Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan on May 6, 2020. (Photo: Brian Kaufman, Detroit Free Press)

"There have been a number of tremendous successes — the return of raptors like bald eagles and peregrine falcons, improved water quality and improvements at the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Facility," he said.

Otters and beavers also have found their way back to the river systems after years away.

John Hartig, a visiting scholar at the University of Windsor's Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research and a co-author of the report, credited the water corridor's turnaround from its toxic past to a slew of federal and state legislation in the early 1970s related to environmental and water protection, including the federal Clean Water Act; the Great Lakes Water Quality Act signed by the U.S. and Canada in 1972; the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The legislation was spurred by public outrage when the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland suffered a raging fire in June 1969 — a spectacle that received far more national notoriety than the Rouge River's similar blaze that October.

A fire tug fights flames on the Cuyahoga River near downtown Cleveland, Ohio, where oil and other industrial wastes caught fire on June 25, 1969. When Canada and the United States approved the first version of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972, the running joke in Cleveland was that anyone unlucky enough to fall into the Cuyahoga River would decay rather than drown. (Photo: Associated Press file)

"That was probably the biggest factor," Hartig said. "We started regulating industries; we started regulating municipalities."

It has only been within the last decade or so that funding sources such as the federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative have been available to address polluted hot spots around the Great Lakes, he said, addressing contaminated lake and river sediments going back to the late 1800s and restoring fish and wildlife habitat lost over generations of human activity.

"Those were things that traditionally have not gotten a lot of attention," he said.

An example of the transformation: the 44-acre Refuge Gateway of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge will allow  public recreation for the first time starting Thursday at a former longstanding Chrysler Corp. brownfield site in Trenton. The site now features restored habitat along the Detroit River, hiking and biking trails and a large fishing pier.

Hartig called human-caused climate change "a threat multiplier" on the St. Clair-Detroit river corridor.

Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center on 5437 W. Jefferson Avenue in Trenton on Sept. 29, 2020. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

"It amplifies the threat of other threats," he said. "It makes greater the threat of things like harmful algae blooms — when you have a greater frequency and intensity of storms, you have more phosphorus runoff of fields into the Maumee River, feeding the algae blooms. You have worse combined sewage overflows in old cities like Detroit."

The ecosystem never stays the same, so it requires diligence on the part of scientists and environmental regulators, Francoeur said.

"You've got climate change, invasive species like the zebra and quagga mussels," he said. "There are new challenges being introduced, and sometimes the management activities that were pretty effective in the past might not be now because the conditions have changed."

More: Lake Erie algae bloom forecast improved, but states failing in war against nutrient loads

That dynamic is occurring as many federal, state and provincial programs providing long-term monitoring of the water corridor get scaled back, Hartig said.

"There's been a disinvestment in long-term programs, and that is not good," he said. "You need to have adequate monitoring — without it, management is flying blind."

The latest State of the Strait report can be found at web2.uwindsor.ca/softs/.

Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@freepress.com.